“That’s why my favorite sci-fi movie of all time is Star Wars. Er, Star Trek.” I’m confused — and this video should help explain why.
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I’m eating lunch at Sizzling Pepper Steak when the group of freshmen college kids from Ateneo at the next table start talking about what classic movies they’ve seen. The list is absolutely disheartening to me: The Matrix, Gladiator, The Truman Show. These are classics now?

But their love for the movies despite their ‘age’ is great. One of the boys tells his rapt female audience about the plot of the Truman Show in loving detail, remembering little plot points like Truman’s father being written off the show as ‘lost at sea’. “But the movie is kinda old na,” he qualifies, “nineties pa.”

I remember talking about Star Wars with my law school classmates and one of the girls said, “All I know about Star Wars is like, Yoda. That’s the little guy with the lightsaber, right?”

So, little guy with lightsaber am I?

Indeed.

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Before I uploaded my lightsaber-wielding picture to my About Page a few days ago, I thought about it for a very long time.

What was the worst that could happen?

When I was a kid, I quickly learned that being different in any way meant that the people you were different from were going to pick on you, sooner or later. Sometimes the picking was for harmless fun, like a joke between friends. (I’ve always made fun of my martial artist friend’s bald head, knowing full well that if he really felt that I was dissing him just to diss him, he could kick my butt so hard I can taste his shoe. He’s cool with it. Plus it makes him look like a badass.)

Every now and then in any kid’s life, the picking becomes mean-spirited and vicious, a way for kids to show other kids who’s top dog of the playground. This is fine if you realize that the name-calling is all just a kid’s game, even if it’s one that’s played for keeps. It’s not so good when you start letting the insults wound you.

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Happy Father’s Day everyone! Just spending the day with my family. I’ll be posting the next Manifesto soon! For now, always remember…

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I think people expected me to outgrow my love for animation, for video games, for comic books, for RPGs, for all these frivolous things other people dismiss as shallow entertainment. My parents certainly did. It is, after all, what you’re supposed to do to grow up, isn’t it?

Eventually you move on, learn to hang out with people who occupy their time with sensible things like what brand of clothes you’re wearing, what car you’re driving, what shoes you wear to the golf course, what team is going to make it into the finals, which club you should be seen at on a Friday night. You know, sensible things.

Especially in my case. I’m a lawyer. At this point I should be looking into stocking up on status symbols instead of driving the same car I’ve driven for over a decade, wearing quirky no-name t-shirts and spending my weekends watching anime with my friends. I should probably be looking into looking into paying for some nubile young girl’s college tuition as a friend joked a couple of days ago.

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To some of you it may sound like I still am bashing ‘normals’ and glorifying otaku, even if I’ve taken a lot of precautions to show that I don’t think one group is inherently superior to the other.

Picture a little community populated entirely by otaku, answerable only to otaku. Imagine that they’re free to dress as they please, like starfleet officers or mecha pilots or Japanese schoolgirls or elves or vampires. Imagine little otaku grouping themselves according to interests, to fandoms, to fetishes.

Does it sound like heaven to you? Well, it isn’t. Let me explain.

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