Haven't seen GotF, so I can't really say what I thought of it, haha.
eRe4s3r said: maintain the mood of large scale catastrophe with streaks of hope (way too much hope, but ok ;p)
Mirai's still a child/teen, the old guy knew that, so giving them this kind of hope (being quite a lot) isn't really unbelievable; a lot of people (especially in such situations) believe that the younger generations will have to be strong and continue their lives proudly/well once everything is over, that's why giving her hope was like an important task to him whether he knew her or not.
If you meant that the majority of the viewers have hope that there will be a good ending, then that's obvious. No one is in this actual situation in Japan with them; if people actually were, it's only natural to have hope/faith in something, or else you find the point of your existence far more void. No one is viewing the anime/situation completely into it, since we're not personally concerned by an earthquake of scale 8 by Richter (or w/e); it's like how you can't predict how you will act once facing with death.
This is also an anime, and over half of the time there are good endings (just like movies, etc, since a lot want to give faith in humankind, messages of not giving up, etc), so statistically, the chances of a good ending here (maybe one of the parents will be dead, obvious drama pointing out 'even though you lost half of your happiness (family here), that just means you have to love the second half twice as much') are higher. My example would still be a good ending if it's done normally, even without being exaggerated to make you think it's more of a good one than a bad one.
It's true that the church's point was as noteDhero said, at least that's how I also viewed it; but it's also pointing out something quite interesting. A lot of people were especially moved by what the grandpa had to live through, but that's because we've got to know him and that made people more attached to him. But like eRe4s3r said, the church full of dead people, should logically be far more sad, yet it wasn't the case, because no one had any attachments to them/knew them. Sadly, I can't say I'm even the least bit surprised by human's emotions depending on the situations, since knowing this before-hand made this part obvious when I watched the episode (it almost seems like people completely forgot about the church/school; role done, you can leave now, ty).
It attaches itself to our reality quite well. I'm not complaining about how stupid this seemed, since it was far from that; it's exactly what would happen for most people irl. I just find it funny that showing this might have not even been the intention from the start (by the studio), although it could also have (and putting more time on another subject to make this one more discreet isn't a 'rare' way of making movies/etc). Also the fact it surely made some people consider themselves humane for having such feelings instead of apathetic ones, even though this is just an anime, yet they were focused only on a group of characters, the one you know things of. That would greatly vary depending on if you consider someone humane if he follows the average logic/reactions of most humans (this case, group 1), or if he actually believes in all the 'every human should be equal, no one is more important than another, etc' (group 2). Here I meant, group 1 believing they are acting like group 2 would be, yet are unbelievably false, even to the point of being blind.
It's easy to say "It's possible that the fact you don't know anything about the other families is far from helping the 'feeling pity/sad for them' situation, but that's also re-enforced the belief that they might not be worth your time for all they've done in the past (murder, etc)", but that'd become too philosophical, and then the same could still hold true with the old guy. I'd be surprised if it was the case, seeing this anime isn't taking this kind of route, but it seems no one even though that the story of the old guy might be 90% lies by the time the episode finished. I'm not convinced that it's mainly lies, but people also forget that exaggerations can be useful in this situation, and are obviously strong believers of 'In such a situation, how can you believe people would lie, it's impossible!'.
I'm viewing all of that from a more neutral p.o.v, I didn't feel sad either for the dead mass in the church nor for the old guy, but the latter was probably made obvious by the time you arrived at this part of the post, heh. |