#KOKO IS SO SO FUN TO DRAW. ALWAYS BEAUTIFUL NEVER A MISS

[twilightakiishi]

everything abt him has me like 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

[koko-ni-inai-im-not-here-us]

Blog1. Writing the Story

Hello,

My name is Emel Saat. I am the Writer, Director, Producer, Casting Director, Location Scout, Editor and blah blah blah-other hats. All you need to remember is that I am the Writer and Director of Koko Ni Inai (I'm Not Here).

Now, sadly most of these blogs will not be written in real time. I'm going to do my best to write in as much detail as I can remember for you. There were so many things going on at once that I didn't have enough time to write in my journal every day. Now that things have settled down a bit (that is a lie) I have more time to share KNI's story with you, the filmmakers and moviegoers (another lie).

O-K! Many people ask me "Why? Why a Japanese story?" Because clearly, I am not Japanese (you can tell straight from my name. Which is 100% Turkish). Let's skip about my ethnicity and go straight to how the story came to be.  

​​

It all started during my sophomore year of College, spring semester 2014. This was an amazing semester. Why?? Because. I. Lived. In. JAPAN. For six months! I attended Kansaigaidai (took me weeks to memorize that name) in Kansai, Osaka in Hirakata-shi. Living there was a good balance of city and rural. It reminded me a lot of the themes Hayao Miyazaki uses in his films. He would always show "old" against "new," and technology versus nature. Even though Miyazaki did not live in Hirakata-shi, the landscape could one day be in a Miyazaki film (if he never retires).

Living there sparked a lot of my creativity and possible stories for future films. But we're here to talk about Koko Ni Inai (I'm Not Here).

I learned a lot living in Osaka. I learned that in Japanese culture simplicity is beautiful. In their art they can take a simple design and use it over and over again. When you step back you see it is actually a complex piece of work.

In America, we're about "bigger is better," and "We need more glitter...no, not glitter, we need sparklers. Wait no! We need fireworks. Come on people we need more pizzas!" Which can be fun and all but I sometimes find myself getting lost in all that "pizzas".

I felt "If I can focus on a single idea and really dig deep into it maybe my films would be better."

Going back to Osaka, my friends and I used the train when we wanted to get outside of Hirakata. As a person who loves stories, I love watching people to see a glimpse of their own story, that day, in the moment. When I watched the people on the train I was super bored. You wanna know why??

EVERYONE was on their phone.

Have you ever tried watching someone stare at thier phone? Try it for a whole train ride. It's completely uninteresting. I was watching businessmen in their fancy suites play candy crush.

Now, I understand in Japan you have to be aware of other people on the train. You can't be loud if you're going to talk to someone. But the silence on the train was too much!

Let's fast forward through the semester--studying, biking, writing Japanese, crying, applying to transfer to a school from New Hampshire to New York City, finding food with pork in it, saying goodbye's to friends, going back home to New York, first day at a new college, aaaaaannnd STOP!

Okay, we are in the first month at Hunter College. It's 2015. I'm back in the familiar city, but with a new start. A new start means new professors, new classmates, and new friends. All of that was true except that last part...

"friends."  (I promise you this is leading to the film. Thank you for sticking with me thus far.)

This college was no ordinary college. Everyone who attended commuted. Hunter has every kind of kid from every borough. A lot of the people there were interesting and cool. Once you got to know someone you could tell they had a story. But the thing was...that's if they talked to you. And even if they did talk to you, that first conversation you had with them would be your last. Why?? Because everyone went straight to work or home after class. Also, because dorms were only for kids who came from outside NYC. The rest of the students lived with their parents or shared an apartment with three other people. There wasn't a sense of community. What made it worse was that everyone would be glued to their -*hisses*-phones.

Walking down the halls you would see kids (when I say "kids" I mean students) sitting on the floor with their head down looking at their phone, waiting for their professor to come and unlock the door to the classroom. The halls were always silent. No one looked at each other. I was back to watching boring people.

I saw groups of friends (from their old high school) sit together while playing games or texting on their phones. What was the point in hanging out if you weren't going to talk to each other? Do people not socialize anymore??? In person??

As my boredom grew so did my curiosity. I tried waving at someone on their phone. Not one glanced at me. I then did some Jazz hands...nothing. I did a little dance in the hall. Again, nothing. I tried my hardest to really stare at someone. I used my imaginary telepathy on them...the kid didn't look at me.

I would sit on the Hunter bridge looking at all these students wasting what was supposed to be the best years of our lives --to looking at their phone. I could only think "What a waste."

For my first semester, I took screenwriting 1. We were learning about script format. Every time we finished writing a few pages, we would read everyone's script out loud together and then critique it. I'm used to having my drawings critiqued, but writing is kind of different. Instead of letting an image speak for itself you had to do all the talking (writing) yourself. It was a little uncomfortable at first, but I was so determined to learn story and format, there was no room for embarrassment.

It was around the end of the semester. Our final for the class was the best kind of final a professor could possibly give. He looked at all of us and said,"Do whatevah you want!!!!" ( Note: this was how he sounded in my head). I was blown away at all this freedom. All we had to do was keep it under 15 pages.

Once the class finished I had to go to my Sociology class (which focused on nuclear families and whatnot). I sat there...early for class. I was thinking about what to do for my final project. I was missing Japan so I chose that to be my setting...but what was the story? I was watching the kids sitting around me. Everyone was keeping to themselves on their phone......

wait....wait....ooooOOOHHH! That's what my final script is going to be about!

And that was how Koko Ni Inai (I'm Not Here) was born.

[ruzhansky]

i pray this will never end, i have my heart open wide

This report is not going to cover my teams, spreads and so on, as it was in 2015. I even don’t know if I should call it a ‘report’, I just want to slop down some thoughts about 2017. Have a nice read.

Why did I return to vgc? I DONT KNOW. As you might remember, I was a tryharder in 2015, but Nats loss and Autumn Series event loss completely broke me. 2016 season wasn’t a thing I’d like to try out (especially with the 2015 wounds) and I got some serious mental health problems in 2016. New pokemon game was a thing that could possibly make my days a bit brighter, and yea, I liked the game, the tapus, the ultra beasts and I became curious about the new format. The first russian tournament was announced to be held in late December, but I was busy with exams prep and haven’t even completed the main story. Though the tournament was tempting. I tested my first ideas on PS which included Instruct spam xd, but Nihilego with proper support showed a real potential at our early days of metagame. I could make it to the tournament (MSS Q1, wow Russia got midseasons...) and somehow won it. It’s like WHATTT how could i... but still. This thing lit something inside me and I decided to give that season a chance.

this is a very bad and old drawing of my mss q1 team xd sorry

January brought the first meta shift, and I started struggling with the team I had. I accidentally joined a random coversation on twitter and then I texted PephanVGC something like hey, did you remember we wanted to talk about teams. And he was very nice to me right from the start, he helped me out with the team and then we started to chat about everything. About friends, life, our past, loneliness and other troubles, and I thought I’ve found a real soulmate. We started to chat every day, but some days ago we were complete strangers to each other. This is so great.

Pephan shared a team with me I instantly fell in love with. It was Winter, so yeah Hail was cool to use, and that was the warmest winter I have :3 though Arcanines already were everywhere, and I removed Life Orb from his Koko to make it Electrium Z Koko AND IT BECAME MY MASCOT FOR THE WHOLE SEASON (i thought so before specs has come to mind...)  Also I played the same team with Pephan at Melbourne Challenge, and I got paired with him on r2... I lost in a close set and got broken so much, but he still helped me a lot with that and taught me how to treat losses less painfully. I love Pephan.

February IC poster with @Elveman yeah we had fun once

Then I built an AFK team too but with fucked item choices (firium arcanine just why), but I also had Scarf Porygon-Z and it was amazing to use. 

I brought Hail team to St Peter (yeah I travelled to St Petersburg) and Moscow PCs, got 1st and 2nd, AFK PZ team - to MSS Q2 AND I WON AGAIN. I was wondering why my enemies rivals didn’t visit our events, but ok, it was not my problem. Especially when our 2016 nats champion became my main enemy.

This was my season flow. I traveled, I played, I was studying at university and it was my graduation year, I had a job and tried to combine it with studying and pokemon, sometimes it affected my results. I was invited to represent Pokemon at Hinode 2017, the huge annual Japanese event in Moscow, with my main rival, famous russian pokemon community moderator and some TCG guys. It was definitely a nice experience. I got money from that just because I told people how amazing pokemon is, I teached them how to battle and showed that there’s much more than Pokemon Go. Yes, I don’t like Go. All pokemon players don’t like Go here.

b-but they’re so young!!! pic from Hinode.

Well, I thought season should have something else besides MSS and PCs, and hell yes, 8 Russian Special Events at 8 different cities were announced in May. Moar travelling! We(my rival, me and our tcg frens) decided to go to St Peter (again), Perm, Astrakhan and Ufa. Someone decided to go to all 8 SE because he wanted to.

The big-big drama started at our community but I don’t wanna share it here.

I graduated, traveled and played, and since my rival missed 2 Specials due to his own graduation and some other issues, my invite made a bit more real. Wait. THE DREAM OF MAKING WORLDS BECAME REAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But I still needed to put a lot ot work into it. Top 1 vgc gets paid invite, I was 1st, but tcg guy with a good amount of vgc points was second (because he always played vgc after tcg at special events). I thought he will play TCG after all and he won’t interfere with my road to worlds, but I found out that he is going to the city we’re all decided not to go, to grind some tcg AND vgc points. I got angry as a rival and made an impulsive decision to go to Irkutsk Special before Moscow Special. And I went. And got some important points. And pretty locked up my invite. But I said to myself that I shouldn’t sсream it out loud and dance in the shower before the official ceremony in the end of the season. I still had Moscow event.

Huh. Our system this year allowed travelling, and 8 Special Events were held in June and July. Because I had the will and money to travel, because I got a job and combined it with studying at university and somehow haven’t lost it, I visited 6 Special Events. People started to shittalk me. I am wallet warrior, I am noob, I am not worlds caliber, I bought an invite and so on. I even partly agree. At that point winning russian events isn’t close to winning or doing well at EU/US events. Not every SE at regions gave us a strong competition. I am deadly far from WolfeyNails/Markus/etc level. But even with that, should I leave my spot and act like a fucking noble idiot? ‘Oh I am bad and not worlds caliber, guess I should give up now’. Yes. Definitely. Absolutely. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? I have a game I love, a desire to travel, a job and money for that, so why not. If you don’t play and try, you can never ‘get good’. Sitting on a sofa and thinking ‘oh I will never be good enough so I better don’t play’ is a shitty mindset as well. And then twitter drama about ‘free worlds not being elitist’ happened, I’ve become so sick of that.  

Moscow Special. The long-awaited end of the season. Really long-awaited because I felt like every day had 48 hours. I didn’t have special plans for Moscow. I didn’t want win it out as hell, I just wanted everything to end. And it ended. 

the event

party after d1

i remember how to draw

the main scene

turn your main enemies to judges lol

#lifegoals

<3

Despite tons of personal shit happened to me this season, apparently I found myself a better person. i don’t know if this is growing up, I am already 21 and difference between 19 and 21 doesn’t seem too big, though my mind and attitude to some things have noticeably changed.

Got rid of fake elitism, as it was in my early days of competitive and my -most famous year- (2015). I can’t even imagine now but then I thought that competitive is the BEST part we can have about pokemon, and everyone else who likes casual playing or anime are absolute losers and can never be as cool as us. Your dream is completing dex? Breeding a shiny? You love some anime characters and wanna watch fuckin dummies’ anime forever? Uh, dream of becoming a xXxWORLDCHAMPIONxXx just disparages your shitty life goals. I laughed at people i don’t know in person and who didn’t do anything bad to me.

I don’t know what changed my mind in particular. It’s like I just woke up with thoughts “why should I do this”. I saw that people who are not only about competitive can have and reach their own pokemon dreams, they’re valuable too. They can travel not only for competitive. For love to the franchise all of us are fond of. I am sorry for being an asshole :)

Got some skills of loving myself. Yup, y’all might know it was a big problem. Tl,dr: I haven’t a reason to. My only ray of light was being successful enough in vgc and when I wasn’t it became a catastrophe. Bad runs at IC, losses at regionals stages, bad BS sessions? Oh god, i am so shitty, i hate myself - and it was the softest thing I said. It was a mix of hatred and sadness and absolutely wasn’t a great thing to feel.  It cost me a real depression in 2016 - though I didn’t even play that season, it hit me hard. I let it happen, I let myself think and treat the game that way. Now it is slightly better, and it also feels so new. It’s like WOAH you actually may not hate yourself for a loss? In 2015 I had my Nats spot already reserved, but every mediocre regionals stage run made me feel terrible. This season I was fighting for the Worlds (Worlds > Rus Nats) right from the start with no ‘safe options’, I was losing too, but I could cope with that. Though losing is always sad. The difference is in being frustrated and hating yourself for days or week and being frustrated and hating yourself for an evening, and then you’re saying something like enough, it won’t make me better, learning and practice will make me better, so let’s play tomorrow. Pephan helped me out a lot with this. Tons of love to Pephan.

Well, also I reached a dream. When I was 17, I watched 2013 Worlds with excitement, though I understood nothing because I was an OU child. New format? Big event? That was very unfamiliar but holy crap so breathtaking! Two guys were fighting for the honourable title with some beautiful teams and strategies, I felt their drive even when I was so far away. That blew my mind. I told myself that I want to visit Pokemon World Championships too. The long way of getting better started in 2013 and will never end. I won Russian VGC 2014 big event and got closer to my dream. I qualified to Russian National Championships in 2015 and almost made my dream real, finishing 2nd. I got broken and gave up because sometimes it was too hard to keep up. I remembered how I sang lyrics from “Wavin Flag”: ‘when I get older, I will be stronger’. The dream wasn’t dead.  And I tried again. And I did it. The most trivial thing I can say now is do not give up and fight for your dreams, but this is really true!

Every Trainer has a choice To listen to that voice inside. I know the battle may be long, Winners may have come and gone I will carry on! Yeah, this dream will last forever, And this dream will never die, We will rise to meet the challenge every time. (Advanced Challenge) Yeah, this dream keeps us together, This shows that you and I Will be the best that the world's ever seen, Cause we always will follow this dream!

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Nothing can be perfect in one second. I still have issues with rivalry and with the community, though I wonder how we will do in 2018.

Thanks for reading and, finally I can say it, see you at Worlds!

Shout-outs to: PurpurVGC, Loui, PephanVGC, Elveman, Sergey, Annet Ilvers, unhealthy rivalry and Havkai for making this season amazing.