Cognitive Recognitions: The Power of Olfactory Mnemonics

“Three experiments with a total of 113 college students showed that, in a paired-associate paradigm using odors as stimuli and pictures for multiple-choice responses, the 1st of 2 associations to an odor was retained far better than the 2nd over a 2-wk period. Results suggest that the persistence of first-learned associations may be responsible for the long-lasting nature of odor memories. Ss reported constructing mediational schemes for mnemonic devices to link the odors and pictures. Latencies for a task of naming odors indicated that although naming odors is difficult, labels could be generated sufficiently fast that they could be employed as mediators in the paired-associate task. A 3rd task investigated the phenomenon of knowing that an odor was familiar but being unable to name it. Ss in this “tip-of-the-nose” state were questioned about the odor quality and the name of the odor and were given hints about the name. These Ss were found to have information available about the odor quality but none for the name as found in the tip-of-the-tongue state. However, as in the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, hints given to the Ss in the tip-of-the-nose state often led to the correct name.” –  (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

I never really payed attention to it much, but your sense of smell can actually be an extremely powerful tool in triggering and retaining memories. As this study shows, in the population tested subjects’ memory retention was far greater when linked to particular odors than pictures. As a primarily visual learner, I didn’t pay much attention to the idea of smells and memories, but the other day while I was walking along the road, I suddenly felt this incredibly relaxed, homey sensation, completely out of the blue. I didn’t notice it at first, this sudden feeling of belonging, but then I noticed that something felt…different. It was only then that I realized there was the smell of tropical fruits and Caribbean spices in the air, and looking to my right I saw the answer to my phenomenon – I was walking right next to a Caribbean Food Truck. Soon after, various childhood memories came flooding into my mind, memories I hadn’t recalled in a long time from when I was a child, all because I happened to walk through a cloud of tropical smells. It was at that moment I realized that olfactory mnemonics were far more potent than I thought and could be something to look into in the future if I ever need to retain information, such as studying for exams or preparing a presentation.

Cognitive Recognitions: Calvin Yang and ‘An American Tail’

I’ve been hard at work on my game whenever I have any kind of free time between classes and homework, and I realize now that I may have been a little too ambitious thinking I’d have enough of it done by now to have a complete test level. My professor pointed this out to me, and I realize that there’s a lot of things I feel I should prioritize and finalize first before moving onto the programming aspect, such as story and designs.

And speaking of story, I decided to re-work the story into something different from a generic ‘collect the magical macguffins’ story. Instead, I decided to go back to an older concept I had for the game, where the story revolved around the Yangs as a family of geniuses and their rivals who want to see them fall. As of now, the story is that the Yang family are a family of brilliant rats and are the wealthiest and most powerful family in their fictional world. Curtis Yang, the patriarch of the family runs Yang Works, a technological giant, and lives with his family on their own personal island-theme park where visitors from all over can experience the wonders and genius of the Yang family through the many high tech attractions available. One day, however, the Yang Works Theme Park is attacked by an enigmatic group of villains calling themselves ‘The League of Shadowed Intelligence’, comprised of geniuses who all hold a grudge against the different members of the Yang family. Now it’s up to Calvin, the eldest son, to take down the evil prodigies and save the park and all of its guests with the help of his family and their various talents.

So……why rats? Well, no deep, overarching reason to be honest – Mainly as an ode to many movies and cartoons I enjoyed as a child, many of which starred cartoon mice going on adventures such as ‘Tom & Jerry’, ‘Speedy Gonzales’, ‘The Secret of NIHM’ and the movie of my childhood, ‘An American Tail’ – or ‘Fievel’ as I called it back then. The movie was about a young mouse whose family emigrates from Russia to America, but unfortunately gets separated from his family along the way. He spends the rest of the movie searching for his family while experiencing many hardships and adventures along the way. I don’t know why I loved this movie so much as a kid, but I watched it countless times to the point where I can remember the lyrics to some of the songs to this day. Looking back at it now, that movie dealt with surprisingly heavy issues I never noticed as a kid, such as child labor, the stresses of living in a foreign country and the persecution of Jews. Now that I’m older and can understand these issues, I appreciate the film a lot more than I did before – especially the part about living in a foreign country, something I’m still adjusting to as a foreign student in college.

Also, I just noticed that Fievel’s red & blue colour scheme somewhat matches Calvin’s colour palette:

A bit of a coinkey-dink, huh? Then again, red& blue’s a pretty common colour palette as well, but I like to think that some part of my brain remembered Fievel’s look and was like: “Hey! You should use the same colours as that Fievel character!”

Inspiration – Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and Hirohiko Araki

About 2 years ago, I came across an oddly colourful and extremely outlandish anime series called “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure”. I remember hearing that title a few times in the past, but never really knew what it was all about, but the unique art and flashy style definitely caught my eye and attracted me to the series.

The Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Opening Cinematic:

What I’d discovered was a rich, decade spanning franchise full of style, flair and uniqueness that not only stood out from the usual crowd of media (not just anime/manga), but also realized that this series also influenced many aspects of popular franchises that exist today.

Jojo is a series detailing a multi-generational storyline following the different members of the Joestar bloodline and their respective bizarre adventures. The name ‘Jojo’ is a moniker applied to the protagonists of the different story arcs, since the nicknamed can usually be formed from their actual names (e.g. Jonathan Joestar, Joseph Joestar, Jotaro Kujo)The author of the series, Hirohiko Araki, was heavily inspired by western music, Italian culture and the artwork of Paul Gaugin, all of which can be seen in his manga and his signature, flamboyant artstyle. Very notable is the fact that the colourful, seemingly arbitrary use of colour in Gaugin’s artwork has transferred over to Araki’s work as he often uses random, arbitrary colours for his coloured pieces – in fact, most of his characters don’t have a set colour-scheme and he often draws them with different palettes each time.

http://s1079.photobucket.com/user/Plusme7234/media/jojo.jpg.html

While I love the series to death and it serves as a major inspiration for me and my own works, what I found most interesting about the series is how much it has influenced other, more well known series. For example, in the Street Fighter series of fighting games, two prominent characters clearly drew inspiration from two prominent Jojo characters: Guile was inspired by Rudolf von Stroheim, and Rose looks near identical to Lisa Lisa:

In addition, from the third story arc onwards, the a major ability featured by the main characters is the ability to project ‘astral visions of their psychic energy’, which usually take the form of warriors who stand and fight by their users’ side, earning them the name ‘Stands’. Jojo can be seen as the precursor to the ability to summon and battle using projections of oneself seen in various other franchises, most notably the Persona series of video games.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is a long running series and is still going strong today and is now currently in its 8th story arc. Recently it’s become a little more popular in the west, with the release of an acclaimed new anime series and a new video game. It’s a highly entertaining series to follow, and I don’t regret the day I happened to stumble upon that colourful opening cinematic.

Fantasy-Avatar: The Dreaded Cyclops Serpent

The Dreaded Cyclops Serpent is an elusive creature. It’s appearance highly resembles that of a snake, except in place of a head it has a single eyeball covered with prehensile hair-like tendrils and a 4-fanged upper jaw. Possessing no lower jaw or mouth of any sort, it absorbs nutrients through its teeth from living beings, much like a vampire. It’s single, massive eye-head sees all, perceiving more information in a single glance than any living thing could ever imagine. It’s body is heavily armored and resistant; even scratching the dreaded serpent proves difficult. It is primarily nocturnal, as the intense rays of the sun are enough to burn its highly sensitive eye. Despite its frightening appearance and fearsome traits, the DCS is actually a rather friendly creature towards humans, acting much like a dog would around them.

Birdy the Mighty: A Wonderful Surprise and Major Inspiration

So, a few days ago I unwittingly discovered this gem of an anime. I’d hit a bit of an art block with regards to my game project, not really sure where I wanted to go with it or what kind of game I wanted it to be. I knew I wanted it to be a retro-feeling sidescrolling platformer with tons of unique and colourful characters and ideas, but aside from the design of the protagonist and the main gameplay elements, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the story or how to go about filling out such a vibrant world surrounding him. While pondering these problems, I was listening to some random anime and video game OSTs in the background, since I sometimes also get inspired by coming across great music. That’s when I discovered the main theme to a show I’d never heard of before but now love:

This is the main theme for the anime, Birdy the Mighty: DECODE, although I didn’t know it at the time. All I knew is that I fell in love with the song, and played it over and over before I finally decided to look more into the show itself; a decision which I will never regret. It’s hard to explain, but the song gave off the same kind of feelings of action, adventure, fun and excitement that I wanted to give off in my game with it’s characters, story and most importantly, gameplay. After listening to the song, I immediately felt the familiar feeling of inspiration and the creative juices in my brain flowing through and started working out what I wanted my game to be like.

To get that feeling of adventure, I needed a big world to travel around, and an even bigger quest for the hero to complete.

To get that feeling of excitement, I needed a quest that would involve a lot of action, danger, and most importantly, fun.

And to get that feeling of fun, I needed to fill that world with vibrant and colorful characters to guide the player through the adventure.

And that’s how I eventually settled on the final concept for my game project. Just in case you missed it, here it is:
Curtis and Calvin Yang are a legendary, father-son archaeology duo, investigating ancient mysteries, recovering lost treasures and discovering historic monuments all over the world. Take control of Calvin the rat as he travels across a world of adventure in search of ancient artifacts to find a kingdom lost for centuries, using a simple yoyo to get around, fight enemies and explore 13 sprawling, danger-filled levels. He won’t be tackling this adventure alone; his elderly father Curtis will be supporting him all the way, and a mysterious group of Zodiac-themed villains will be doing all they can to crush them both.

I probably would have never made up my mind about what direction to take my game in had I not indulged in the wonderfully epic funkiness of the Birdy the Mighty main theme. In fact, I’m listening to it as I type this blog entry 😀 It’s just so catchy!

The show itself was a wonderful ride as well. It tells the story of an intergalactic police officer, Birdy Cephon Altera, sent to earth to track down some alien criminals hiding amongst the human populace. In a fateful battle against one of the criminals, Birdy accidentally kills an innocent human boy. He manages to survive, however, but the once normal Tsutomu Senkawa now finds himself sharing a body (and life) with the feisty space officer Birdy while his original body is repaired by her superiors – one body, two minds. In the meantime, however, he’s forced to tag along with her on her investigation as she battles against evil aliens and a plot that could end in the extinction of the human race.

If that doesn’t sound like an awesome concept then I don’t know what is. It’s a great show full of action and comedy, and it has a surprisingly gripping plot as well. I’d recommend it to any anime fan out there and encourage everyone to check out this underrated gem.

Why Does Anime Food Always Look So Darn GOOD?

Today, I decided to do something special for lunch. There’s a little ramen shop on 18th street that serves authentic, delicious Japanese cuisine; I would know, as I’ve been there several times. I ordered a regular sized miso bowl with an egg and when I got it, my mouth started watering almost immediately. It looked so GOOD! Exactly like all the imposibly delicious looking ramen bowls I’ve seen in all of the anime I’ve ever watched.

Then I suddenly found myself thinking: why does all food look so darn delicious in anime? I mean, I can’t smell it since it’s only an animation, and it still looks somewhat cartoony. But still, just look for yourself:

Most of the time I can’t even tell what the heck they’re eating but I still find myself wanting a piece of it. I also can’t help but feel like the artists always put special emphasis on the food – they always look a lot more realistic and emphasized than the characters or environments shown in the anime. Heck, you can literally see the steam coming out of the second picture as the character cuts into their….whatever they’re eating.

I’m a guy who loves food, and my favourite kinds of food all come from Asian countries, and I have a feeling that its images like these that sparked my interest in Asian food in the first place. When I first saw a bowl of ramen in ‘Naruto’ when I was little, I was dying to try a bowl of ramen myself. I had to settle for lame instant-ramen for many years before tasting the real thing at Nom Nom Ramen on 18th street, during my first year at Drexel. Needless to say, it was DIVINE.

Geez…now I’m hungry for ramen again….