Buyuden 16

This post is actually going to be more of a post about cyberbullying and how it affects people rather than cyberboxing and wait, what’s cyberboxing

Isamu and Moka visit Hoshi’s sister’s gym. Hoshi’s dad was a professional boxer (though not world-league, professional meaning he earns his living from boxing), and trained him intensively in boxing since he was an infant. However, when Hoshi was in fourth grade, he competed in the national boxing competition (WHY THE FUCK IS THERE A NATIONAL BOXING COMPETITION FOR FOURTH GRADERS) and was knocked out in the first round. Ever since then (a year ago), he’s been emo and sad and mope-y. Moka decides to sign up for the gym, but Isamu’s got family issues of his own…

God, I’m confused by whether Hoshi’s his first name or Hyouma’s his first name. I thought they were the same because, y’know, Ho -> Hyo, but it seems that he actually does have two names. I always thought he had only one! It seems strange that there would be so many professional boxers in Japan, that there would be two elementary schoolers in the same school that both had extensive boxing training from childhood, but I guess the pigeonhole principle works here.

I’m really excited for the next chapter, which hopefully will talk more about Isamu. As I said last chapter, Isamu seriously needs to start acting cool and elitist again, instead of being that useless guy who stands around looking weird while Moka and Hoshi talk about serious dramatic shit. If there is a standoff between him and his parents, I hope the mangaka makes it interesting and Kyousuke-like rather than lame and rambling. slap.gif Elitists are only elitists because they feel inferior, right?

Maybe you’re too young to be doing things to girls

That said, Cyberbully.

I’m not even going to start by commenting on the horrible idea to name a trailer ‘Promo(te) Cyberbully(ing)’, but I just did that, so I guess I’m a liar now. I just want you guys to know that that movie was one of the most emotional and depressing rides I have ever been through in my entire life.

Emotional because I got kicked out of ABC Family Chat, which was very sad, and depressing because of the brilliant story that they made almost seem real in the movie.

And then I realized, holy shit, this stuff DOES actually happen to people. Three preteens have fucking committed SUICIDE because some people said things on their FACEBOOK. Teenagers still CARE about what people say about them on a social site. They can’t even commit suicide properly. And parents are still Russian and psychologically abnormal (Menma’s mom, Lunatic’s mom…).

Seriously, if this is the state of the world nowadays, Cyberbully beats it all as the most depressing thing of this year, even more than Madoka or AnoHana. I don’t get it, why can’t we do things from a more defensive, open, and free point of view? Instead of restricting freedom of speech (though what those people did to her was pretty mean and shouldn’t count as freedom of speech, if we do implement freedom of speech laws, normal criticisms might become a ‘hate crime’, and that’s what we should avoid), can’t we educate people to be strong, and not ignore what people say, but take what they say face-on? Can’t we just throw a bunch of teenagers into 4chan or something before they’re allowed on the internet to understand how to deal with insults? Do we seriously want a society where everybody’s polite and happy on the outside, but seething with rage that can’t be expressed at all inside? Where everybody acts nice to you, but inside, they might just all hate you? Why can’t we create a society where everybody speaks their mind and nobody gets offended? Or even, if people do get offended, they can explain why they were offended in a rational manner, and then deal with it? I probably offended some people with that sentence, but you can’t accuse me of doing anything bad, because I didn’t mean to offend you. What if, after these freedom-of-speech restricting laws are put into place, I can’t even do that? Fuck, some idiots have even banned Fahrenheit 451 from schools because it dealt with censorship.

That said, Cyberbully was indeed a moving film, that completely fulfilled its true intention – to show us all how weak society has become, and to show us how ridiculous restricting freedom of speech is.

The depressing part was that some people thought it was about the opposite.