Alice Mare - A fairytale in a fairytale...

Hey, I'm back! 

As you can probably tell from the title, this post will be about Alice Mare. Alice Mare is a horror-esque adventure game created by Miwashiba, translated by vgperson. Remember I mentioned Jammed Gears? Well, he recently ported this game for Mac users, so I was able to play it! YAY! Also, I noticed that my previous blog posts are quite lengthy and wordy and all the visual stuff (pictures) are all at the end, so it's hard to stay focused for the reader. Well, I'm gonna try something new today. <3

Oh and by the way, I really hope you like the music. I know there are probably some people who hate music playing while blog walking, but I really love it and I know there will be some people who will like it... so yeah. If you don't like it then just turn it off. The music player is on top of the blog. :P

Cast of Alice Mare (fanart from tumblr)

When you first read out the name of the game, what were you thinking about? (Go on, read "Alice Mare" aloud. What did you think of?) Did you think of Alice in Wonderland? Good. Now, what does the "Mare" in the name mean and make reference to? Nightmare? Correct. "Alice Mare" is just a combination of "Alice" and "Nightmare".

The game starts off by showing this boy named Allen, whom you will be playing as in the game. He appears to be an amnesiac as he doesn't remember anything about his past. He talks to an older man who refers to himself as "Teacher". They are, together with some other children, in a facility. Teacher tells Allen to introduce himself to the other children and while it may be hard to get along with them at first, they are all good kids and there should eventually be no problem. So you wander around the facility and meet the following characters. 

Joshua, Teacher, Chelsy, Stella, Allen and Letty. 

The boy standing up (wearing some sort of headwear) is named Joshua. The guy in the middle and wearing a white shirt is the Teacher. The girl directly beside him, on his left is Chelsy. In front of Joshua is Stella and in front of Chelsy is Letty. Lastly, the one lying on Teacher's lap [? lol whut ._.] is Allen.

Stella is probably the first one you will meet, since her door appears first. She doesn't talk much and is actually surprised that Allen can speak. She claims that Allen doesn't seem alive, more so than the others. She thinks everyone feels dead to her, especially Allen and Teacher. She also seems to hate living people.

Stella hates living people. :O

o.0

Next (in door order) is Joshua. Joshua sure is a weird chap. His name is Joshua (as shown on the name plate outside his room) yet he can't seem to remember his name. He introduces himself as Brown then second guesses himself and it goes on and on... He is implied to be a liar so you shouldn't trust him so much. 

?

Yeah you get what I mean.

Next is Chelsy. She is an incredibly shy girl who is the stereotypical stuttering one. But she is shown to have a kind heart as she tells Allen to keep warm when he sleeps as it is getting colder. I just recently discovered a term for this type of people: Shrinking Violet. (Thanks, tvtropes)

*Introduces herself*

Nice to meet you too, Chelsy.

Last is Letty. When you first meet Letty, you have the impression she is normal. She's very nice and friendly and introduces herself very cheerfully. She tells you that she has a twin brother, Rick, who is currently not around. 

Mmhmm!

The twin brother is not around now.

After meeting the characters, Allen proceeds to have dinner with everyone and Teacher notes that he is already used to being around there though he only recently arrived there. Teacher then says something that gives you an idea about your upcoming journey. 

It starts to get Alice-in-Wonderland-esque.

Allen is then told to go to bed, though it is alright to go talk to the others first. The only thing they cannot do is go upstairs. So you control Allen and interact with the other children. Joshua tells you that he hears sounds coming from the second floor, but is too chicken to go check it out. Stella doesn't care about the sounds when you tell her. Chelsy doesn't say anything. Letty isn't around anymore and Rick appears instead. He says Letty's sleeping but you don't see anyone on the bed. (Hmm... suspicious.) Anyway, Rick warns Allen not to listen to Joshua and that Teacher can be very scary when angry. 

Weird voices coming from above.

"When Letty goes to bed,  I watch the room for her." Is she in bed now? I don't see anyone sleeping. o.0

So you go upstairs anyway, haha. That's what all games make you do. It's hard being the good kid when all odds are against you. When you leave for the second floor, it's already lights out everywhere. UGH, darkness...

So dark...

So you go up to the second floor and you notice that the butterflies in the butterfly specimen are calling for help. So you go ahead and help them but the glass smashes into pieces and Teacher comes running up. He got all worried and asking if you (Allen) are okay. Thankfully, he doesn't scold you or anything. 

Butterflies in butterfly specimen call for help.

Teacher arrives at the scene.

Anyway, back to your room. In your room, you notice there's a cat and it ran into your closet. You open your closet and suddenly you are transported to another world. (Unfortunately, I wasn't able to screenshot the scene in time. :P As embarrassing as it sounds, this was also the part I was stuck at, haha. The screen was pitch black so I just sat there staring at it, hoping something will pop up. It turns out that it was intentional on the creator's part. You're supposed to just move forward so that there's this element of surprise when you reach the end and there appears a character called the Cheshire Cat. 

Cheshire Cat ver. Full body

Cheshire Cat ver. Face

The Cheshire Cat makes his entrance.

You have no idea how hard it is to find pictures of the Cheshire cat. Well, they're not official, but I hope you get the picture. ;)

Anyway, the Cheshire Cat welcomes you into this other World and calls you Alice. Even if you deny that you're Alice, he still says you're Alice because he says so, lol. :D Also, he says whatever Alice does is absolute. Then he runs off and you continue moving forward. Eventually, you meet the White Rabbit in the middle of some place. The place is very ruined and there are stones and weird stuff around. The White Rabbit is like a guardian of the Worlds (as represented by the doors). He stands at their entrance and keeps track of the "visitors". 

You are Alice, so if you say you're dreaming, then sure, you are. ;)

UGH I can't find any pictures of the White Rabbit so you're just gonna have to look at the first picture and look at the top right hand corner. That's the White Rabbit. Okay, so it appears he cannot move from that spot he's standing at, the poor guy. He tells you that you are in fact in a different dimension from your own (no shit, sherlock) and there are many other Worlds in this big world. Each World is like the heart of someone out there, and that each World is guarded by a key. Unfortunately, 4 out of 5 keys were stolen from the White Rabbit by none other than the Cheshire Cat. Knowing the Cheshire Cat, the White Rabbit says that it is highly likely he has scattered them all in the other Worlds. Since the White Rabbit cannot move, he seeks your help in retrieving them back. 

Poor White Rabbit. Basically, he's rooted to the ground. 

4 of his World Keys are gone. The kitty has them. Bad kitty! >:(

You have a chance to ask the White Rabbit questions. Fair enough. You agreed to help him and you're not prepared to just wander in some unknown territory without knowing anything.

The White Rabbit explains about the different Worlds you are about to enter. 

Explanation time! Like I said before, you have ventured into another world by opening the closet. Technically, you have arrived in one big world. Let's call it the Wonderland, since there's Alice and all, and it's so apt! So, the White Rabbit explains that in Wonderland, there will be many other small worlds too. Think of the small worlds as a sub-world. Generally speaking, a sub-world is a place that embodies the hidden parts of an Alice's heart. Remember the Cheshire cat called you Alice? Well, you're not the only one. I'm guessing an Alice is the main character, or you can say, the owner of the world they are in. Which means, you being the Alice of Wonderland (lol), means that Wonderland is a hidden part of your heart. It exists within you. The White Rabbit also says that it only embodies the hidden parts of an Alice's heart, because the surface of the Alice's heart has already started to disappear. Now, back to the story. The little sub-worlds all have Alices of their own. The Alice of Wonderland, is you. :) These worlds are based on each Alice's deepest, darkest pasts. 

Anyway, using his only key, the White Rabbit unlocks the first world and you are able to gain access to it. As you approach the Worlds, the Cheshire Cat appears again. He was unwilling to give the keys back to you, but he was kind enough to give you an informative hint.

Which means, after completing one world, you'll find a key which gives you access to the next world.  

Here you can see the five different Worlds, or aka sub-worlds. 

When you go through the door to the first world, you find yourself in a very familiar room; Letty and Rick's room, except that only Letty is there. So you go ahead and talk to her and she asks you to play with her. 

"Let's play! Play play play!" "Sure!" :)

She tells you to open the closet and you are transported to another place. You wake up in a house made of wood, just like a house you'd find in a forest. Like, owned by a woodcutter or something. So you wander around and find that some doors are locked so you have to do something like any other game.

The wooden house in the World you wake up in.

What I really like about this game is that in the midst of the game, you collect scrapbook pieces. These scrapbooks have the drawings and words from the Alice in the World you are currently in. It kinda gives you a background story and helps you to make the connection to which fairy-tale/fable inspired World you are in. Also, the scrapbook pieces show you what led to each Alice's sad end.

Anyway, after wandering around and interacting with things, you manage to get out of the house. Just as I expected, you were in a house in a forest. XD That aside, guess who we saw? 

Oh dear, who is this poor girl sitting outside here alone? *pedo smile*
Nah, just kidding.

In case you don't know, that's Letty. Letty was sitting there, feeling really parched, so you bring some water to her and she's all well. Letty then mentions how sad she feels, knowing that Rick isn't around. She asks if this is a dream and when hearing that it is, she feels assured because Rick is holding her hand when the real her is sleeping.

Moving on, you have to solve this really troublesome puzzle. Or rather, it's a riddle. BREAKING NEWS: I'm horrible at riddles and apparently in this world, if you get an answer wrong 3 times, you'll die. Oh bummer... So after dying 1 time, I finally got the answer (totally didn't cheat). Really, it was a lucky guess. I don't understand why that (the answer I managed to guess) was the answer, haha. XD LIKE I SAID, I GUESSED, SO DON'T DOUBT ME! I may be bad at riddles, but I have good luck.

This is probably where you will first find your first Shard of XXXX. Up till now, I'm still a little unsure of what XXXX mean. I have my suspicions that XXXX = LOVE, but I'm not very sure. Anyways, Shards of XXXX appear in different places in different worlds. If you collect all of them, you will be granted access to an extra scene. 

After that, as you proceed towards the direction of the house, you meet the Cheshire Cat and... Rick. Well, now we know that Letty and Rick can appear at the same time and not have one disappear when the other one is around. But then again, this is a World. If you haven't noticed already, this World belongs to an Alice and the Alice is Letty. So we can't rule out the possibility that that Rick before you is not real. Ah well, what business does the Cheshire Cat have with you? 

Hmmm... I don't know. He was gonna eat Rick, so I'm guessing that does have something to do with you and Letty. But that Rick was acting weird and he had blood over him, so I don't know if I should really care, but whatever. You go into the house and realise that it looked different than before. 

A chocolate wardrobe!

A cookie drawer!

Have you noticed already? Chocolate and cookie plus stuff that looks like chocolate Pocky sticks are part of the house. Have you figured out the fairy-tale, or rather, the fable this World is inspired from? No? Well, let me show a scrapbook piece.

Sweets!! Who doesn't love them? You? Oh you uncultured shit. Tsk tsk...

Ring a bell? Anyway, you go back to the kitchen (where the oven is) and guess who you found?

I wonder who that mysterious creature is...

Letty then gets really scared and calls out Rick's name. The creature gets frustrated.

The creature's frustration. She says that there are only 3 people in the house.

Letty is certain that Rick exists. 

In her state of anger, Letty pushes the creature into the fire. Shock then overcame her and she cries out "Moth-mother...!"

So you're wondering what happened? If you played the game and read the scrapbook pieces (which you haven't except for one), you'll realise that Letty is the one writing and drawing in the scrapbook. She talks about how she feels safe when Rick is around, but she notices that Rick was hardly happy except when he talked to her. She also mentions that her mother brought her out into the deep woods and told her to wait there. While waiting, she chatted with Rick, and that was when he was genuinely happy. She later says that her mother is not her real mother. Her real mother died while giving birth to her and that her current mother often teases her real mother. She is constantly bearing the brunt of her teasings and often suffers inside. She was so hungry she wished her clothes and house were made of sweets. She was basically abused by her stepmother.

I wasn't very sure about Letty's underlying backstory, but I find the interpretation from ManlyBadassHero to be the most reasonable. First off, it's the normal Hansel and Gretel fable where the stepmother attempts to abandon the twins, except that in Letty's case, she was the only child. There was no twin. Rick was a subconscious personality created by Letty to shield herself from her stepmother's abuse. Coupled with the information provided from the newest version of the game, it was further proven that Rick was not real as he only appeared when the stepmother sent Letty out "because there was no food left for her." At that time, Letty wondered if it was because she was weak that there was no food left for her. As she walked into the woods alone, a lone boy told her, "I'll be strong, so you can be weak." Since then, Letty has relied on the boy (Rick) to shoulder every burden she has. Eventually, Rick could not take it any more, which led to him killing the stepmother by pushing her into the oven. 

The scene when it was shown that Letty pushed the stepmother (creature) into the oven, shows that Letty was also in a bloodied state. Remember Rick was also in a bloodied state? It was hypothesised that it was in fact Rick who killed the stepmother in defence and therefore when he merged back with Letty, she ends up with the same appearance. Anyway, after the stepmother was pushed into the oven, Letty jumps into the oven too and died (I believe). The final scrapbook piece appears and some words were blurred out, but ManlyBadassHero managed to guess the words which fit into the context.

"Teacher, is her pain the only reason I exist?"

Now I'm confused as well, since the scrapbook is supposed to be written by Letty, or am I wrong? It appears this sentence is in the point of view of Rick, since he was created by Letty when she was in despair after the abuse by her stepmother. *shrugs*

All this time we have been wondering if both of the "twins" were real. This is apparently not the case. This explains why Rick never seems to be around when Letty is and vice versa. But this doesn't explain why Allen was able to see Rick back in the facility... I'm confused...

Anyway, that was Letty and Rick's story. The inspired fable is Hansel and Gretel. I'd say this game is a little dark. I guess this is what makes up the lack of horror in the game. They replaced it with what I'd call "psychological horror". If you are not feeling the horror yet, let me tell you something. This is not official, but if I were to write a cracked article about this topic, I'd say Letty has schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder where the patient sees things that do not actually exist. This mental disorder often appears in young children (Letty) and they say that they are able to see some people (Rick) and believe they are real. It's like seeing imaginary people and that the imaginary people can sometimes influence the sufferer so much that they affect the sufferer to do things, e.g. kill. 

After collecting the World Key from Letty's World, you go back to meet the White Rabbit and pass him the key to unlock the next world. It turns out that this time, it's Chelsy's turn. 

Inviting Chelsy to play.

Since Chelsy was too shy, you have to invite her to play, which ends up in you opening the closet and being transported to another place again. You wake up in a bed again, this time in a house with lots of Teddy bears and after wandering around again, you meet Chelsy.

Meeting Chelsy in her World.

Chelsy's story didn't have much happening during the gameplay. Rather, it was her scrapbook pieces which told more story than the gameplay. (Or maybe I just didn't take much screenshots. =.=)

Chelsy was tasked to take a basket full of bread and wine to her grandmother.

Follow the usual route, kids.

Because there's a scary wolf that will eat you up.

So anyway, the gameplay involves Allen and Chelsy going to her grandmother's house. Chelsy also stopped to pick up some flowers for her grandmother. Usually, she was told not to do that, but since it was a Dream, she thought: "Oh who cares?" And then they proceeded to her grandmother's house. Naturally, there were some riddles that you have to solve, but they were not so much of a pain in the butt as compared to the one in Letty's World. So they managed to get into Grandmother's house but Grandmother did not respond when Chelsy called out to her. Anyway, they went into a room for a little while to collect the next World Key and at the same time, obtained a scrapbook piece.

Well, it speaks for itself. 

Naturally, Chelsy has a bad feeling and after much persuading on Allen's part, finally agrees to go back to her grandmother's room, only to see that there was a wolf and it ate her grandmother. !!Surprise!!

Chelsy and Allen facing the wolf.

Eventually, the wolf decided to attack Chelsy and as Allen, you have the choice to Tackle or to use the axe (which you obtained earlier). If you tackle, you'll die, so you have to use the axe, which results in killing the wolf. Chelsy goes into depression and says she hates the colour red and closes her eyes so that she can't see it. 

Again, you're gonna need some explanation to make sense of everything. Up til this point, it is totally fine to interpret Chelsy's story as a girl who did not listen to her mother's advice and wandered off and met a wolf and eventually led it to her grandmother, resulting in her death. That's totally fine as that's the original version of the story (kinda). It is fine, because I did not tell you everything. 

In the original version, the grandmother is sickly and Little Red Riding Hood has to deliver things to her grandmother under her mother's orders. However, in this World, Chelsy's mother is the one who is sickly. Chelsy, being the good daughter, decides not to go to school so that she can take care of her sick mother. Her father is rarely at home. Her grandmother is a medicine-maker and every time the medicine at home runs out, Chelsy's mother would send her out to get some more from her grandmother. 

This time, feeling indebted, Chelsy's mother sends Chelsy out with a basket full of bread and wine and tells her not to stray and wander off. Chelsy finds flowers during her walk to her grandmother's house and decides her grandmother would love it if she had some flowers. So Chelsy strayed from her path to pick some flowers and there she met a kind man who was looking for a medicine-maker. Yes, it was a man, not a wolf. Chelsy, being really kind, decided to bring him along with her since she kinda knew it was her grandmother whom he was looking for.

When she reached her grandmother's house, she leaves her grandmother alone with the kind man and entered the medicine room to collect medicine. When she returned to her grandmother, she found out that the kind man had killed her grandmother and was collecting medicine and hastily putting them in a bag. He sees her and slowly approaches her, probably going to kill her as well. Chelsy, in desperation, killed the man. With all the blood flowing out, Chelsy is scarred and therefore hates the colour red. She probably died of despair or something. Or maybe she didn't die. Understandable? 

Now, here is where everything gets really f**ked up. Like in Letty's World, when the Alice dies (or so it seems) there will be a last scrapbook piece. 

"Teacher, I... still can't grieve father.
Those eyes... were his.
...Help me."

Do you see where this is going? 

"I still can't grieve father." 

You grieve someone because they die or something. This brings us to another hypothesis that in fact, her father died. But how and where? Where does he fit in the story? How about, her father being the kind man? Chelsy led her father into her grandmother's house and with her back turned, he killed Grandmother, which is equivalent to a wolf (father) eating (killing) her grandmother. Her father was going to escape until he saw Chelsy. He approached Chelsy, intending to kill and out of desperation, Chelsy killed her father. Now, the scrapbook's words finally fit in. Chelsy couldn't bring herself to grieve over her father's death. She recognised her father's eyes, recognised that it was in fact her father who committed murder. Some people replace "his" with "sad". I personally feel that "his" fits more, because it is highlighting the fact that Chelsy can't be sad because she knows deep inside that he killed her grandmother. 

However, "sad" could work out, if you interpret it with Chelsy's last words: "Help me...". It clearly shows that she is confused and needs someone to help her. What could she be confused about? On one hand, she could not feel sad about her father's death. On the other hand, she notices that his eyes were "sad", indicating the murder might not have been intentional on his part. Chelsy is then conflicted on what to believe. If her father truly did not mean to kill anyone, she should be able to feel sad for him, but now, she still can't grieve father. She has tried, but she can't. 

To anyone who is suspicious about the fact that Chelsy didn't recognise her father when she met him while picking flowers in this theory, I'll say that it is probably due to the fact that her father is rarely home. She probably didn't recognise him. ;( Brrrr... Am I the only one feeling the chills here? Again with the cracked articles, Chelsy could be a serious case of the Nice Girl Syndrome, being manipulated easily. But it's not as scary as Schizophrenia, right? 

Again, you return the collected World Key to the White Rabbit and the next World he sends you to is Joshua's.

Again, you play with the Alice. 

So you open the closet and are transported to another place.

A very luxurious place...

You wake up in a big room. It gave me the impression that Joshua was a rich man's son. I mean, look at the bed and all the furniture! But I must say that the choice of colour has got to be the most flattering thing ever! Anyway, you walk about, solve riddles and you find Joshua. But before that, you obtain some scrapbook pieces.

Unbelievable...

Joshua's mother thinks of them as harmless jokes fueled by imagination.

Maybe because his stories escalated into no-laughing matters.

Allen meets Joshua in this World.

I seriously have nothing much to say about Joshua's gameplay. It's just walking around doing stuff. What's important is the scrapbook pieces!

Well, maybe because you're a liar!

Okay, so the scrapbook taps on the topic about Joshua being ignored by his parents. Sad, but not that big of a deal compared to what's coming up. Allen and Joshua enter this room where they meet the ever pesky Cheshire Cat and a hanged figure.

Cheshire Cat standing in front of Joshua's mother.

Joshua notices in horror that his mother is being hanged. But he then denies that it is his mother because her eyes do not look like that. After that, the Cheshire Cat made many eyes appear around the room and asks Joshua to identify which eye belongs to his mother. (I chose not to show that pic, because it's a bit haunting.) Joshua freaks out.

Now for the underlying backstory, since nothing is complete without it (even more so for this World ;)) So in fact, I was right about Joshua being a rich kid. He lived with his parents and a brother and a sister. Apparently, there were many things forced upon him and such a rich lifestyle can be a little suffocating and dry. So Joshua naturally got bored of everything. He would wander outside and when he came back, would talk about all his escapades to his mother, and most of them were exaggerations and lies. His mother would look surprised and then laugh and pet his head, probably thinking it's just a child's imagination. I mean, wouldn't you think the same? Joshua liked seeing his mother's surprised face and he went on telling lies about his escapades, just to get his mother to talk to him. His talks became more and more unbelievable, until one day, his mother did not laugh at what he said anymore. One day, Joshua noticed that his father "went cold" and he was "floating". (When I read that, I automatically assumed he died.) Joshua tried to lead his mother to his father and convince her that he indeed "went cold", but his mother refused to believe him. 

Eventually, it was Joshua's brother and sister who managed to get his mother to his father. His mother realised that his father had indeed "went cold". Since then, she displayed a face that he had never seen before. She would sit on a chair and stare into nothing. 

The truth is, despite the wealth the family had, they eventually met with some financial troubles. Joshua's father was overwhelmed with all the debts and money-related problems. He then took his life by hanging himself, which explains "went cold" and "floating". His mother became depressed, probably because she didn't believe Joshua or maybe just depressed over her husband's death.  

Joshua, being a young boy, did not understand that lying was wrong and that it was the primary reason why his mother refused to look at him anymore and didn't believe him. His mother would only look at his siblings and Joshua felt shunned and unwanted. This lack of attention and most importantly, lack of love, caused Joshua despair. This is his last scrapbook piece:

"But I still said it.
Did I make the right choice?"

Joshua's brother is good at soccer, his sister is smart, but he felt he was nothing. His mother would only look at his siblings, not at him. Therefore, he always spoke up, always lied to get attention. He was nothing, but he said he was something. He had nothing, yet he said he had something. In the end, he didn't know who he was and what he had anymore. He got so sad after saying those things because deep inside, he knew the bitter truth. It dawned upon him that whatever he said, it will hurt someone.

But he still said it. He still told the truth that his father had died and in doing that, he had hurt his mother. Did he make the right choice by saying that? It wasn't supposed to hurt anybody since it was the truth, so why was his mother so hurt? Joshua wonders if he had made the right choice, seeing that his mother is devastated.

If I have to say what disorder Joshua has, it'd be Compulsive Lying Disorder. A compulsive liar would always tell lies, just like The Boy who cried Wolf.

Once again, the next World Key is collected. The next World you'll be entering is Stella's World.

Let's play with Stella!

I think you know what happens here. You get transported to another place again. You wake up in a very weird place. The atmosphere of the place reminds you a graveyard... Everything's dead there.

A bed in the middle of nowhere...

So you wander around once again through the annoying mazes (like WTH?) and you finally see Stella, but Teacher is also there. 

Stella and Teacher sitting at a dining table [?] in the middle of nowhere again.

As seen from the previous Worlds, the setting in the Worlds reflect a place that the Alice knows about. We can safely assume that Stella knows about this god-forsaken place. Anyway, Stella follows you around too, and so does teacher. Honestly, it's very cute watching 3 characters walking in a single file.

Ahaha, how cute <3

Anyway, in the middle of your gameplay, Stella gets tired and you three sit down and rest. Stella kindly reminds you again of how you and Teacher feel very dead. 

Thanks... I'm a Walking Corpse, then. =.=

Eventually, the three of you reach a point where there is a room in which Teacher just walks towards alone and tells you two not to follow. It seems like Teacher has some secret lurking inside there... Stella then tells you that she will follow you wherever you go (no, not in a romantic way, haha). There are some jumpscares here and there but they are not so extreme. The thing is, it catches you off guard since during the whole game, there were no jumpscares when you anticipated them, but once you let down your guard, they pop out. :P

Basically, you and Stella reach a gravesite [?] kind of place and there is a piano with missing pieces which you have to find. You find them and put them back onto the piano and Stella plays it. You and Stella have this short conversation about XXXX. Haha, remember XXXX? Stella says that when someone loses XXXX, they die. She then comes to the realisation that the reason why Allen and Teacher both seem so dead is because they have lost that one thing. She then has this sudden motivation to move on on their journey. 

You enter this place with a huge stone where many names are carved on. Stella says that eventually, her name too will be carved on that huge stone. The names belonged to all the people who used to live in that village. (:O It's a village!!) They eventually died.

Never let anyone die a second time.

You then walk around and eventually find an apple tree. Stella reminisces about the past, about how she was "up there" and when the villagers tried to reach out to her, they ended up "falling". Stella, too, reached out to them, but she couldn't follow them to where they have gone to. She then says something about how she should have eaten that apple a long time ago.

I'm not very clear about Stella's World, because she always seems to speak about everything in metaphors. If I am not wrong, (which I highly am), where Stella used to live was far from a disease-free sanctuary. There was this plague that attacked the village and many villagers ended up dying. Stella was orphaned because of that and she was then adopted into many families, but the families that took her in would slowly succumb to the disease and die off until Stella is the only one left. All the people who have died had their names carved on that huge stone and Stella believes her name too will be carved on it. She walked to this apple tree by the water and then explained about her past.

While everyone was slowly dying due to the disease, Stella realised that she was in fact immune to the disease. The reason is not very clear to me, but it has been hinted by others that in the game's ending credits, it shows a girl who resembles Stella getting a shot, probably a vaccination from the disease. The place and time of that happening is unfortunately and yet again unclear. Someone gave her an apple and told her eat it if she doesn't wish to be alone. As you can probably tell, the apple is poisonous and the only way for Stella to not feel lonely again is to eat the apple and die, thus following in the footsteps of all the villagers. I still don't really understand the part about her being "up there" and the villagers "reaching out to her" but in the end "falling". I'll just assume that the villagers wanted her to be together with them (i.e. die like them) and while getting her to do so, they died. As for the reason, they probably didn't want her to be alone.

In the end, Stella decides to eat the apple and asks if you would join her. If you join her, you'll die. If you don't, then you'll continue with the story. :P

"But Teacher, you understand, don't you?"

And that was her one and only scrapbook piece. Her story was inspired by Snow White if you haven't figured it out yet. Alas, you're wondering what Teacher understands too. Stella is thinking that Teacher understands how it feels like to not have love in their hearts, to be forgotten and alone. Betcha didn't know Teacher was as forgotten and depressed as Stella, perhaps even more so, which is why we will be moving on to Teacher's past, but later. The flow of the story shall not be disrupted. 

There is one last room you can enter. You can choose not to enter though. From there your objective would be to stab someone with the last key. If you stab that person, that person becomes a door for you to go back to your original world, but the person being stabbed can't go back because his/her soul remains in the World, and eventually, the Cheshire Cat would eat it since he claims they don't need it anymore. If you stab Letty, the end would be "The Two of Us". If you stab Chelsy, the ending would be "The Color Red". If you stab Joshua, the ending would be "Crying Wolf" and if you stab Stella, the ending would be "Poison Apple". If you choose not to stab anyone, you'd be choosing to make a pact with the demon, Cheshire Cat. We all know that doesn't end well, and the Cheshire Cat either ends up killing you or possessing your body, eventually breaking his promise that he would not hurt the others. The ending would be "Cheshire Cat", with a super scary-looking Allen, with a slasher smile plastered onto his face. *Shivers*

Of course you can be like me and choose not to stab anyone yet and instead venture through the last door. You may think that's it's your World, but ultimately, the whole Wonderland is your World, so technically it should belong to someone else. It turns out it's Teacher's World. Again, the gameplay didn't show anything of high significance and neither was there scrapbook pieces to show the plot. Let me just skip towards the end. 

The end shows you finding Teacher after being separated from each other. He notices the last key you're holding and requests you give it to him. Regardless of whether you choose to give it to him or hide it behind your back, he still manages to obtain it and then stabs himself. 

As he was going to die, he explains his past partially. The other half is supposed to come from an extra scene, but I'll just say everything right here, right now. Teacher used to have his own World as well, meaning he was just like all our dear characters, stuck in the World. Another person stuck there was his sister, Fiona, who had stabbed herself with the key so that Teacher can go back to the original world. It appears Teacher used to succumb to this syndrome called Nightmare syndrome that is very prone to appear in children with dark and sad pasts. The characters in the game were prone to such a syndrome and Teacher took them in and cared for them. It seems that the Nightmare Syndrome is somewhat connected to the World and that people who have or are prone to have the syndrome will be more likely to find themselves in that alternate World. Since Teacher knows that the syndrome is connected to the Wonderland, he was in his way, trying to protect the children from that Wonderland World by taking them in and monitoring (caring for) them. Teacher's past was also sad because he was never loved. He tried to love other people, but in the end, they still did not love him back. Because he was caught in the World, he had to find an exit and his sister provided the exit by stabbing herself with the key. He got very depressed because his sister stabbed herself in front of him and he wanted more than anyone to destroy that World, which is why he stabbed himself to save Allen and the others.

As for his dear sister, Fiona, she did not die immediately after stabbing herself with the key, as with anyone who is in that situation. A person who has been stabbed with the World Key will not die immediately, but instead be trapped in the Wonderland until demons come and consume it, as mentioned before. So that's what happened to Fiona. Before Teacher himself died by stabbing himself with the key, he told Allen to forget about him. This is because he knew what would happen if Allen kept remembering his sacrifice: Allen would become depressed like Teacher once did after his sister sacrificed himself and he might become too obsessed about the Wonderland, wanting to destroy it. He basically didn't want Allen and the others to have anything to do with the Wonderland anymore, therefore urging and almost begging Allen to forget about him. :(

Remember when Stella said that people who has lost XXXX will die? It is very obvious at this point that XXXX is love and we can hence make the connection that Allen had lost love too. It was part of Teacher's childhood to be lacking in love and hence suffering from the Nightmare Syndrome. Allen is also prone to suffering from the Nightmare Syndrome as he lost his parents in a car accident prior to his amnesia. He has already lost his loved ones, hence losing love as well. 

Teacher was saved when his sister stabbed herself for him. Allen is saved because Teacher stabbed himself or he stabbed the other characters. If Teacher was saved once, but eventually came back to the World, we can't rule out the possibility that Allen might turn out like Teacher when he grows up, finding himself in that World again, while the vicious cycle of sacrificing souls continues, highly likely courtesy of the Cheshire Cat. 

As you can probably tell, the Cheshire Cat is a goddamn motherf***er (sorry for the curses) and this whole process of succumbing to the Nightmare Syndrome and once more going back into the world as an attempt to stop the vicious cycle of never-ending sacrifices, will probably continue forever. This is a haunting aspect in itself. I know this is getting long, but I still have something to say.

Although I did not tell you before, in the starting of the game, the following words can be read: "The ant told me that the frog is bad. The frog told me that the cat is bad. The cat told me, no. The rabbit is the worst of them all." This brings me to more mindf**k, courtesy of ManlyBadassHero. In the Wonderland, there are many demons that take the form of fairytale/fable characters, notable examples including our dear Cheshire Cat and White Rabbit. Yes, demons. A demon in the form of an ant says that the frog is bad. The frog thinks that the Cheshire Cat is bad, but no. The Cheshire Cat thinks the White Rabbit is the worst. While you may have come to the conclusion that the Cheshire Cat is the demon going around consuming poor souls that are trapped after stabbing themselves with the key, the game is implying that compared to what the White Rabbit can do, the Cheshire Cat is a saint. While the Cheshire Cat is stereotypically evil, the White Rabbit has the ability to alter fates of children who enter the Wonderland, which I assume through means of communication like telling and convincing Allen that the Cheshire Cat is the bad one. That makes the White Rabbit the overall mastermind of the Wonderland. He lured children in when he got the chance after altering their fate. If you think about it, it would mean that the White Rabbit meant for everything to happen: Allen's parents' deaths, the other children's murder or witness of death... everything.

The Cheshire Cat may be a motherf***er, but the White Rabbit is downright creepy. >:( Oh my gosh. I seriously need to meet the creator of this game in person and see what kind of creepy shit he/she is. I would understand if there exists the ability to bullshit a disturbing story like this after long hours of brainstorming, going all "Oh, I need to add in more mindf**k to this, and another death to that, oh and don't forget the angst. The angst, Jimmy, the ANGST! WE NEED MORE ANGST!" But if the creator just woke up one morning and got the idea from a dream, then man, how do you live your life?! Don't get me wrong. I love this story, I love how it's unique. I love that it has everything to do with Alice in Wonderland and all the other stories I have read when I was young. I love how it opens up my perspectives and make me aware that there are many ways to interpret a supposedly innocent-looking childhood fable. It made me think about the different ways that story would have ended if I just pop in a death here and a plot twist there. Most importantly, it's starting to make me think like a psychopath, oh gosh. Okay, maybe not a psychopath, but someone creepy. This makes me remember about all the English Literature lessons I used to have. Oh, how nice it would be if I could bullshit some theory for analysis about this game and get a wonderful score for that? Literature would be a hundred times more fun than usual! Someone should definitely propose that to the school.

Anyway, since I am so horrible at expressing my thoughts, I shall spare you from more words. I do realise I am supposed to be making more of an effort to make this easy to read, but I like writing, so much so that it looks like I have a serious case of word vomit. >.< But really, can't you see how much effort I poured into this? I took the screenshots individually and put them all here, organising everything so nicely that even if you don't understand the game plot by the time you leave this blog post, you should be embarrassed to even try and criticise me for my effort. >.< *pants* Well, that was a long sentence!

Okay, I seriously don't know how to end this without sounding awkward, but since I know that I probably AM going to sound awkward anyways, why not make it as awkward as possible? :D
BYE. That's all. Hehh hehh. (Sorry if this sounds awkward ;))

Tons of Love,
Mirai

Oh. My. God.

Oh heyy...
Have I seen you before?
I think I have...
Oh right, this is my blog, haha. I haven't blogged in ages, lol and I think I may stop the whole blogging thing if I don't churn out something.
Actually, I have a lot of things I would like to blog about, but am just too lazy to do so and I end up forgetting about it and have absolutely no motivation to blog about anything, haha. But I DO have certain things in mind that I wanna blog about.

1) Alice Mare (OMG, I have been putting this off for way too long. I know I'm just making excuses, but Alice Mare is wayyy too hard to understand. >:( I'll finish up the long blog post littered with many screenshots for easy reading soon! After that's done, I'll kick start everything else on my list :))

2) OBS? (Hmm... I don't know what I'll do for OBS. :( I mean, OBS is an amaze-balls experience and it's such a pity if I don't blog something about it. Besides, I forgot a lot of things... Hmm..., maybe I'll dedicate a blog post for it soon.)

3) Generally, my life. I mean, seriously! My 2014 life, school and whatever. Bad, bad Mirai! Your last blog post was like, what? 2013 December?! I'll start to talk about how I'm coping and whatever shizz I feel like blogging about. Oh, oh! The new RGS NCC! I must, and will talk about it!! Oh, oh, oh!! And Japan ;)

4) RGS FSD!!! :) This is a must too. :)

5) Uhh, Gold Wing Course? Uh, yeah I'll think about it ;)

I think that's all for the moment? I WILL PULL AN ALL-NIGHTER TO FINISH THIS AHAHAHA! (Really, it's amazing how I find the motivation to do blogging, but close to none when it comes to my studies. Oh well, they always say "interest is the best motivator." I guess that's the case. Toodles for now~~~ See ya' soon! (Well, see ME soon, since I think only I follow my own blog, haha. ha... ha...)


Love, <3
Mirai

Hakuouki

Hakuouki cast and their chibi versions.

Hey guys!!

I made a post about my life just now, but I'm back here because I need to rant. XD Well, this rant might be interesting to some people, but not necessarily all. If you like anime and you watch this particular series called Hakuouki (be it Shinsengumi Kitan ot Hekketsuroku or Sekkaroku... anything...) you might find this interesting (hopefully) and you may even share the same views as me. If you don't like anime or you just simply don't watch them, well, you should. You should watch it and come back to read my blog post. I probably mentioned this anime somewhere, but I came back to it after rewatching the series, and I have a lot to say.

Okay, so, I like the anime Hakuouki. Reason: It's historical fiction. That's right, baby. Historical. The plot is set in the Edo period, when Japan is still ruled by the Tokugawa Shogunate. Basically, you don't need to know what the Shogunate is and what Edo is. The Tokugawa Shogunate is simply the people who are in charge of Japan and the Edo period is just the name for the period they are in control. "Edo" in itself, is the former name of modern day Japan. "Shinsengumi" is the name of the police force then. That's it. History class is over.

Plot: !!!(Spoilers)!!!

"Yukimura Chizuru heads to Kyoto to search for her father. While there, she witnesses a fight between Rasetsu and members of the Shinsengumi. The Shinsengumi take her into custody and, once learning she is the daughter of the doctor they are searching for, decide to keep her close at hand. Chizuru follows the Shinsengumi in their battles to help the Shogunate. "

What do I have to say about this anime?

Simple. I would say that I love this anime, because of the bishies and the plot.

The anime uses characters based on their historical counterparts, so you can be sure that the people shown in the anime actually used to exist. The anime tells us a story, about how the Shinsengumi was hated by the people and looked down upon, but they were slowly acknowledged due to their efforts.

The soundtrack is beautiful. The characters' designs and the creators skill in portraying Edo-period Japan is to be commended on. It makes you feel like you're actually in that era and as corrupted as it sounds like, it makes you feel like entering that era yourself. (You know, with the geishas and geikos and all.)

The plot was crafted well and it slowly builds the tension to the ending. Sure, there was the rise of the Shinsengumi, and there will be the fall for them. As the fall would be somewhat emotional, the creators decided to drag everything out slowly, as if softening the blow. I mean, if you didn't know any better, you might think that the creators had the impression making everyone die one by one was better for the audience because it didn't hurt as much. Seriously?! Every time someone was going to die, you kind of had a premonition and the whole time the creators were probably grinning sadistically on their chairs, knowing you were hopelessly wishing that it wasn't the case. Their deaths strike at you when you're the most emotional.

What happens after they actually die? You just sit there like "Was happenin'?" What? Is that the end? They're not gonna talk about him now that he's dead? Maybe I was just secretly hoping they would mention the ones who have died, one way or another. They could have just mentioned that they have died honorably or something. I just couldn't get over the fact that once the characters disappear, it makes me feel like they have been forgotten. Yes, maybe the anime did mention them for a while, but I felt that it did not give enough credit to the characters for what they did.

Anyone remember what happened after Souji died? Hijikata and Chizuru sobbed a little and just walked away. They walked away and that's it. Okay, you may be thinking, what's wrong with that? Souji's dead and there wasn't anything they could do but walk away. His freaking body was not even there anymore. HE TURNED INTO ASHES, DAMMIT! But you know what I think? I, too, think that there's no problem with Chizuru and Hijikata walking away. I think there's a problem if they didn't even show us Souji's last moments. Maybe it's to save us from tears, but hey, what about some feelings in there? Souji died protecting and though I'm sure he did it willingly, he had a grudge on Hijikata for letting Kondou die. Did they seriously just let Souji leave while having a grudge? You might disagree with me since Souji willingly died protecting Hijikata so he couldn't possibly still hold a grudge. If you haven't noticed, he was doing everything for Kondou. Did they (creators) seriously develop Souji up till that point, to just let him die with a grudge, with sorrow for Kondou's death, and with a blind conviction stemmed from Kondou's ideals? I think it would be more impactful if they showed Souji saying his last words (possibly about entrusting the future of the Shinsengumi to Hijikata) before he took his last breath. Dramatic, perhaps. But not redundant.

Also, they didn't show what exactly happened to Saitou, Nagakura and Sano. Yeah sure, we could wikipedia it, but you and I know that the anime didn't completely follow history. If they did, Souji would die because of Tuberculosis. What about Kazama and Hijikata? Did they both die? I don't know about Kazama (since he took a blow in this heart, I think?) but some people theorize that Hijikata didn't die because he didn't turn into ashes like he should if he died.

Well, I don't know. While I may be pissed at some points, (like Souji's death and the Hakuouki ending overall for not letting me know everything) I managed to see the charm of how they ended the anime. Without letting me know what happened in the end, I'm allowed to believe in what I want to believe. I can believe that Hijikata isn't dead even if he was supposed to be, because the anime didn't tell us anything. Happy endings don't always make the best endings. I will admit this: sometimes the sad and angsty ones make a greater impact because it wasn't what you expected. Since it's a period anime, most will expect a sad ending where everyone dies, but the attachment to the characters makes you believe that a happy ending might have been possible, so when the sadder-than-you-thought ending falls in place, it throws you off a bit.

The biggest charm point was how the tied everything up. Chizuru met the Shinsengumi in the start, and she "meets" the Shinsengumi at the end. The battle the Shinsengumi was fighting was a losing battle. What is sadder than fighting a losing battle by yourself? It looks as though Chizuru was alone in the end, looking up at the sky and remembering the people who stood and fought till the end, only to know that they indeed have met their end and are never coming back, and she is indeed alone (if Hijikata really dies... Well, let's just say that she's alone for that moment.) The people whom she had known for the years she spent away from home have left, some even leaving in front of her. It was a tear-jerking moment for me, even if I'm not Chizuru. I liked how the anime wasn't just skirting around the borders of reality. Loss is a part of reality and this anime showed just how it could possibly feel like. It provided a grim reminder of how life is fragile and can lose its flame any time. I like subjects that portray realistic human aspects such that I can relate to them.

I craved more from the anime, somewhat hoping to seek some comfort in knowing they (the characters) are out there somewhere, and they are not lost forever. Next comes the following season, which is the prequel to the actual anime. The fact that it shows all the characters happily spending time together, alive, just reminds me of the fact that they eventually died and the happy moments will never be back again. It's like the feeling you get after watching Titanic, haha. I guess I'm addicted to that kind of feeling. I wanted everything to go back. I wanted time to not move on. It was depressing for me, actually. I lay down on my bed and thought and thought about the characters. But I loved the anime. I really did.




Hey guys, I've been hiding this for a long while, but...




I really don't like Chizuru. If you didn't feel any hate from my thoughts about the anime, kudos to me. I've been trying to be impartial. But really, there is so much hate radiating from me towards Chizuru that I'm just typing rapidly now, so if I actually sound like I'm losing my mind and is a temperamental b**ch, you know the reason.

1) She is such a Mary-Sue. If you don't know what a Mary-Sue is, I am honoured to be the one to introduce one of the most annoying types of characters media can possibly produce. I'm sure Chizuru is honoured to be the number one representative of this distasteful and pathetic excuse of a well-developed character. A Mary-Sue is a type of character that follows the criteria of being a perfect human (in terms of morals) so closely that you'd think she's being manipulated like a robot. A Mary-Sue is always the stereotypical kind girl/boy (mostly girls) who is nice to everyone, even if the person is the enemy, because a Mary-Sue IS ALWAYS SO F**KING NICE AND IS ABLE TO EMPATHISE WITH ANYONE EVEN IF YOU ARE A PITIFUL BEING WITH A SAD AND DISTORTED PAST. They are known to have very strong morals and miraculously have the ability to convince everyone because of their ridiculously potent good girl/good boy vibes. Here's what I believe: they are secretly manipulating you, supposedly changing you into a better person since they're always right (but they put on a facade and say really sensible things and make you think that they are just speaking their minds. Then you believe that they are actually really sensible and you eventually believe what they say, do what they say BECAUSE THEY ARE SOOOO SENSIBLE!!) Because they are such extraordinary humans, everybody likes them. Everybody feels the need to protect them because they are so good and good means naive and naive people get hurt easily. Now, do you understand what a Mary-Sue is? She is absurdly nice to the people around her, even the eccentric ones whom you don't usually approach, i.e., San'nan. Sensible girl Chizuru decides to make an easy-to-eat meal for poor San'nan who injured his hand and when he accused her for treating him like an invalid who needs special attention, good girl Chizuru makes him look bad by saying her oh-so-sensible things because she's like a f**king saint. She knows well that the guys in the Shinsengumi would never abandon her even if hell freezes over (because they like her so much and she's so important) but being sensible and not wishing to be anyone's burden, Chizuru waltzes out in the battlefield to offer herself to the enemy. Oh no, Chizuru's not in the wrong because she's thinking about others. Oh my, the guys are even more determined to win the fight because they want to protect Chizuru. They all feel the need to protect Chizuru. Nobody sees that she is being reckless and a pain in the ass to protect when her stupid actions cause potential harm to her. And since the guys would never let harm go her way, they all stake their lives for hers to protect her. If I didn't know any better, I would have thought she was trying to gain validation of her worth by putting herself in danger and seeing who will bravely put her life before theirs. Tch...

2) She. Is. So. F**king. Weak. Seriously, if you have decided to come search for your father in an unknown land, there has to be a certain amount of danger you're gonna have to be prepared for. Maybe you didn't expect blood-thirsting creatures, but c'mon, Edo period has rouge samurai and some of them are brutal. If you're gonna be a damsel in distress every single freaking time you leave the headquarters, you should have gotten the hint that You. Are. Weak. and it should dawn on you that your trip to Kyoto would have been well-wasted if not for the guys. Train, dammit. You spend your hours bringing tea to people and doing chores. The Shinsengumi have managed themselves long enough before you came and they won't die due to lack of thirst if you used your time training instead of bringing tea. You have a f**king sword and I have only seen you unsheathe it 3 times. You say you know the basics of self-defense? Isn't the basic to defend yourself when someone is going to attack? If your idea of the basics of self-defense is to close your eyes and scream while someone is about to slash your throat, then I have nothing to say. Sure, she's young and is a girl and of course, guys feel this need to protect girls. She is no exception. But she's been in so many dangerous positions and near-death situations throughout the anime if not for the guys. If she was smart enough to decide to parade into the battlefield, she should have been smart enough to catch on that she should steer out of trouble and there won't be some hot guy being helping you slash your enemy. Oh wait... She wasn't smart to start with. I take back my words. She is simply too dumb.

3) She is whiny and cries about how useless she is. Sure, there are some things you can and you can't do, and though it is not the intent of the creator, I think the anime shows a great deal of things that Chizuru can't do. E.g. #1: She can't fight. (We have established this earlier. I shall save you from more horror and loss in faith in female leads.) E.g. #2: I'd like to think that she has a problem sorting out her priorities. Enemy has a gun and has fired it in your direction. My priority (as well and Genzaburou's): To escape death. Chizuru's priority: Whine about how the enemy is blocking their path and (possibly) hope a miracle happens that somehow distracts the enemy so they can pass. As you can tell, Chizuru has flaws and that's fine, because everybody has flaws. The thing is, she knows damn well that these are the factors that make her so damn useless yet she never learns and never does anything about it. Yet she whines and wishes there is something she can do, something she can help the Shinsengumi with. A little advice here, girl, correct your flaws and stop being for f**king annoying.


I have read many blog posts written by people who share my views. I have also tried being rational and reasonable by reading posts written by people who defend Chizuru. However, I still believe in my stand (as you can tell). But I will say this: I understand that Hakuouki started out as an otome game. It's targeted towards girls and the female character you're supposed to play as should be someone who is quite neutral in character. In other words, she has to have the potential of being liked by possibly every type of guy in the story, and what kind of character best fits the bill? Well, a Mary-Sue to be honest. The nice and sensible ones would lean towards their nice demeanour while the ones who are not as nice will always change for the better after being exposed to her good-girl vibes. Everyone's happy and there won't be any hint of discrepancies in any relationship the player decides to pursue. But like I said, a Mary-Sue is a pitiful excuse of a well-developed character, especially if it is supposed to serve as a game's female lead. What more is there to develop a Mary-Sue? They are like the epitome of niceness (though it means they are also the epitome of fake) and since they are so nice, they won't be affected by you. People are people for a reason and if it's to exist as an awfully nice and upright character like Chizuru, there would be no meaning to life. You'd be a fake because there has to be some point in your life that you make your decisions because of your interests, not because of your morals. But Chizuru? Someone needs to tell her that her good girl act grates on many people's nerves.

I have read a blog post by 9darkangel from 9darkangel.livejournal.com/13189.html and I agree wholeheartedly with her that Chizuru has been entrsuted with the responnsibility of being a character every girl (who plays the game) can indentify with and "I would sue the gaming company, really. That thing (Chizuru) is a freaking insult to every woman out there, I swear." And yeah, you go girl. I totally agree on your post and I too, will ship Chizuru with Itou because HIJIKATA IS TOO GOOD FOR HER! No offense to Itou too, because he's just a step above Chizuru in terms of how much I like them. Nobody deserves to be paired with someone lower than themselves.

Chizuru's True Pairing...

Itou and Chizuru. Don't they look lovely here?

Chizuru's emotional moment...

Chizuru is thankful to everyone for risking their lives for her.

*Thankful smile with teary eyes. 

Chizuru's noble act...

Amagiri: If you come with us, we will spare them.

Chizuru: I...

OH MY!! :O

Chizuru's thoughts: I will protect everyone!!!

She's so noble! *v*

Chizuru is afraid she might kill Saitou...

Hmmm... Can Chizuru protect herself?

Oh really?

Saitou speaks up...

Saitou's test

:O

Fight, huh?

"You don't need to hold back."

"Come and TRY to hit me wherever you like."

But what...?

Chizuru thinks she has the potential to kill Saitou.

Damn right.

Oh, our Chizuru is being serious here!

And this is what happens...

Ending result: Deer in headlights.

Whoo~ I'm tired now. I basically poured my hate in this post. It's not gonna be a healthy day for me...

Bye~,

Mirai

End of Year - Holidays and other activities!!

Heyyyy!!!

I've been feeling so lazy nowadays. I didn't even get into the mood to update my blog, well mainly because I felt like I have nothing significant enough to blog about. It's just normal life. Some people just have a wonderful social life while I'm just sitting here and being like, "Yay! I got an achievement in Tetris Battle!!" <Talking about Tetris Battle, I kinda hate it a lot now. Well, not just now, but since the time they had this major update that decreased everyone's energy down to 30. (Note: It requires 5 energy to play one game.) I used to have around 100+? I would play it all day and not get tired of it. Now what? We get to play only 6 games and THAT IS NOT ENOUGH! Seriously? After that, we may get free energy, that is when we watch boring advertisements (Singapore propaganda about keeping the earth clean and what shit.) Freaking 5 minutes about this Malay chick singing, which isn't all that bad, but it's not catchy at all! It's so repetitive and they have random raps and all. UGH! Anyway, I have steered off the topic once again, but then again, don't all of my posts usually do? ;)

Anyway, the school holidays have started a long time ago, I can't even remember when. All I remember was sitting under the sun in the amphitheatre and watching performances. Yep, that was the Y4 Graduation concert. It wasn't really spectacular as I wished it would be, but hey, it's something!! And then, I remember packing all my books into my bag (from my locker) and then I would discover that my locker is 70% filled with Chinese newspaper which I have payed for, but have not read a single one of them. Okay, maybe I read the dou hao but that's it. I wonder if the school could make buying the Chinese newspaper optional. That way, people like me who is just taking Higher Chinese to escape the hell it brings in JC, will not waste money and instead use the money for greater purposes. :)

Other than that, I don't remember much about the things I did just before the holidays ended. I just remembered that we had a NCC competition. (2, actually.) Holly and I participated in the Air competition which I am confident to say I am probably the person who sucked the most in the competition. It was so discomforting and annoying and so utterly painful to know that I am nowhere close to all the aeromodellers that our CCA has produced over the years. Oh, I'd rather not talk about it. I blog about things that I would want to remember in the future when I re-read this blog again. I'd bet my life I would never forget what happened on that day. j.j

The other competition was the Orienteering competition. We didn't win. End of Story. I blame it on myself. I couldn't run fast enough, couldn't run long enough, couldn't resist the urge to drink water and thus have stitches. I mugged for the theory part, but I think that was all. I never thought it would be so hard to run in our No.4 uniform. They always say, "Expect the unexpected." Clearly, I didn't do any of that. I could see that we have disappointed the seniors. They put in so much effort for us... All the trainings, all the exercises to get us used to navigating with a compass... Frankly speaking, the theory was the only aspect I was confident in, except for 1 question. :P I was hoping it would rain on that day so that the scores and the winners would be based on the theory test. Haha, Holly and Jomma, now you know what I was thinking deep inside. But then, luck had wore itself out. It did rain, but it stopped just in time for us to participate in the competition. Not only were the grounds wet and muddy, we were treading on marsh 90% of the time. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, but whatevs. The running? It was horrible. UGH.

Air Competition

I did say I won't talk about it, but just for remembrance sake. (My mind has gone completely nuts. Maybe I'm secretly masochistic, causing the future me distinct pain when she reads this post in the future.) So the day started out ok, (if 'ok' is the word you use to describe a major case of nerves.) and my dad drove me to the HQ. <So that I don't have to deal with the judging stares of the people in public transport, who obviously had no idea that girls could join NCC. I met with my seniors and juniors and Holly. When everyone was present, we proceeded to check into HQ. However, it turns out we didn't prepare a nominal roll and the seniors were frantically calling our seniors and Teacher Officers for help. Our ma'ams came but in the end we still could not go in haha. I don't know what we did in the end, but it ended with the ma'am taking down our names and IC number and we were thus able to get in.

For Holly and I, our competition requirement was to fly a circuit and land in a spot that was marked out on the ground. Let's just say that we weren't adequately prepared and we screwed up terribly. It didn't help that we were the second (?) school to participate and that we entered late to have a decent amount of time calming our nerves? This may sound like an excuse, but I was really nervous. The Sir who was assessing us was this scary sir, haha. OMG did I just put a 'haha' there? Anyway, that sir wasn't scary as in looks or anything, but you just get this scary vibe from him. IDK how to elaborate further on that. =.="

Anyway, both Holly and I screwed up badly. But then again, even the seniors did badly. :P Can't blame us~~ We only started training 1 week before the competition, and I think we only had 2 trainings? And the 2 trainings ended quickly mainly because we crashed the plane really quickly. How did Holly and I screw up, you ask? We had 2 tries each and well, I think for the first try, Holly's plane got stuck in the tree and mine flew into some mysterious place, which was fortunately retrieved in the end. Holly's plane wasn't that lucky. It rained and we couldn't get the plane down from the tree in the end. For the second try, mine crashed into the Flying Fox Tower. j.j Holly, well, I'll leave it to her to say what happened. Later, when one of my seniors and our Teacher officer went to retrieve my plane, (well, technically it isn't mine. It belongs to the school.) we found the plane, but some things were missing. I can't remember what they were, but they were the things you'd find in the plane, together with all the batteries and stuff. It didn't appear as if they had broken off and fallen somewhere due to the force when I crashed the plane. (Still guilty about that.) It was obvious someone just took them... D: We didn't find out who they were, (I don't think we need to) but most importantly, we didn't get back everything that we lost. Sure, we got back out battery, but we were still missing something. Haizz..

That's it about the Air competition, I think? Basically, Holly and I crashed our planes and just sat there waiting for other schools to finish and occasionally watching other schools fly their plane. The ACS(I) people and the Catholic High people were crazy good. They were awesome at the Limbo. And here I am, crashing planes into things and making them disappear into god-knows-where with little to no effort. I might as well be a magician. =.= Life sucks. I try not to remember that our CCA is merging with NCC Land. But it comes back and I'm stuck between sucking it all up and going through with the plans that the school has had the final say in, or leaving the CCA while feelings of betrayal consumes me from within. Will I be an empty shell in the end? Maybe merging isn't that bad. Maybe there is a way where everyone can be happy, but like Jomma said, no one's happy about this. Not even the Landers. Stop it, Mirai, stop it. You're getting angsty.

"伤心的人不要听慢歌", so here I am, listening to songs bursting with passion and possibly making lyrics videos out of them and putting them to YouTube. :P

Holidays!!

On a lighter note, I emphasise that the holidays are already here and is going to end really soon if I don't gather all my energy and do what I want in the meantime. But then, I'm an unsociable slug who doesn't exercise and eats chocolate and stays in her bubble of happiness which actually is a "bubble of denial" in disguise.

I don't think anyone will be able to life me up,  just saying.

My life: I go on Facebook and stalk people by looking at their photos and cry over the fact that they go to parties and I go to literally none except to that one birthday party of this guy, (I think, or was it a girl?) whom I don't remember now, when I was 5. And may I politely add that my mom was with me? :) Oh and you know how the ALWAYS say that puberty will kick in and you can see "Puberty at its best"? People will grow up and their appealing features will enhance and their not-so-appealing features will fade away?? *cough cough* baby fat *cough cough* I see my friends look really pretty now even when they don't in the past and here I am looking through my past photos and gushing over how pretty I was. (Egoistic, I know, but note the 'WAS'. You may think of it as me trying to emphasise I look better when I was younger.) >:(

Me: Life's not fair. j.j
Life: I'm never fair, honey. Here, have some lemons. You may do anything you want with them, but you shall never make lemonade or anything because you've never learnt to do so, and because it's mainstream. Instead, you should just eat the lemons and let its acidity corrode you, cause you know? I can't give people lemons if they're just gonna destroy them and make sweet lemonade. Remember, honey, lemons are SOUR and they will NEVER be sweet!!! Suck it up and get used to it already!!
Me: Okai. j.j *cries even harder*

HEY, FREE LEMONS!

And that, my folks, is one of my biggest life lessons.

AFA

Movin' on~~ Okay, so I went to AFA 2013 in Singapore, which is Anime Festival Asia. This is one of the reasons why I love Singapore. It has a large anime fanbase (quite) and they allow AFA to be held here every year. <I'm hoping it will stay that way till the future. But since it's my first time going to AFA, (I know, I'm noob.) I didn't know which days were the optimal for merchandise hauling and therefore I was disappointed in the lack of merchandise left for me, haha. On the other hand, I'm still stuck in the Katekyo Hitman Reborn "era" and refused to acknowledge any other anime as the best. I wasn't prepared for the lack of KHR merch. I SHOULD HAVE BOUGHT THE HIBIRD BAG< OMG!! I'm regretting it now. j.j I mean, c'mon, it had a picture of chibi Hibari, for christ's sake! How can anything be more cute than that? And the bag was designed to be able to be folded into a Hibird for easy carrying and storage. :3 But then, it was expensive and impractical, so I didn't buy it. I wish I had. Anyway, i bought a Konata badge and some nendriods, since I'm not willing to actually buy figurines. I mean, sure, figurines are realistic and all, but nendriods are cuter and cheaper. :P

Since my first AFA experience was not all that great (because of me, not the organisers.), I shall not entertain you with my lack of input for this experience, lest I give you the impression that AFA is not enjoyable. AFA IS enjoyable! The only impression you should be leaving this blog post with, is that it is not advisable to go to AFA on the last day (which I foolishly did). There are amazing cosplayers and I bet there are amazing merchandise there that I probably missed. Look through other people's blog posts about AFA (which are definitely more detailed and filled with pics) and learn how to handle disappointment when all the goods that you want are sold out. Be prepared and stay tuned to the anime popular around that time. You'll be expecting lots of anime from that season and lesser from the older seasons, or should I say from the past years. *sob... KHR... sob* Anyway, I was in a frenzy and was hungrily soaking in every sight I could during AFA, that my pictures were sucky. Maybe if you go to my facebook profile, you'll see the pictures. But really, my camera's not sucky, it's just me in a rush that the pictures turned out blurry. I shall not embarrass myself here. There are people who lug around DXLRs and take good quality pictures so go see them.

Chibi Hibari and Hibird! <3 ASDJHGNS

I'm guessing this is a long-enough post to make up for my laziness over the holidays. I'm ending it here. Oh wait. Another thing I've been doing during the holidays is playing horror games. I know I have talked about playing RPG Horror games before, but this time, it's different! I discovered this wonderful YouTuber who ported many RPG Horror games for mac. Like I said before, macs are not game-friendly, such that games are usually made for Windows and hardly ever for Mac. Even if there are Mac games out there, they are usually made for Windows first. :( But this guy, he managed to make Windows games accessible to people with Macs like me. Unfortunately, there are people who are not able to open the games, haha, e.g. Jomma. I guess I'm lucky. Well, check out this guy's YouTube channel: Jammed Gears. :) There are tons of games there: The Mirror Lied, Ib, The Witch's House, Mad Father, Hello? Hell... o?, Mermaid Swamp and many others which are not horror, like True Remembrance, To The Moon etc.

I guess that's it, folks!!

Signing off,
Mirai <3


Confession: I like to think that I'm a blogger, but I'm not. #sadtruth This blog is more like an informal recount/rant about my life experiences, which isn't all that awesome. Not much pics, so don't expect much at all, and of course, don't be surprised when I actually put in something.

First Update in Forever!!

WOW.

I can't believe I haven't updated in like a month? The EYAs have ended so long ago and we even got back our papers, but I guess I let the holiday mood sink in quite early this year. Haizz I'm too lazy to blog but I know that if I don't, I'll probably end up giving up.

Let's just start by saying EYAs was horrible. I only got like 2 4.0s? And one was Philosophy. =.= Wait, I got 3, if you count Japanese. UGHH This period is also known as the 'RA Selection' period. RA stands for Raffles' Academy, which equals to advanced subjects, like you can go for English RA and the things you'll be doing there is higher-level English, I guess? More like they are harder and you learn more things. Talk about mentally draining.

I didn't even get into 1 RA, okay? Okay, it was partly my fault as I was too ignorant to know the method to apply for RA. I WANTED TO APPLY FOR LIT! Cause I actually like Lit? Then I hear and see people like Penny (my friend, not her real name) and her friend Ally (not her real name) who are absolutely literary geniuses, and I am sitting in the loser lane. Life sucks. I want a Japanese RA. Last time I checked, my Japanese oral score was purrrfect~~ Maybe that is the only subject I actually have a chance to do well in? That was the sad part. I completely flushed down whatever chances I have of getting into a RA into the toilet bowl. But you know what's even sadder? I had absolutely no teacher's recommendation whatsoever to sit for any RA selection test! This is humiliating! I think half of my class got into a RA? And here I was sitting here today, going, "Hey! Who's not going for RA selection test? Nobody? Okay that's cool." NOT!

Ugh I should go die in a hole to cut the world some slack and not having to watch my pitiful sight. <It's after the exams and I don't know whether I phrased that sentence right? I feel so inferior in my English writing skills. Why is it that I can do well in class work but when it comes to tests, I flunk everything? It's horrible actually. My mind has this way to tell me you'll do horrible or fine in whatever test. That is, it decides to be a scumbag and assure me I'll do decently when I'm freaking out and telling me I'm screwed when I just don't feel nervous or anything. Maybe it's just because I don't give a shit about that test, hence the bad results, or I just know I'm screwed so I'm saving energy for more useful purposes.

Anyway, that's enough of the EYAs and RAs. Talking about it more is just gonna make me more and more upset. Anyway, today was kinda fun, really. Since it's after the EYAs, we are having Post EYA activities. This one is actually quite fun, okay? As compared to some other activities *cough* Netball Carnival *cough cough*. Hey don't be mistaken. Netball is a sport therefore I shall assume it is beneficial to health or whatever it is supposed to be beneficial to. However, I'm dyslexic when it comes to sports. Maybe not so much as in I can still run and jump and catch a ball and other basic motor skills, but other than that I am hopeless. If you ever find a person worse than me in sports, please throw a party for me. And just for your information, in my whole life, I have only been to 1 birthday party. Yes. 1. FML If you count weddings as parties, then 2.

Anyway, the activity was DramaNite. Like you know, Drama Night? All the Year 1 and 2 classes are expected to come up with a short skit (is that what it is called?). The Year 1s are supposed to base theirs on their English Literature book, Gathering Blue, which according to my classmate, has nothing to do with someone going on a quest to collect the colour blue, if that's what you're thinking. ._. It's about a blind girl whom the society thinks is useless after her parents died. Little did they know that she was very talented at sewing and embroidery. So they sent her to places to learn proper techniques and other fancy stuff and if I'm not wrong, the book just ends there. Like WTS? Either my classmate found the book too boring and decided to end it there (official or not) or Lois Lowry was doing a sucky job. I'm hoping it's just my friend. Lois Lowry's The Giver is an awesome book. Anyway, the Year 2s are supposed to perform an original ballad. Needless to say, our class did a wonderful job. But we weren't shortlisted, haha. I really thought it was a good effort. There was even a dance. :)

Today was basically sneaking around watching other classes auditioning after us. By right, I wasn't supposed to be there watching other classes, but who cares. I was ninja-ing around, counting the number of fucks I give. <-- which I didn't get very far. I was really shocked and excited when I heard the ballad class 207 was performing. Excited because I knew the song they used and the lyrics they sang. Shocked because it was supposed to be original. I can safely say that they were really performing a ballad, because the song had that heartbreaking sadness and was the work of a genius, MOTHY. Unfortunately, 207 kind of ruined the work. I'm not going to say that they were terrible in the singing, which isn't very far from the truth but, hey, at least they barely made it. BARELY. The piano arrangement was nice, but the singing faltered and never outshone the piano. Which is very bad. With exactly the same plot and the same music and the literally perfect lyrics, it's not wonder they got in. <-- That is what I though and i guess it will be the only thing I'll be thinking of when I see 207's performance during DramaNite. They completely ripped off from "Servant of Evil" from Kagamine Len, a Vocaloid. (which reminds me, I still haven't devoted a post for them. D:) The plot... the cast... Everything was a rip-off! Except for an added mirror, which was far from MOTHY'S ingenious ideas and standards. It made me angry that they actually qualified to perform for DramaNite. How original. Maybe I would be less angry if they had credited MOTHY and his works, but no.

Haizz. Everything went downhill for the day after that. Our CCA had a briefing with the school management. It sounded so serious and Holly and I were actually nervous about what they had to talk about. Turns out that Singapore was decreasing in brith rate and therefore there will be decreased admission into school nation-wide. Fine. Because there are less students, there will be lesser teachers to go around and therefore with 49 CCAs in our school, the declining staff cannot handle us. Thus, the school has to cut down on the number of CCAs in the school. And according to them, they took a lot of time and consideration to finally decide to merge us with NCC Land. Note: WE are the ones who have to follow THEM. Can you see why I am angry right now? No? Let me enlighten you.

I have been in this CCA for 2 years and counting. I came into RGS not knowing which CCA I want to get into, and frankly speaking, seeing as I have absolutely no talent in the musical aspect though I have a musical background, I decided, why not try something different? That is when I started exploring all the Uniform Groups in my school. I remember being in school with my father for the CCA open house where we can roam around finding more about different CCAs in school. Once again, nothing appealed more to me than the Uniformed Groups in my school. NCC Air was interesting, yes. There were many other Uniformed Groups I could have chosen from and frankly speaking, NCC Air was not my personal first choice. I was impressed and motivated by how Uniformed Group seniors had this charismatic feel to all of them and how passionate they were about the CCA. I still hold on to this belief that one Uniformed Group senior told me, "Uniformed Groups and meant to train people physically and mentally. It is ideal for basically anyone. It doesn't matter who you are or how you look like." So I thought, why not join this wonderful family? I remember going for NCC Air interviews and for the first time in my life, I was actually enthusiastic and I was eager to answer their questions. I was offered a spot in NCC Air. Remember I said that NCC Air was not my first choice? Well, I still chose it in the end, because my mom was more supportive of it than my personal first choice. When I entered as a Part A, I remember taking a long time to change into my PE uniform as I was too scared to come out quickly and face my Part A PSes. Needless to say, I was intimidated by them. From there, through their strict trainings, I grew with my platoonmates as a platoon and we learnt the importance of bonding and staying strong together. We learnt the importance of each other in our NCC Journey. Wanting the best, I made the effort to do my best in everything and I even tried to strengthen our bonds. While Part A was an enjoyable year, it was saddening to see people start to leave this year. We had a lot of people. A good number left and we were left with 5. As a small platoon, we had it the roughest, I must say. Tears, joy, sweat. We shared all those. We even saw each other in the buff. And now, this small platoon of 5 has met its biggest obstacle it has ever faced. Even though we are still together, merging together meant a lost identity. We all came into this CCA as rookies who knew very well we belonged in this wonderful family and home we call NCC Air. Although there were times we wished to never be associated with NCC, we grew to love it and its people. We are NCC Air. Not just any NCC! Telling us to go into another CCA like it is nothing is very much impossible for me as it is impossible for my platoonmates, I believe. From next year onwards, I will be known as a NCC Land cadet, not an Air cadet anymore. It took so much time to acknowledge being in a new big family. I don't care if NCC Land is older and more experienced than us. The fact that the school has placed us under their wing shows that WE are to become like THEM. We Air have to change and become the Land. While the Land? All they have to do is adapt to having us around. The least they can so for us Air, is to welcome us and treat us as equals. Look at us! We are being called Land next year! When we go to HQ, we will be Land, no longer AIR! We will never be able to cheer Airborne again, we will never hear the NCC Air sirs teasing us girls and telling us that the password for a certain computer is "airissexy". We will never hear from our Air commandant again. I will never see my Air friends again. Even worse, as Land (as much as it tastes and sounds bitter on my tongue, I shall say this horrible word), we are expected to be like them i.e. cheer and command like them, behave like them. I have had my own set of ideals and values from being in this CCA for 2 years. I have learnt to care for fellow cadets. I have learnt to bond and share whatever with each other. And now they are telling me to be like Land and dispose of my values. I can no longer talk to seniors as I please. I have to greet them even if I am not in uniform. This is utter misery. Land has nothing to lose here. Everything about Air is at stake here. I understand that as the school's management team, they have to do something. As difficult as they make it sound, I can't help but believe that there is a better way to resolve things. I probably sound like a whiny kid right now, but I have had too much to bear in these few years. I have the least luck in the world. I have missed so many opportunities in life and this thing I hold dear called the NCC Air family... is it going to vanish? Although we will still see each other, I can't help feeling reluctant to let go of our NCC Air identity and journey. Land ain't got shit on us. They had better not look down on us and instead think that it is their pleasure to have us with them, cause bitches, we own the world. We are such awesome people whom you don't know exist! We are a committed bunch who teach their cadets what it really means to bond!!

*gasp* I have finished my rant. I shall go off now.

Bye.
Mirai (no heart today)

I am going to hell for this...

Heyy,

I realised I am doomed. For my upcoming exams, for my life. I have tons of revision to do but scumbag brain decided I should draw after not touching the holy pencil for months... Why doomed for life then, you ask? Because I have utterly disgraced Suzumiya Haruhi-sama with my incompetence in drawing.

The beloved Haruhi-sama.

Andd...
My crapped up version. I don't even know what compelled me to post this. 

Ugh... The hair. The HAIR!!! I can't-never should draw again. Holy pencil MY ASS you stupid brain! Anyway, here's bye for now. :3

#hopingtopostsoon

<3,
Mirai

P.S. Go check out Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon's video on the absurdity of the overuse of hashtags.
#funny #wecaaaan'tstop~~ #cookiemonster #nomnomnomnomnom

Smile, peeps!