Profile

Name: Charry

Age: 20

Occupation: Student/Writer/Dreamer

Likes: drama, adventure, bishounen, possibility, style and substance

Dislikes: school, the ordinary, routines, ignorance, senseless violence, pessimism

Hi all, welcome to Vianime! My name is Charry. I run this site for fun because of my love of anime. (Contact me)

Find me on…

Deviant Art: FieryCharry.deviantart.com. I mostly make avatars/animated icons, with a few CG or colored pencil fan arts thrown in.

MyAnimeList: MyAnimeList.net

Personal website: ValerieMa.com (I’ve just started it as of 03/22/10, so don’t expect too much yet!)

Please visit me! ^^

Introduction

I’m currently 20 years old and a graduating 4th year student at UBC, Canada. I study things like psychology, philosophy, and computer science. My real passions are writing, art, anime, games, music, languages, and travel.

I’ve played piano since a young age, and a few other instruments.

In addition to Japanese, I can understand Cantonese and some Mandarin and French. Currently, I am interested in learning German.

So far, I have traveled to 23 countries on four continents of the world, and my goal is to increase that number to 100 within my lifetime! ^o^

Vianime

Why “Vianime”? Not really sure, I was kind of in a hurry to choose a name and get started with my website!

Okay, okay, that’s not quite true…. I thought I would combine the words “via” and “anime” to make… “via anime.” What via anime, you ask? Lots of stuff. “Japanese via anime” was probably my main thought.

Also, the letter V has a big influence on my life. My real name starts with a V, my city starts with V, my brother’s name starts with a V…. Okay, you get the point.

Anime/Games/Music

My personal favourite anime include…

  • Fullmetal Alchemist
  • Death Note
  • Pandora Hearts
  • Nabari no Ou
  • Kino’s Journey
  • .hack//SIGN

.hack//SIGN was basically the first anime I ever really got into, while Fullmetal Alchemist was the first anime that made me completely obsessed. Pandora Hearts is my most recent love. I will also admit to having enjoyed Loveless and Gravitation, although since I am not an extreme fan of yaoi I don’t quite feel they belong among my favourites.

I also enjoy gaming to an extreme degree. The number of my favourites is too vast to really list, as I’ve enjoyed nearly every J-RPG I got my hands on, but some of my all-time favourites include…

  • Tales of Symphonia
  • Starcraft
  • Super Smash Bros. series
  • Fire Emblem series
  • Zelda series
  • Shadow of the Colossus

I have a number of favourite composers, mostly of the video game/anime soundtrack variety. These include (but are certainly not limited to…)

  • Yuki Kajiura
  • Hitoshi Sakimoto
  • Yasunori Mitsuda
  • Motoi Sakuraba
  • Yoko Shimomura
  • Yoko Kanno
  • Michiru Oshima
  • Nobuo Uematsu
  • Noriyuki Iwadare

I also listen to classical music, my favourite classical composers being

  • Chopin
  • Ravel
  • Debussy
  • Rachmaninoff
  • Mozart

Japanese

My interest in Japanese began when I was about 13 years old and thought it would be fun to be able to understand Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi (GBA), which was never released in North America. I started with just learning the katakana for the characters’ names. Then I went on to hiragana and trying to pick out some kanji from the dialogue. It was very tough at first.

When I was about 14 or 15, I began to get serious. I borrowed Japanese textbooks and CDs from the libary, went to dozens upon dozens of Japanese language websites and learned what I could, testing myself by trying to understand anime without subtitles. I got Japanese dictionary and input software and began raiding every Japanese fansite I could find and translating absolutely everything possible.

I begged my mom to make a family trip to Japan; we did, and every time we found ourselves on one of those long train rides I’d whip out my freshly-bought Japanese Hagane no Renkinjutsushi (Fullmetal Alchemist) manga, struggling through the dialogue with only a paperback dictionary.

When I was 16, I decided to challenge the Japanese 12 Provinical Exam which was required to graduate from high school. In preparation, I hired a Japanese tutor and went to Japanese classes for a few weeks (though to tell you the truth, my level was already too high for it to be of much use!). I passed both Japanese 11 and 12 with flying colours, scoring even higher than my Japanese friends (much to their jealousy ^o^).

Thus began a (so far) lifelong infatuation with Japanese.

Travels

I live in Vancouver, which is on the west coast of Canada. It makes an excellent jump-pad for trips to Asia, as well as various parts of the United States. Although I have been to Europe, Central America and Africa, I’ve traveled most widely in Asia, having relatives in Hong Kong and China.

During the fall of 2008, I went on exchange to Hong Kong University. During those few scant months I took every opportunity to ditch classes and travel to nearby (and not-so-nearby…) countries, including Japan, Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia, and even Australia.

This previous summer I spent two months in Uganda, Africa, as part of a volunteer program with my university. Needless to say, the experience was amazing. You can read about it here: Ugandablog.wordpress.com (my first attempt at a blog)

I also spent two months in the summer of 2008 traveling with my family through Europe, hitting as many of the major countries as we could: the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, and Switzerland.

My favourite places in the world so far include…

  • Hong Kong
  • Japan
  • Taiwan
  • Alaska
  • Scotland
  • Switzerland

I also want to (someday soon) live in Japan and… Los Angeles (yes, random I know, but there are reasons).

I have various dreams of future travels: motorcycling across China, sailing the coast of North and South America (and more), walking across Japan, etc. It’s basically endless ^o^;