AltSci Cell

I've been learning Japanese again. If you don't know what's going on, check the previous posts. This is a test and then a short blog.

学 号 両 主 右 和 勉 申 番 字 読 言 用 銀 黒 漢 父 図 地 話 強 買 安 駅

As with the previous row, most of these are from row 10 and some of them are from earlier rows. I made one embarrassing mistake: 漢. That's right, I got the 3 strokes at the top of the kanji for the kan of kanji wrong. While this is not a good result, it is 96% given that I did everything else right, even the readings of 申 and 用 which I find difficult to remember. What I've ended up doing is remember the kanji for monkey starts with mo and the kanji that isn't monkey is you. This won't do of course, this is using the test against itself (the fact that kanji in a row is guaranteed to be on the test but other kanji are not). So I'll put extra time into those two's actual readings. If you look at the right you'll see that each row has taken 2 days to post. One I actually finished in 1 day, but chose to retest anyway because the streak was going. This post also fits that streak. Row 11 is going to be more difficult because it's a more difficult row and I stopped learning kanji around row 10 5 years ago. That's right, learning 140 kanji 5 years ago did have a beneficial effect on learning a second time -- even if I wasn't able to draw half the kanji when I started relearning. My guess for the effect of this is that the easier kanji I am able to remember from last time, so I am able to put more effort into learning the kanji I didn't remember.

I came up with a bunch of topics to make these blog posts less boring, so I decided I would write a defense of Love Hina. After writing the content, I figured out that indeed Love Hina is a harem anime and that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

"The fact that a series is or isn’t a “harem” show doesn’t automatically make it good or bad, or make it immediately suitable for select viewers." -- Ask John: What Distinguishes Harem Anime?

"The fact that typical harem anime are exploitative, superficial, and redundant doesn’t mean that all of them are, nor does it mean that harem anime are automatically bad. There shouldn’t be any reason to feel shame about describing Ah! My Goddess as a harem title." -- Ask John: What Distinguishes Harem Anime?

It should be pretty clear to viewers and readers of Love Hina that the setting of Hinatasou is exploitative -- it puts the protagonist Keitarou in a situation where he is constantly on the wrong side of the privacy boundary of his residents, all of who are girls. So why do we still like Love Hina? The story is likeable, the main characters are not trying to cause the trouble they get into (except for tama), and it's enjoyable. It's not about the exploitation -- the anime is trying to be funny and how does it? It reminds us that there's a reason why you are not hired to be the manager of a girl's dormitory with a big hot spring no matter how appealing that sounds. It also is trying to tell a handful of other stories at the same time as the main story. The main story it's telling is a fairly boring story about a guy who SPOILER hidden can't pass the entrance exams at a prestigious university and perseveres while managing a girl's dormitory even though he doesn't want to. And I think the stories go well together. The short stories are interesting, while the main story has continuity.

Until next time!

I'll hopefully post all tests as I pass them. Wish me luck.

Previous episodes:
Learning to Read and Write Kanji
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 5
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 6
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 7
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 8
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 9

Javantea out.