Staying Put Until Further Notice: How I became Koreanized (Part 1)

When someone says that something is Koreanized, they mean that that something has become like Korea. For example, if a food dish is Koreanized, it means that it has been modified to taste like Korean dishes. Well I've become Koreanized. It seems like Korea is always on my mind. If I'm not studying the language, I'm watching their dramas or listening to Gaon chart. Or I'm YouTube-ing the lucky people who are already over there and absorbing all the advice and knowledge they offer. But how did I become this way, you may wonder? Well here's my story.

I think it all started when I was ten. The movie store (for those of you reading this in the future where movie stores don't exist anymore, they are place where you rent DVDs, VHSs, and, in some, video games) there was this shelf. As you entered the movie store you always make your way around the perimeter looking at the new releases, but the movie store was not a perfect rectangular shape. So when you finally made it to this shelf, you had to turn 270 degrees to get to the slightly older than new releases. Well this shelf was an awesome shelf, other than the fact that it was a corner shelf that jutted out. I may not have payed attention to all the new releases, but this shelf was the first one I always thoroughly looked over. It had anime.

I didn't know what anime was at the time. I just thought it was prettier than regular cartoons with more serious themes and characters with awesome names. So I was attracted to it. The first anime movie I remember ever watching was 'Spirited Away'. I guess I checked it out so many times my mother ended up just buying it for me. And I still have it.

I've still got that same copy

Now you may be wondering, what does 'Spirited Away' got to do with Korea? Well wait just a minute!

I watched every movie that was on that shelf....almost. Some of them were rated R, so they didn't get my mother's approval. One in particular was the movie sequel to what would be one of my favorite anime series ever - cough, cough, 'Cowboy Bebop'. I watched my way through 'My Neighbor Totoro', 'Kiki's Delivery Service', 'Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind', and 'Castle in the Sky'. For some reason I was very reluctant to watch 'Howl's Moving Castle' which is ironic because it became my favorite.

By the time I had checked out all of Hayao Miyazaki's movies, I figured out that they were all Studio Ghibli and directed by the Asian (I'll be honest. I called all Asians 'Chinese' back then. Hey, I was a child) man who was introduced by John Lasseter in the beginning of most Ghibli movies. I didn't know that it was called anime or that it was from Japan or that it would change my life.

I think it's good to mention that right around this time 'Avatar: the Last Airbender' came out. This is another thing that I was reluctant to watch that ended up being one of my favorites. Which, now that I think about it, happens a lot. My friends at that time started watching it, so I figured I should too. I remember telling myself, "Madi, you are already watching too many other shows; you can't watch another." But I did. It looked like Ghibli and the facial expressions were crazy - think Sokka in the desert. And the plot twists...dear me.

In the movie store there was this one movie that didn't look like the rest of the Ghibli movies. The art was different, but I could tell that it was like all the anime I'd seen before. It was 'Ah! My Goddess: the Movie'. I think I rented it because I was out of Ghibli movies and I wanted more. Now I know that AMG is kinda crappy and that there's much better stuff out there. But after the first time I watched it, I loved it. If you haven't seen it, it's about this virus type thing that gets into heaven's computer and then there's all these repercussions that happen because of it. But I didn't get some aspects of it. All the characters seemed to know each other without the introduction of many new ones and it seemed expected of the viewer to understand the universe it was set in. So I looked online.

I half expected that I had just watched the sequel to another AMG movie, and that's why I didn't get it. But I was wrong. There was a whole series of it that came before it. Two seasons in fact. And since 'Avatar' technically isn't anime since it's not made in Japan, you can say that AMG was the first anime I ever watched.