Anime makes you think in really unique ways...okay that statement is far from my greatest original quips of cleverness but bear with me. I would like to claim that anime and manga perform the really great and valuable service of making us confront angles of perspective and possibility that the mind ordinarily would never ever touch. Take Naruto for example, a lot of people were brought back from the dead in that series.It's especially notable when Itachi comes back and has to talk things out with his brother Sasuke.
In anime this kind of event is taken for granted, just think about all of the amazing things that might happen if we got these opportunities in real life! What if people we know whom we may have loved or hated came back and gave us the break down on how they chose to live. How do you think things would change for your perspective of the world if you got answers from the people who can no longer give any? If you really ponder the true meaning of a ridiculous anime development you would realize how amazing the ideas are.
If they are no longer bound by responsibilities and politics of the living they would certainly be free to talk more openly about their true thoughts and feelings, in which case how would my past relatives really feel about me? What would George Washington or Ben Franklin really have to say about the way this country has turned out? What advice would they give us? Would their return to this world however short transform our views and reinforce our legacy as Americans?
Anime makes us think in tangents that ordinarily seem irrelevant and I think that this is a very good thing. It literally expands our minds and allows our thoughts to reach places far beyond the typical mind which is focused on traditional habitual ways of looking at the world.
I've mentioned before about my disappointment with people for not understanding or embracing my anime inspired happy-go-luckiness. I have a tendency to go over the top with things, for example I've taken it upon myself to keep to my schedule of writing this blog with at least one posting per week. This has kept me up with the clock closing in on midnight in spite of the fact that I have a test tomorrow that I need to do more studying for layered on top of the fact that there is absolutely ZERO obligation for me to write this thing in the first place. If this got to be too much work for me I could literally just start pretending this blog doesn't exist and it wouldn't hurt me a damn bit. But I press on, and I do so because Naruto didn't quit no matter the cost and it got him incredibly far in life, so I found myself wondering: "What if I did the same?".
Anime makes me consider grand possibilities...
This could totally be me right...?
But really I find myself thinking that the only reason things can or can't be done half the time is because of what we perceive to be possible or not possible. In my experience anime functions as a tool to experiment and toy with ideas of what we might be able to enjoy in life and it's already showing promising results in my life. I have wooden planks in my house that are dying to give birth to a pair of geta sandals for me and I've got needle and threading all set to make sweet love to some cloth materials in order to make little kimono and yukata babies!
With these projects on deck to be initiated in my life the finer values I learned and adopted from this Otaku nature of mine are now inching towards reality. I'm finally starting to bust the barrier between the manga covers and video screens and the real world that contains my actual life.
Consider the concept of Tsundere...
This one trope alone has given me a sense of hope about aggressive jerkiness' everywhere. I wrote a whole posting about how Toradora made me less able to pass judgement on others because it gave such fine consideration to peoples personal stories. This particular anime made me think more about what it means for someone to actually be a jerk or an otherwise bad person, sending my mind off on a thinking spree that tries to work out the ways I might be wrong about the way human nature actually works. People are shocked on a regular basis at my ability to be highly tolerant and patient and forgiving, hell a part of why I was so late to writing this article was that I spent a whole day with a classmate in need of a great deal of aid with school issues. Many others would have gotten fed up with her and wanted to abandon her...for God's sake her son did want to just ditch her himself! But I endured because my Anime Mind has pondered such things long and hard and I am determined to make miracles happen and so I will face whatever the world wants to throw at me and I will find a way to rise above it and take this world by storm!
That's not what I meant by storm...but that's not bad either.
All I'm trying to say, is that I think there is intellectual value in anime fandom. It's established science of psychology that people need to be entertained, fully stimulated through all of their senses, challenged with new and interesting ideas, and repeatedly slammed with it all in order to learn and grow in intelligence, creativity, and skill. Anime does absolutely everything for the human mind that a healthy one craves! That's why it's so addicting, that's why you know and love it by heart, and that's why your mind gets so wild when you've been exposed to it for a good long time.
So take this opportunity to avail yourself to the benefits now, just in case you hadn't noticed the intellectual gold mind you were sitting on. What would happen if you forgave your worst enemy? Would he have a change of heart like Nagato when Naruto talked him down? What if you went the other route and launched a full scale rebellion against the people who hold you down? Would you rise to become a supreme conqueror like Lelouch vi Brittania, and ultimately become the savior of the world by guiding it to a better future free of the dismal past?
What about true love? Do you think you can find it like Junichi Tachibana did? With any of six or seven different but perfect in each her own way ladies!?
I think these questions are worth exploring because they bring up thoughtful questions of hopes and dreams that would not have been considered otherwise. Anime is extremely entertaining but it also makes me think and in so doing it changes me as I believe it does to all of its fans. It serves to mold and shape my identity and I think a great surge in quality of life can emerge if we take to heart the ideas we often take for granted as we secretly watch anime and read manga where the normal people can't see.
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