(Mecha genre Evangelion)
It wasn't just the pretty pictures that I liked, but the sheer variety of characters and storylines that were possible. Of course there were several generic conventions for each 'type', as it were, but without them there would be no genre!
My personal - and all time favourite (ever!)- is a manga called Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya.
(Fruits Basket Volume 2- Yuki)
It's pretty long for a shojo (a whopping 22 volumes!) but is in no way a typical girly manga. It crosses genres such as domestic, highschool and romance, with magic, supernatural and the odd bit of suggested shonen-ai (which was naturally taken by the fangirls and multiplied by thousands to create horrendous tales of bad hentai.)
But I digress. The main reason I am discussing Fruits Basket is because of it's place in my heart, and because of how much it affected me as a young person just beginning to discover who I was.
The best way for anyone to understand the beauty of this manga is to read it. If you cannot afford to buy them (at £7.99 a pop, it took THREE YEARS for me to complete my collection) then do as all rabid manga fans (myself included) do and look at online scan sites such as MangaFox.
But again, I digress!
Without giving too much away, one of the main characters, Yuki, enjoys tending to a patch of garden where he grows leeks and other such delicious foods (anyone who knows the significance of leeks within the story will laugh with me here...)
Anyhow, at one point he is talking to his older brother, Ayame, and the conversation turns to creation (of the making things variety.) As I do not have my copies of the manga with me, nor the internet savvy to discover it online, I am only able to paraphrase this all important quote. One day (if I remember) I shall post the quote in its entirety.
"I like that there is something that exists in this world because of me; without me, it would not exist."
This half remembered quote (along with so many others) holds a place in my heart as a Personal Philosophy. I am amazed by the idea that without me, my crobots (as I create them) would not exist. Sure, they would be created by another (probably more talented) person than I, but they would not be themselves.
With this small quote my mind races on to bigger and bigger ideas. Without me, my mother would have had one less mouth to feed. Without me my friends at uni would have had a different experience to the one they had with me in the picture.
And it doesn't just concern me! Without knowing the right people at the right time I would not have met the love of my life. Without them, who knows?!
So it goes, on and on til my brain aches with the sheer vastness of 'what if's'. So I drag myself back to the quote, and how it represents what I feel when I create a silly robot, or a pretty hair bow; because if I continue to think about the big stuff, I am afraid I would not be able to function!
There you have it. That is what I feel every time I make something from a mishmash of materials and skills. Whether it is baking, drawing, crochet or even creating an argument for a literature essay at University, I know that without me it would be something else entirely. And when living in such a giant world, it is the little changes and impressions we make that really matter.
(Without the efforts of Cara from Beauty and Truth or my lovely housemate Emma and myself, this lovely picture would not exist!)
Don't go losing your head to the big things ♥
♥ Rachel ♥
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