2021.11/8 Terminator Salvation

     "If we stay the course, we are dead, we are all dead!"　　

     I was in ninth grade when "Terminator Salvation" came out in 2009. I couldn't go to theater to watch it because I have to prepare high school entrance exam. (It was called Basic Competence Test for Junior High School Students (基本學力測驗) in case anyone wants to know)

     And I just finished it today after 12 years. after the setting year of 2018 was already passed. Even though the story is settled at 2018, you can tell it is definitely not 2018 we knew when Kyle Reese pronounced 2018 as Twenty-Eighteen instead of Two-thousand Eighteen. 

     I also finished "Terminator 2" in this August. Honestly I don't think it is better than T1, because I really like the 80's Sci-Fi atmosphere in T1. However, there are many great philosophy in T2. Such as "The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves." Really love the saying. It is just like a truth leading us to real freedom in the world lack of freedom. Years we passed, things we did, who we are, are the results of our every decision. As years go by, we look more and more like our own decisions. 

     I know most of people don't like Salvation, but I really liked it. Maybe because of its atmosphere of cold gray destroyed world. This storyline should go on, until they won the war against Skynet or something.

     Since I missed the chance to watch it in theater because of high school entrance exam, this feels like a big fight back to the exam. After all, it took away my precious time, my hobbies and my youths. Maybe it was just one year, but one year was a lot longer when you were a teenager. However, 2018 was passed, and high school entrance exam was already history too. Only I was left, in the future I made for myself.

2021.5/3 Outside These Walls

     What's outside these walls? What's beyond the sea?

      I stopped for so many years after watching the first episode of "Attack of Titan" in 2013. I always wanted to watch it but I didn't watch it again until this year. It was when I heard it is going to finish that I realized I postponed it for almost 8 years. Just like most of things in the life, you always think you have time to do it but you will never do it and so many years just passed by.

     But this is also the reason why the song "Guren no Yumiya" (紅蓮の弓矢) is the memory of 2013 to me. With part of German lyrics, this song always reminds me of the day of my first grade in college,  room 121 of dorm, the hill before I have to climb to go to my college's building.

     Just few days ago, I saw someone mentioning that everyone could be lead character and the story of "Attack of Titan" would still make sense in YouTube comments. That is my favorite element, everyone is the lead character of their stories, and nearly no one is real villain  in the story (Maybe expect Gross, the Marleyan officer who let dogs murder Grisha's sister). 

     And this is how real world is, we are all following our own mind to become who we are right now. We are all the lead character, and nobody would think that he is the bad guy. That is also why the world is cruel, because we become the villain in other's story, simply because we want to do the right things.

     People inside the wall are curious of the world outside. People at this coast are curious of another coast of ocean. We all want to leave here, to go to another place. That's also what I always feel. Seeking knowledge itself is the embodiment of seeking freedom. I learn English or Japanese so that I can understand what foreign people say. I come to Japan so that I can experience the life abroad. 

     However, just as Kenny said, we were all slaves of something else. 

     As people who could not leave their comfort zones are the slaves of comfort zones, people who always pursues freedom are also the slaves of freedom. Just like Billy the Kid in Young Guns II, who didn't quit after arriving Old Mexico, but made another plan to Canada. He is always chasing for something. And, of course, like Roland in Dark Tower, they are all slaves of freedom.

     When Bertolt was being eaten, at one moment he still believed that his old comrades would save him. That is the saddest moment for me. 

     But I still don't understand why the Owl didn't just save everybody when arriving at port?