Hi, I’m Jamie Noguchi. Technically, my brother is the Angry Zen Master, but he agreed to let me use that for my site. So that’s me. Let’s get to it!

Let’s face it, the 80’s were super cheesy. Jelly shoes, oily stickers, bangs that you could surf on, hair bands, power ballads, should pads. It was also what I’d like to refer to as the Golden Age of cartoons. We’re talking Transformers, G.I. Joe, ThunderCats, He-Man and to a lesser extent She-Ra, Silver Hawks, Voltron, Tranzor Z (how you get Tranzor from Mazinger I’ll never know), Jem and the Holograms, Jayce and the Wheel Warriors, Inhumanoids, Visionaries, Dungeons and Dragons, M.A.S.K. We actually looked forward to Saturday mornings and weekday afternoons because we knew that some of the best action on television was waiting for us.

As people tend to do, we grew up and our cartoons were replaced with imports.

And then, our beloved cartoons came back.

In 2002, the now defunct Dreamwave Productions licensed the comic book rights for Transformers and began to retcon season 1 of the show, generally referred to as Generation 1 or G1. The book was an instant hit and inspired other comic companies to pick up their own licenses. Devil’s Due snatched up G.I. Joe and Voltron with Wildstorm picking ThunderCats and Battle of the Planets (BoP is not really an 80’s cartoon, but it is a revival). You could tell that hardcore fans were behind these remakes. The stories were updated for modern times, but the characters were instantly recognizable. Optimus Prime looked like Optimus Prime. Cobra Commander was still Cobra Commander. They even threw in a crossover or two to satisfy the age old question of who would win if our favorite cartoons battled each other.

The 80’s comic book revival made some quick money for the comic companies, but only Devil’s Due has managed to continue to make G.I. Joe comics after the boom. And although I was sad that no one had picked up Silver Hawks for a comic, I thought that was good enough. Time to let the 80’s die.

Hollywood had other plans.

Someone out there in L.A. must have recognized the financial success comic companies experienced during this short period and thought, why not the movie industry. And so, this year, Michael Bay unleashed the live action Transformers movie. Except it wasn’t really our Transformers. Instead of just updating the stories while respecting the source material, Bay completely rewrote everything and redesigned the robots to look like tinker toys from hell. Where the show was always about the Transformers fighting each other, Bay’s version focused more on the people and how they prevailed over the Decepticons. Make no mistake, this was not our Transformers. This was a new franchise for a new generation.

Unlike the comic book industry, the movie industry doesn’t care about old sensibilities. They will remake our Golden Age in the image of this generation. G.I. Joe is up next. No longer are they America’s highly trained special mission force. Now, they are the Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity fighting Scottish terrorists.

The most disappointing thing about what looks to be a second wave of remakes is not the fact that the movie industry is completely rewriting our Golden Age cartoons. What’s disappointing is that instead of creating new cartoons and franchises for this generation, they’re recycling old stuff and giving it a new shiny wrapper.

If you never saw the originals, you might make an argument that the source material is so good, it stands the test of time. Honestly, watching the old shows is kind of embarrassing. What seemed cool when I was 8 now looks like, well, kid’s stuff. These remakes spring form laziness and greed. Lazy because they’re unwilling to try new stuff. Greed because they know some of us old folks will buy tickets just to see what they’ve done to our favorite cartoons.

The ones who ultimately suffer? All the potential young geeks just waiting for their own Golden Age of cartoons.

So. Games. Girls. Oil and water, right? Playing games or get a girlfriend. You get to choose one. Either you, as a gamer (naturally you are a guy) have the choice between spending all your time on Madden or WoW OR you can date a woman. Because we all know that women are disinterested utterly in games. Bitter and unhappy gamer widows are the only result of an attached guy playing video games. Of course! We all know that, right?

Um, hi. I am a definitely female, and I spend an unreasonable amount of time playing games.* I will admit that I primarily play WoW, and I play it with my boyfriend. In fact, I know rather a lot of video game playing girls of all varieties. One friend of mine is nigh unbeatable at first person shooters. Several of my friends play WoW. And almost all the girls I know will admit to playing something like Wii Play or Super Monkey Ball at a party.

I hear on occasion that video games are destroying society in any number of inventive ways. They cause violence, they cause men to objectify women, they cause relationships to crumble, and they are as addictive as heroin laced with alcoholic nicotine. My answer to all that is that violence and objectification have been going on for millennia. There’s nothing new about them. I mean, ever hear of Sparta? How about Rome? Pretty classically misogynistic and violent societies there, kids. Anything, taken out of context, can be made a scapegoat for any problem you want to use, and anything can become an obsession.

Personally, I think that playing games with my sweetie is a great way for us to hang out. Sometimes I’ll just watch him play while I knit and talk to him. Sometimes he’ll watch me play while he folds laundry or finishes up some work. Sometimes, we even play together. He thinks that it’s sexy. I think it’s entertaining. Amazing. Trick is that we also actually spend time talking over dinner, going out to places together, seeing friends… you know, actually living life.

Ok. It’s true. In excess games can cause social dysfunction, however, I daresay that’s true of anything taken as far as obsession. I’ve heard of people becoming compulsive over collecting, over exercise, over dieting, over Legos … anything can become unhealthy if taken to a ridiculous extent. Everything in moderation folks.

Video games and a healthy relationship. Dogs and cats, living together. Mass hysteria.
Anyone else find gaming in their relationship?

*disclaimer: I am also super sexy, can weld (and otherwise play with melted steel,) and play with large amounts of electricity for a living. I truly enjoy breaking stereotypes.

Related links you might find interesting on this subject? Try this article here, and you can check out these unhappy women bemoaning their fates…

Howdy. I am Mookie.

I will be posting stuff here every Wednesday.

What will I write about? What opinions will I force down your throat? What sort of stuff will I geek out about? What sort of stuff will I get angry at? Will I remember to post stuff on time and not be a scatterbrained doofus?

Come back and see me next Wednesday to find out.

That’s all from me for now!

Hello! My name is Richard S. Kim, and I’m one of Spwug’s regular contributors. Like all of the other contributors here, I am a geek. No, let me correct myself. I am a Geek. In fact, I am a Professional Geek.

Let me give you a little background on myself. I’ve been a teacher, a translator (anime, movies, video games), an interpreter, and now, I work for a video game company on the west coast. I have a wide variety of hobbies, many of which will be touched upon in my column here.

I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be writing about here, every Tuesday. I will most likely write about the Japanese language, Japanese culture, translating, interpreting, video games, computer games, role-playing games, the list goes on. (I may even rant, who knows?)

In any case, I will be writing about a lot of different things. I will also take suggestions, within reason, so feel free to leave responses – I will do my best to read and respond to all of them.

I don’t have a whole lot to say this week, since really all I’ve been doing is going to work and then getting this blog organized when I come home, but I’m going to say it anyway! I hope you enjoy your stay here, and that you come back to find out what’s new.

And there will be much that is new and fun from this week on. We’re organized and ready to roll now! AND the next issue of Spwug is being sent to the printer, AND there are more exciting announcements to come! And um… bunnies! yes. OR something.

I have clearly run out of creative ways to say hello, so I am just going to toddle off and spend the rest of my day off getting my car’s oil changed and playing WoW. What else does one do on a day off?

Er, hello, hi! Welcome! It’s our first day here, so kindly excuse the mess. Logistics being what they are, not all of our people are quite here just yet, but don’t worry! We’ll be sorted out and cruising along here in no time, I promise. Until then, we’ll just do our best.

And our best is pretty durn good, if I do say so myself. First a little bit about us here. The way it worked is this. I was at an anime convention once upon a time, strolling through the dealer’s room, relaxing and perusing the wares when it occurred to me: almost everything that I was seeing was geared towards the younger fans. The teens and the pre-teens. All the dealers were trying to lure in the youngsters in cat ears and costumes, while being less interested in attracting those of us now out of college. I decided that it was time to Do Something About It. Thus came Spwug.

Spwug is a magazine dedicated to all things geeky. The magazine contains all sorts of things from short stories to framable art to articles on cosplay and Japanese language lessons. Here in the blog we will have rants and articles, art and fiction, discussions about movies and games and shows… all sorts of things for the geek in all of us to enjoy. I hope that you can come back to see what we look like once the paint dries and the candy machine is stocked. I’m really hoping to get some Reese’s Pieces in there, myself.