It's amazing to come to a realization (or forcefully but successfully piecing together) the relationship that entertainment media has and/or eventually gain with real-life events. I've been thinking of writing about it from some time ago already, but have decided to put it off most of the time because it all just seemed tedious to be writing about the obvious, seeing as the "real life" were then current events in the news headlines.
Ok, first let me express gratitutde on behalf of the generations and generations of those delighted at the ideas that Miyamoto Shigeru has offered the world of entertainment. He is the mastermind behind such classic hits as Zelda and the ever-succcessful Mario; he also authored more recent masterpieces as Nintendogs and WiiFit. Nintendo obviously has the most to be thankful. It has been reported that Nintendo banned Miyamoto from talking to the public about anything outside his Nintendo-game interests as all the abovementioned games supposedly came from his daily encounter of life. For example, WiiFit came out of his obsession in weighing himself upon turning 50; Nintendogs came out when his family got a dog. [B. Silverman, Yahoo! Games]. But enough about the good stuff, what interests me the most is the intriguing darker side in this topic.
Death Note has been a hit ever since it came out - in manga, movies, or anime. But it had adverse side effects in real life too. Countless cases in the U.S. have seen young kids in possession of their own Death Notes with names of teachers, staff, and fellow students in them, ofetn times having too vivid a method of how they are supposed to die, very much in coherence with how the Death Note in the movies and manga and anime were utilized. More gruesome is the discovery of a note beside the remains of an unidentified man in Belgium. The note says "Watashiwa Kira dess" which means "I am Kira" in Japanese, referring to the antagonist in the Death Note series.
The Naruto series has been basking in its fame for years now. But a 10 year old's imitation of one of the characters in the series ended in tragic death. Just March this year, Cody Porter passed away by suffocation, buried in a sandbox head down. Such a tragedy for a young kid. There are news like these that shake the world for the facts that they deliver and then there are those that give people the scare because of the possibilities that may happen through what may seem as "predictions" of the real world, happening first in the world of entertainment.
Like the Star Trek series inspiring modern day technological inventions, the recent break of the Georgia-Russia conflict seems to have been predicted long before in a game based on Tom Clancy's bestseller Ghost Recon. In the Xbox and Playstation 2 game, the setup of the early stages are in a conflict between the Georgian government and rebels in the South Ossetia region. It subsequently grows into a more complex storyline with a Russian invasion and eventually the fall of the Georgian government. Amazingly, the imaginary events that will eventually lead into the war in the game started in August 2008.
It is sometimes a bit scary to think of the possibilities and the resemblances between entertainment media/games and real life occurences, eh?
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