irl me brain dump

HI GUYS . oh my god. sorry its been so long since my last update. well. I guess you guys can't see that anyways LOL because I havent made the site public yet. erm
IT WILL BE PUBLIC SOON!! but ANNNNYYWays . Okay . i'll preface thsi saying that im so fucking sleep deprived rite now so i am a little bit all over the place sob sob BUT BUT BUTTTT. but.
I DISCOVERED SOMETHING . ACTUALLY LIFECHANGING .

ok well i guess its not that deep but its exciting to me. but BASICALLY.
Ok so. I was finishing up my site and i was looking for assets and shit to add to fill out my page more rite. and in doing that i got curious and looked though some of my old bookmarks (because when i was like 14 one of my biggest hobbies was bookmarking a bunch of sakura.ne.jp and jp geocities sites on the wayback machine bc they always had hella cool graphics on there.
and also. i was so obviously autistic as fuck reflecting back jesus . -__-
BUT. yea. anyway.

When i was looking. I had a realisation.
So because i was scouring for assets for like. TEN HOURS straight like a freakazoid (its literally one of my fav things to do btw, i get so absorbed digging through old shit... its one of my fav things EVER its litch like TREASURE huntingGGGu. ( ≖‿ ≖ ))myeeaaa.

But yeah. As you can see ABOVE. I stumboled across thiiiiissss liittle fing. This llittle simple banner. Which takes you to This Link ...... And I would scroll past this like ALL the time as well when I used to scour the internet in the past, and I always ALWAYS thought it just meant like. oh yeah thats just an ad for NHK news. like yk. japan's equivalent to the BBC in the uk . or something.
And i also didnt watch welcome to the nhk until i was like. 17ish . and i was up surrffeeeen these fucking random ass sites a few years before that. But i never really knew what I was doing at all properly so. I never took much notice of this little thing that seemed to be in the bottom of EEEEVRRYONES sites at the time (especially if it was an otaku page or a nerdy personal blog, that nhk banner was litch on EVERYBODY and they mama site.).

So out of curiosity, I looked at the page and translated it all and THEN. IT ALL CLICKED INTO PLACE . Well . thats a lie. not at first it didn't but i did get curious. Bc I was reading it and when I was actually paying attention to it, I realised "hmm. 'NHK (Japan Neglect Association) is an organization representing those who are neglected.' (╭ರ_•́). hrrrrmmmm. seems awfully similar to Welcome To The NHK... Even the same acronym. how interestinge hrmmm,(¬_ ´¬ )(╭ರ_•́)"

SO THEN. i read all the page. and i slowly realised it was bascially just a webring for people on these like 2002 jp sites and on BBS forums who felt rejected from society and wanted to make a little silly community out of it. like a satire thing almost making fun of themselves but also owning it...do you get what i mean. AND THEN. THATS WHEN IT CLICKED.
I was like.
WAIT.
THSI IS WHAT TASTUHIKO TAKIMOTO WAS WRITING ABOUT!!!!! AND THATS WHAT SATOU WAS TALKING ABOUT IN THE ANIME!!!!!!!!

I felt silly for making that connection at first until I started looking around more in the BBS forums and other forums like archived 2ch threads from the time which basically confirmed it for me. I also looked into when Welcome To The NHK was written originally, and the anime came out in 2006 - but the story was written in 2002. WHICH JUST SO HAPPENED!!!!!!!! TO BE THE EXACT TIMEFRAME WHEN ALL THSI STUFF WAS THE MOST POPULAR ON THAT SIDE OF THE INTERNET!!!!!! IT ALL MADE SENSE!!!!

like . It makes MORE SENSE. For Satou in the story to be rambling about how he's part of this like 'Japanese Hikikomori Association' (which is basically the fucking same as 'Japan Neglect Association' like COME ON
rather. than. Idk . a fucking schizo acronym that makes no sense and is related to a government news station.?????..??????? ITS SO CRAZY how much you can misinterpret stuff made by others (especially early internet references!) if you don't have the like cultural and periodic knowledge of what the author has experienced themselves at that time. It makes me wonder how many otehr things we in the west have interpreted entirely differently because of the lack of knowledge on these hyper specific references an author might be throwing in there that are actually integral to the worldbuilding...

Idk. I think I was just very proud of myself for digging that up since like. I don't feel like I've EVER heard anyone from the west (or even japanese people these days, unless those conversations are still just tucked away on jp only sites) talk about it... I suppose it was just was a little nod to something that was partially lost to time, and partially left behind by the internets massively divided linguistic and cultural barriers back then.... BUT NOT ANYMORE!!! BECAUSE I'VE DOCUMENTED IT HERE NOW !! It really does feel like I've found a like little relic maaaaan . like part of what inspired nhk to be made. and barely anyone remembers nowadays. so cool ToT You can check it out for yourself aswell, i linked it above with the blue underlined text earlier.

As a silly sidenote to end on, I find it kinda funny how Satou's last name in the Story is Tatsuhiro, and the authors name is Tatsuhiko. It was so obviously a projection of himself and how he felt about himself and the internal dillemmas he had with himself and i think HONESTLY. YOU GUYS CAN HATE ME IF YOU WANT BUT. i honestly think that self insert-y characters when it comes to writing awkward and horrifically flawed characters is a GREAT approach. fiction (especially this genre) can be made SO much more impactful if you have the first hand experience with these real and honestly kinda morbid kind of topics that noooooooobody seems to ever want to talk about or bring up, you know?! It's kind of beautiful how you can turn something so personal and insecure and instead of pushing it down and burying it, you can take it and make art out of it TO SHARE WITH OTHERS WHO MIGHT GET IT!!!!!!!!! I LOVE THAT SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! sob sob sob

I just think the most like mind boggling thing about this for me as well was the fact that Welcome To The NHK was already very close to my heart already, but it totally changed my perception and understanding of satou's kinda worldview. I really did think he was just like spewing some schizophrenic le epic random mentally ill man moment bullshit for the longest time but NO! It was actually a little niche reference that tatsuhiko wrote in as like a . 'if you know you know' kinda thing. idk. its kinda sweetums in a way. it also changes Satou's character to like. a LOT less schizophrenic AND ALSO idk it just really shifts the focal lens of the anime a lot for me. But in a cleaaaaaarrreer way.
Now that i understand its like a reference to something that was really niche at the time and a little almost COMMUNITY. BAAwww. it makes a lot of other things make a lot more sense. And its also sadder. idk Its kinda just like a really real documentation of what it was like to be living as that sort of person at that time which is AWESOME! It really is so fascinating to see something as real and as niche as this recorded in soemthing that ended up so popular........ I always knew it was personal to the author but I never realised HOW personal it was T___T And not just for him, but for a lot of others too at the time :,) BAAAaaaaaawww. Like. time capsule. :J

also teeny tiny little last sidenote i found that a lot of people played ragnorok online back then too. lol . that makes so much sense considering the fucking like 3 ep long game section whcih was clearly very obviously referencing that too. GOD THIS ANIME WAS FUCKING AWESOME. Sigh. i need to watch it again . That's all for now though. I freakinge love finding stuff like this out hehhahahahhaha