Absolutely agreed - remains one of my favorites to date (I didn't watch it weekly back in 2013 since I didn't start watching anime at all in general until 2016, so think I first watched the series sometime in 2019). A thriller which takes your breath away more than many others involving spies and assassins or battle royales between military units or criminal organizations. Because it's just about the nature of how your own small world (even smaller when/if you're still in school and/or in your hometown) can be flipped on its head and contorted day to day in unforeseen directions just based on your changing relationships with a small group of people around you, like friends and romantic interests, bullies or potential bullies, bullies turned friends, etc., and how greatly that can impact your identity and self-perception. And the drowning hopelessness of feeling trapped in your current life and station on one side of the hill, because you're a kid, because you have little to no money, because there is nowhere else to really go anyway. Etc.
Except for mystery series where I don't like to read other people's guesses/theories/speculation while I'm still actively watching a series and would rather just allow the show to reveal it to me naturally in its own way on its own timetable (and I don't like to furiously theorize and play the role of an active participant either), on series of all other genres, around the time I'm first watching them, I like to go back and read the individual episode discussion threads or other threads from closer to when the series was released and still airing, on forums such as their sub-forums on MAL and other forums.
And sometimes I skim over them very briefly and sparingly or even skip them almost entirely if the comments are too consistently obnoxious (like just a horde of the manga/LN/VN source material elitist/purist/supremacist types saying little else than how much better they find the source) or some variation of people all just saying the same thing.
But not only has the power and way the ideas of the series were presented visually and in its writing left a positive indelible impression which has remained with me strongly to this day. But the ratio of negative-positive viewer reaction and engagement in terms of the lack of comments I saw actually appreciating, discussing, and exploring those aspects in comparison to those nonsense-type comments pitching a hissy fit just because the series dared to do something different and opted not to use the manga's art style (which, was perfectly fine and attractive, but was/is a more typical manga and anime art style which would have yielded a more expected and conventional product and result, as opposed to the rotoscoping technique they used which was infinitely more fitting and made this small story really come alive onscreen and imbue it with a sense of tension and existential dread partially directly tied to the visuals)....all that was such a disappointment to see as such a commonplace reaction and such a mark against the anime community's taste and tolerance, in my view.
It really confirmed the extent of shallow superficiality. It's an endemic disease, and some seasoned and regular anime watchers shouldn't fool themselves into believing many of their fellow enthusiasts aren't just as reflexively rabidly closed-minded as any other group when it comes to the medium and individual artists exploring and experimenting with anything new. They try to shut it down right away like white blood cells attacking a bacterial infection. And it must be no small part of why there is so much increased timidity and conformity in the modern anime industry not to wander and stray off the reservation so as to not rock the boat and upset this mob. But eventually that stagnant air will all back up, build up, and suffocate us all, just as Sawa felt suffocated with the prospect of normal daily life in that class and a future in that town.
_Kozue said:it's hard to believe
Unfortunately, after reading the torrent of comments pertaining to it on this and other anime-related websites, even from people you would expect something better and more of an open mind from, and after seeing this experience replicated in other situations where great works of art or even just fun and entertaining series with a number of interesting things to say were dismissed out of hand early on in a kneejerk manner for equally facile reasons, I no longer agree that "it's hard to believe". It's now, regrettably, extremely easy to believe and even completely and entirely expected. Sickening, but no longer surprising. |