Happy Birthday, Milo

27 years have passed since 1985 when Shueisha started to serialize Saint Seiya (SS) by Kurumada Masami, one of the most influential comic artists in his days. Five years later SS was animated and won hundreds of thousands of young audiences in China after the CCTV bought the its copyrights. In days when Chinese cartoons were far less developed, SS attracted many Chinese children with its glaring pictures and extraordinary characters. Almost every student in my class watched it, and knew fictional things like "burn my cosmos" or could do a few fighting moves. I was one of the kids, and inevitably I got obsessed with SS for years. But my dad didn't allow me to watch SS too much for fear that the glaring pictures would hurt my eyesight.

20 years later, Chinese cartoons were still as poor as two decades ago, but Japanese cartoons were much more developed, and many of them were introduced to the Chinese market. The new cartoons made the SS look like a rough and childish one to its old audiences, who were young adults now. But the SS as part of our memories of childhood, is always missed. That was why they made Saint Seiya Hades, a new series of SS with better computer-made stunts and more gorgeous pictures. (Actually it was the most expensive TV- animation at that time.) In comparison to the old SS which was mainly about Bronze Saints, the new episodes were more about Golden Saints who are also stronger and prettier. This time I was a college student. I watched SS Hades with other SS fans, not worrying about its glaring pictures. The new SS Hades created a strong reminiscent mood among SS fans. New online forums, clubs, cosplays, fan comics and novels could be found everywhere. Even I ordered a SS T-shirt from the fan club in Peking University.

After the SS Hades, Golden Saints beat their Bronze peers and lead the popularity rankings, and one of the most popular Golden Saints is Milo, the Scorpius Saint. He is the youngest one in all the twelve (and later thirteen) Golden Saints, and is also viewed as one of the most emotional and caring saint in the SS. His fans always celebrate his birthday on Nov 8, based on officially released bios. In 2004, I drew a short comic about his birthday, the only comic I've ever made. One year later, I put all my fan novels of Milo into a book, and then decided it's time for me to grow up.

The moment of SS has largely gone. Its following episodes never became popular as the SS Hades. Now most SS online forums are closed, few people are still drawing or writing about SS. Days when we got together to celebrate Milo's birthday will never be back. But Japanese cartoon fans are still growing, with more new animations showing every season and old ones never coming to an end. As long as this industry grows and the Chinese cartoons continue sucking, there will be more Chinese children and teenagers becoming Japanese comic fans, and crazy about the characters in them. You can call this a cultural invasion, but I need to say cultural products like this are truly powerful.

Scorpio Milo

Happy Endings V.S. Bad Endings

Online fictions go viral as internet spreads out. These fictions are free of charge, but not free of time: anyone with access to internet can register and post his/her novels regardless of their qualities, and screening always costs readers quite a long time. For me, the challenge lie more on these fictions' endings rather than the qualities. It's not too difficult to sniff out a well-written fiction - the first few lines can give us a glimpse of the author's writing styles and levels, however it's very hard to tell whether the stories are happy ending or not, serial novels in particular. I used to spend several hours reading a humorously-written fiction which unfortunately ends very badly, and got upset for quite a while.

Tragedies impress people with the beauty of imperfections and poignance. If I recall all the fictions I read, what remain in my memory are those ending miserably: either A abandoning B or B betraying A, or a couple deeply in love failing to stay together as a result of unfortunate accidents or distressing misunderstandings. When I was in teenage, I cried over deaths of heroes and their friends, wishing they would resurrect like Sherlock Holmes in the following chapters. I waited for a few weeks, nothing happened except the writer announced "the end", leaving myself unable to get extricated from the mire of sadness and depression for another few weeks. Authors have been enjoying torturing their audiences with bad ending classics for centuries, and they know tears are better at gripping people's heart than laughter. Though loving tragedies so much, I found myself too emotional to read many of them. Therefore I carefully avoid tragedies and choose more with happy endings. Some internet writers have reputations for offering happy endings to all characters, and I feel relieved reading their works. But some of them abuse their reputations a little bit, and give sudden reversions in the last few chapters when all the sweet stories turn into a plot and some important ones die - like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. Poor me can only moan for a while, swearing I will never read his/her books any more. However, when attracted by the beautiful beginning of his/her next novel, I tend to forget about all the old pains.

Some readers look for perfect love and lives in fictions because they are so rare in the real world, and some prefer to bad ending ones due to their profound meanings and enlightening inspirations. In either case, good fictions open windows to different life styles and show us alternatives to our current lives: what might have gone wrong and what could be corrected. Reading novels which tell stories of people relevant to us can easily arouse empathy. For example I read a love story earlier today about a young man doing master degree on journalism at Berkeley. He rents an apt in Marin and hates clam chowder. The story has not ended yet, and I sincerely hope it will have a happy ending as I subconsciously take it as a fictitious orthogonal of my own life.

I read for fun. When I hold a book (or iPad) in sunny afternoons in California, and spend a few hours reading a virtual world created by other people, I want a joyful experience rather than memorable regrets. All the characters - though unreal - are blessed by me.

Radio Drama

During the wi-fi break-down, I reviewed some of my radio drama collection, which already adds up to a surprising stock of 9GB in my laptop. Even after the unfortunate theft of my previous Lenovo last November, my collection was soon recovered and grew very fast. Now it took at least four days for me to listen from the beginning to the end.

The first radio drama I listened to was in Japanese. In early 2000s, when most Chinese audiences had to tolerate hypnotic radio stories by the China National Radio, Japanese dubbing schools were prospering as animation industry boomed. Graduates became popular by dubbing cartoon characters, some even having their fan associations and annual fan meetings. These famous voice casts then chose to make radio dramas and games, both of which are much more profitable because of their lower costs. Dramas are particularly cost effective - just think of how much less work you need to do in producing a drama in comparison to an animation! Like other pop cultural products, many Japanese dramas were pirated in China, and soon acclaimed by cartoon fans.

Dramas tell stories by dialogues and monologues, thus language skills are crucial if you are not a native speaker. I used Japanese dramas to practice my listening skills and learn slang. But for those who don’t speak the language, it might be challenging. Actually unless you’ve acquired a pretty good level of Japanese, it's unlikely to understand what’s going on. Sometimes you can find their Chinese translations online. However most people listen to dramas when they are walking, sleeping, etc. - basically when their eyes need breaks, and very few are willing to listen while reading. So despite that dubbers have beautiful voices, it’s frustrating if you don’t know what they are saying.

Therefore the demand from Chinese audiences fuel the market of Chinese radio drama. Many radio studios emerged on internet after 2005, adapting internet novels and making dramas. Usually a 200,000-word novel can be adapted into a four- to seven- episode drama, and the production cycle may vary from a few months (e.g. Bat by "Jueyi Studio") to a few years (e.g. Unspeakable Love by "Scissor Studio"). A typical team consists of voice casts, directors, scriptwriters, audio specialists and other staffs. Voice casts and audio specialists are the key components of the team: they use either their voices or technologies to inspire our imagination and create virtual frames. A drama usually has several voice casts for different characters, but always one audio specialist to ensure the overall consistence of the style. Some of them - dubbers in particular - also make names of themselves by making high-quality dramas.

Most people working on radio drama are amateur. They get together out of interests, and none of them are paid. Early Chinese dramas had difficulties in recruiting high-quality staff: a typical dilemma faced by those with great interests but not enough skills. Things are getting better later as more people know the industry and become willing to contribute. In addition, short-term training on dubbing and audio production are also provided at reasonable prices in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai now. Courses are offered at night or during summer, so that college students have spare time to do something fun. A website called "Superior Voices Superior Looks" (You Sheng You Se, a punchline for "impressive" in Chinese) releases information about all the new dramas published by each studio, and provides BBS for discussion, recruitment and get-together. I still check this website from time to time, the amount of dramas do increase exponentially in the last decade.

Ten years have passed since my first drama, voiced by Midorikawa Hikaru (can't remember the name of the other guy.) When I have difficulties falling asleep, or need to walk alone for hours, I still resort to dramas for accompany. Last year, I had almost nothing with me after the burglary in South Africa but my iPhone which happened to be under my pillow when thieves broke in at midnight. During the next several days when I was detained in Pretoria waiting for my new passport and visa, dramas in my phone soothed  my soul and relieved my anxiety. It's a fantastic feeling as if you know someone by his/her voice so well that they are like old friends to you. I'm always grateful for the visual world that they create for me.