APRIL 15 — I have watched more anime in the last two years than I have in my entire lifetime; mostly because I now find Western storytelling very dull.
Whenever I see the Booker list I wonder which tale of midlife crisis/adultery/diaspora disenchantment but written to appeal to Caucasian high-brow tastes made it to the list this time.
My favourite recent read has been Taiwan writer Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue; I wasn’t sure if I’d like the fiction pretending to be non-fiction literary gimmick but it was entertaining and as someone who loves food, particularly Taiwanese food, it did not disappoint.
One of my hobbies is collecting foreign language books and books about learning foreign languages.
I feel they mock me sometimes, from the shelves.
One of the books is my Russian copy of The Master and Margarita, a gift from a friend who said she got it for free because the bookseller was amazed a non-Russian had heard of it, and wanted it.
There is still time for me to pick a language, pick a book and attempt to understand it in its original tongue but I am paralysed by the demands on my time and the bounty of choice.
So instead I procrastinate by watching anime.
I’ve just finished watching Kaya-chan Isn’t Scary and it has an interesting, and weirdly personally relatable premise (for me).
Little Kaya, a preschooler, is psychic.
She can see things others can’t, including monsters that mean her and her fellow preschoolers harm.
The teachers and her classmates see her as a “problem child” when all Kaya is trying to do is protect them from the monsters.
Kaya isn’t afraid of the monsters. Being psychic she has more spiritual power than even some spiritually-attuned adults and can ward off even the scariest bogeymen with a single punch.
(Spoiler alert) Then in one episode, Kaya meets a foe she cannot fend off, and one abetted, unwittingly, by adult onlookers who should have protected her.
Kaya meets a monster but he is an ordinary man who can’t resist trying to walk away with her, a child lost and without her guardians.
Despite her protests the other adults laugh and think she is just having a tantrum.
It takes her distant cousin who happens to be walking by to rescue her from her would-be kidnapper, who instead of showing remorse, admonishes him for not looking after Kaya better, before disappearing into the crowd.
Kaya’s cousin, also a psychic, then picks her up and tells her there are some monsters she can’t fight.
I found the scene harrowing because I empathised with it too much.
When, as a child, I was assaulted in a library I had thought even then, why is this happening? Isn’t this place supposed to be safe?
All children deserve to feel safe.
It feels unreal to read about the Epstein files, the recent report about a toddler being assaulted in ICE custody and the recent paedophile ring arrests in Johor, as well as widespread child sexual abuse in a children’s home in Selayang.
The crowd who feels the need to scream that “women can be sexual attackers too” need to quiet down because women being the perpetrators is the exception and not the rule.
Women are told to learn self-defence, to be careful who they go out with, where they jog, who they date, who they marry and when assaulted, always have to deflect the blame put on them for not “making better choices.”
Do children have the choice in deciding not to be fodder for paedophiles?
I was a little depressed post-cancer looking in the mirror, at my flabby abdomen, menopausal acne, sagging jowls but having had to endure strange men even trying to harass me at my front gate, it’s kind of a relief to be free of male attention.
So when I was back in Sabah for a few days (mainly so my mother wouldn’t decide to give me a heart attack by flying here) I felt nothing but irritation when a passing man on a motorbike catcalled.
It is not women who decided to cause the current West Asian conflict, nor are they behind the troubles in Sudan, and the Congo.
It is not women who keep making themselves the scapegoat for low birthrates, with men now outrightly suggesting that perhaps braindead women could be kept on life support to be used as surrogates or in Russia, women who refuse to have children will be referred to psychotherapists to help convince them motherhood isn’t a bad thing.
As though we are less than human, merely attractive breeding stock not allowed self-determination.
There are young women who are preemptively on birth control so if on the off-chance they are raped, they won’t likely get pregnant.
Serial killers? Mostly men.
Suicide bombers? Also men.
There is something fundamentally wrong in society for men to be so much more skewed towards violence and depravity, and we cannot keep making excuses and calling it “human nature.”
Do not look for bogeyman under beds or in closets; the real monsters have always been, in the flesh, men.
Stop blaming women for men being lonely or unmarried because the problem has always been with them.
At least you won’t have to worry about your cat or dog plotting to kill you.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
