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Nice to see people with Koi Kaze in the favorites

Yes, in reference to Koi Kaze, that it does neither glorify and idealize nor vilify and demonize either the central issue or characters which comprise its subject matter is huge and crucial for me. Also, some of my favorite stories out there anywhere - in anime and just, in existence, generally, are ones where all the details which make it up - its setting, characters, and even plot themselves are even superseded if only for a fleeting moment when you have a clash of wills, goals, or beliefs and the accompanying examination and exploration of different ideas. In that moment and opening the plot itself temporarily melts and fades away, bows it head, and allows one to feel connected with what is truly up for discussion. Koi Kaze taught me that a conversation while strolling through a playground, in an apartment living room, or your childhood bedroom can be as existential as a massive sprawling battle raging in a castle or at the edge of some cliffside.

You aptly pointed out that there is extremely minimal comic relief in Koi Kaze (I believe Koshiro's co-worker, Odagiri was meant to fulfill that role and a dual function of serving as a contrast) and this is true. There is also no fanservice. The only moment which elicited a chuckle from me in the entire series was actually Zenzo, the father, and one of his exaggerated mannerisms. I don't enjoy scripted comedy in general even outside of anime because I have a somewhat idiosyncratic and dark sense of humor and also a very random one, and draw from a genuine, deep wellspring of rejuvenating humor based off of happenings in real life more than an intentionally set up joke. So I appreciate that it's ironically one of the most down to earth, simple and plain-seeming, naturalistic, and played as straight-laced anime out there, or certainly number one that I've seen (Usagi Drop, a show with a completely removed plot but actually a few striking similarities, is another). Ironic because it has this straight face in approaching what many people who think of themselves as "normal" don't really entertain as a subject in their head. It is about taboos, but even if you are a person who cannot fathom or physically feel like you cannot relate to loving your sister in such a way in actual life, beyond the incest and beyond even the romance and love, it's also asking what I see as an extremely provocative and important question which would be inflammatory whether posited in Japan and East Asia, the Western bloc states, or any other civilization about why humans accept any taboo or prescribed generational wisdom or rule for living if it's not conducive to their desired way of life and actualizing happiness. It could be who you choose to love and how the line is blurred between platonic, familial and romantic or sexual. It could be your career choice or lack of one. Or even not living in a traditional home. It asks the average person: "Could you knowingly take the plunge to willingly choose to excommunicate yourself from society through your actions if you knew in your mind and heart the alternative was never being allowed to be happy or live freely as who you are?" That can apply to so many different scenarios, countless ones, which people are willing to cast judgment on others for over prejudice, taboos, appeals to collective wisdom or historic/past precedent even if it completely doesn't take the current individual circumstances into account. I would be willing to bet there are so many who have come up against such a pervasive attitude in their lives over any number of issues from family and communities, workplaces, schools, and supposed friends and social networks that preach happiness but only want people to act on within very restrictive lines and parameters. The series just shows the logical thought processes and circumstances past and present of those who are about to be deemed the next outcasts and disgusts, disgraces to their family etc. and invites the viewer to a conversation without making any authoritative moralizing pronouncement either way. If the show has any identifiable moral or ethos at all, perhaps it's just that every single individual situation in life is worth examining and if you want to render a judgment on anything you're entitled to an opinion, but you should at least know all the details first. For it's easy to end up on the "monster" side in the eyes of any society just based on the ebb and flow of your life up to that point and a series of coincidences. I'm simplifying it here but it's something which can have weight and meaning and cut to the core psyche of every thinking person. It's funny (and by "funny" I mean in many ways infuriating, supremely off-putting, and inducing of general malaise) that simply living earnestly and allowing your true feelings to manifest, even mutually with one who shares them, can still get you branded by the mob - society at large, mainly strangers, but even many who might become former friends and estranged family, as a dirty beast in the same category with serial killers or child rapists in the hive eyes just for crossing some invisible lines regardless of reason.

The fact that it was a romantic drama when I'd only previously seen the subject in anime take central focus either played for comedy in ecchi and harem titles or for arousal and titillation in hentai (pornography) already propelled it half of the way to be something worthy of consideration in my eyes, but then I didn't expect the writing, pacing, music, and art to do the legwork of the other 50% and then some and create a classic. And similarly in Western media, I had only seen it used comedically as a joke about disparaging people from certain regions of the U.S. as backward and uneducated/illiterate or in horror as something grotesque and to be feared as lurking in the woodland interior of the country and equated with belligerent malcontent mutants and murderers. So yeah, when you have a certain vision hammered and pounded into your head through media exposure for many years and it's one of rank ugliness, deformity, danger, shame and ridicule and then it's juxtaposed against such majesty of form, something special was born. I've always favored certain heavy romances and psycho-sexual fare - particularly anything with a deviant or transgressive bent (like sizable age gap, android love, one of the concerned is a fugitive killer, etc.), but romance was far from a top genre for me. As someone with a background coming from prioritizing and caring most for sweeping historical war epics and period pieces, transhumanist cyberpunk and grand cataclysmic, apocalyptic works, and cosmic horror, I never once stopped to think any romance could be so damn existential.

I'll be certain to read the attached links going forward (the one included in your follow-up post about Koi Kaze and also the one further down the post addressing your perspective on epistemic humility). I have several other thoughts I'd like to include, but I'll refrain until I've read more thoroughly your linked document. And yes, I'll mention now that it goes without saying you have my permission to include anything of that nature of mine in the present or future. I'm not one of those multinationals patenting and trademarking everything who will be coming after you for royalties on Intellectual Property rights or some malarkey.

You know, the way I try to get closer to approaching what you describe in your first paragraph - and again, just to re-emphasize, this isn't advice for anyone as I don't speak in coded language ever but only in explicit terms, but it is the path I've resolved to set out on a long time ago and am equally resolved never to deviate from - is to be willing to consider any idea, any belief, have any conversation with anyone about any conceivable topic, abandon any preconceived moral, philosophical, or ideological precept on any topic, not shy away from researching anything, read anything, watch any documentary, analyze any primary source text, take in any art, and be willing to give anyone a chance to prove the worth of their ideas or stance or lifestyle to me regardless or what anyone else thinks of them. Regardless of whatever else they've done and are judged for - that's why I said to you early on that I only evaluate people on the basis of how they treat me - you could be a serial killer. I wouldn't discount you as someone worth knowing, because all I personally value is accruing knowledge and the enriching of that part of the human experience for me. So I want to give everyone a chance to set about proving the efficacy of why they think, say, and do what they do, and not have my opinion of it tainted by others' judgmental groupthink who only arrive at any position or conclusion they do "just because" or their parents and their parents' parents thought and felt that way, or because of some subconscious evolutionary impulse. That to me represents a false consciousness and I don't want the knowledge I take in to be pre-sorted by passing through any societal or cultural filter. When a wine cork crumbles into tiny pieces in the bottle, when the coffee filter is imperfect and causes leakage of grounds into the mug, or when a teabag I'm utilizing breaks, in any of these scenarios, I go fetch the strainer from the kitchen drawer. The solid parts are cut off and don't pass through the filter. If we think of communication as the mesh, in countless ways a society and group culture is preventing people from understanding themselves and each other on a daily basis. The best way I can see around that for a more authentic and less adulterated learning and communication (and hence why I've long ago committed to autodidactism) is conscious as much as possible decision-making in everything you do to undo it.

After your thorough description, I would be curious to know where you believe your differences set you apart from that close friend you mention or even myself (admittedly that's more limited since we only know one another as online acquaintances through a few recent exchanges). I would like to believe, and so far haven't been disproven, that there isn't a single thing in this world which I don't care about to the extent of never wanting to read about. That's a unicorn or a purple bucking kelpie - it doesn't exist.
I'll say on the topic of gauging and assessing mental health and everything you mention, while it's far from any expertise or primary interest on my part, it isn't anything new to me either as for years I've been reading up on the very nuanced latent differences between a schizoid and someone like myself, so I do have some opinions on SPD, but it's really important to stress the following - While most contemporary books or any website you seek out wanting to encourage responsible behavior tells people not to self-diagnose and I agree with this, I also am leery of even actual in-person diagnoses by doctors on any neurological condition which is tested for through behavior, self-assessment, history and wellness/behaviorally disabling/societal adjustment metrics rather than neuroimaging (as for example, conditions like bipolar disorder and Alzheimer's or dementia onset is tested for) or a more absolute genetic or blood-based test. Just because I think it's incredibly more subjective, dubious, and up to the discretion of an individual being evaluated and the professional individual doctor or staff evaluating them who are all prone and subject to falling prey to prejudices and fallacies about themselves or about any certain condition. I don't trust any human for impartiality, to be some machine or godlike entity who can 100% of the time see outside of themselves and everyone and everything else like that. And modern psychiatry is considered a relatively young field still undergoing enormous growing pains and maturation just in these past 100 years alone. So I really hesitate to say and would never say with an absolute belief someone definitively is or isn't anything - condition X, without there existing some form of physical test of their brain architecture and wiring or neuron arrangement, blood, or genes; might sound extreme to many, but I'm sticking to that.

If you know you're in an at-risk group more likely to fall prey to the worst excesses or side effects of something, then it makes sense to exercise extreme caution before you've gathered all the facts about the situation or yourself, like dipping your toe into the water. It's one of the several reasons why, despite having some other unhealthy habits, I never once had any desire to touch or dabble in any psychotropic drug or substance because I value the exact manner in which my brain chemistry and neurological wiring works now and don't want to risk altering it even .5% for a lifetime. Psychologically it would be the death of me and I wouldn't survive it, since my mind is my everything and I've read a lot on the increased risks of psychotic breaks, inducing a form of lasting schizophrenic visual and auditory hallucinations for either bipolar cases or those on the autistic spectrum. So, as I said, not so much on the drug topic as that's not a main thing of mine anyway apart from regular intellectual curiosity, but just down the general list of perceptible and subtle distinctions I had been into examining SPD vs. ASD differences for a while. I don't know that you necessarily struck me as schizoid though. You have to explain and define for yourself if you've ever derived real pleasure from having the things you aspire to and how much that conflicts with any yearning to escape or be free.

Yes, there are a lot of cases studied of schizoids being borne from trauma, but I'd say that just from what I've seen reading it's a contentious and not very settled subject. There are venues online where schizoid folk will congregate and share their stories and many testify and swear up and down about having happy childhoods and being from non-abusive backgrounds where they were never excluded but were seen eventually as weird for consciously, as early as they could remember, not visibly and audibly reacting to things they were cued and expected to react to and excluding themselves based on an internal feeling as getting no satisfaction or pleasure from the same activities as other people, like a lacking dopaminergic response functionality or other neurochemical imbalance reported in those with depression.

I believe it's possible to be a "rugged individual" principled type loner with some deep-seeded introversion without necessarily being neurodivergent, but what defines that range of normative neurology, whether divergent neurological profiles are just a subset and expression of the natural range of variation found within the human genome is subject to an extensive ongoing debate and unlikely to have definitive proof either way soon, since neuroscience is still considered as possibly in its most primitive early stages even in the wealthy and developed countries. Even if they're the minority, I say "neurotypical" loners exist even if general introverts are a minority and are usually much more moderate in how they apply it to daily life. With me though, being both quite asocial in daily life and an aromantic, I had known for some time about actually being neurodivergent (but knowing the outline of diagnostic criteria for schizoids/SPD from the DSM-5 was incompatible and incongruous with me).

You're probably right that most who choose the solitary path aren't usually mentally or physically optimal. Mentally because there are several mental disorders which lead those with them to isolate, even though that obviously doesn't mean that everybody who isolates has any of them. But also, more controversially, because mental disorders as I said above are still a fiercely contested and debate subject which have a degree of ideological and philosophical coloring and bias and there may be basic and natural ways of human existence which are categorized as a mental illness today but may be seen differently in the collective culture years or generations from now and de-listed, just as there are phenomena which were medicalized in the past (like homosexuality) which are now seen in many cultures widely as a legitimate naturally recurring thing and effectively benign or nothing more than a cosmetic distinguishing feature and personal choice, as long as it remains confined to a minority of the populace. And physically because many sadly who either are already mentally ill or are not but are scorned for their life choices or behaviors have a lot of internalized self-hatred they imbibe by putting a lot of unnecessary stock in basing their own sense of self-worth on what others think of them, devalue themselves, and commit early suicides, self-harm like cutting and mutilation, drug and alcohol abuse, etc. Or are like 600 pounds and housebound.

Finally, I'm truly happy to see others show some respect and acknowledgment for the show which I consider as literally changing and having this transformative effect on my life. Whether it surprises you or not, I have actually had a few other folks through MAL question why I wasn't doing reviews on the site or requesting reviews. I suppose the reason has just been because, while I love writing, I usually feel like I'm writing for myself with a lot of idiosyncratic detail, which is why I can't really normally expect meaningful feedback from other people or post/promote it, like on MAL or a blog webpage or anything as I'm so used to only bouncing all ideas off myself and am a crazy perfectionist. So it's more of an OCD thing, that I feel sometimes I have so much to write and say about that and a lot of topics, but undergo a kind of paralysis, as if worried that I would never be able to do it justice without setting about writing a novel = )

I do intend to attempt it though for Koi Kaze after possibly my fourth rewatch of the series next go-around when every moment is still as fresh and burning as brightly as the last and my blood is most recently still afire from its tumult and whimsy as it is that special and important to me. Though I expect it will alienate a lot of folks as I have some possibly unusual, probably inflammatory views on it all.

Hmm, I've given some more thought yesterday evening to what you said. Most comments on this forum and in other venues to me come across as cotton candy fluff and superfluous stuff I have no actual desire to engage with. But if you're someone who tends to look for the more in-depth kernels of discussion than you gradually learn and becoming accustomed to filtering out 90% of the more small talk-oriented chatter, repeated jokes or what they call "memes" nowadays, etc. as white noise. Most of that is white noise to me. I'm interested in practically in every topic but not just hearing and reading the same low effort style comment or chain of comments with little variation ad nauseum. This reminds me more of how a lot of interactions and exchanges in real life (offline in the physical world) are laced with an omnipresent undercurrent of artificiality and ring so overly saccharine or needlessly formal that they turn me off completely. It always seems like most talking (including writing online in text or "text messaging") is just serving a social purpose for most people, but often not actually gaining any new information of any import or value. If humans could meaningfully understand and translate the communication of other species, I've always wondered if it would be a similar equivalent of mindless chatter. At least in many of the social species. Or it would just be a reportage of facts like surveying the physical landscape before them constantly, such as bats with their echolocation.

Your assumption on the friends issue is definitely true currently; I don't keep up any social contacts nowadays, but it's probably also important to note that I really only became comfortable this way within the past five or so years. I did have a few friends throughout my time in primary school. I had a close friend who was like a best friend from kindergarten up until after seventh grade when his family moved away to another state and were only able to see each other sporadically thereafter. And then in high school I had another few friends some of whom I remained friends with I would say for around four or five years after high school. Of course I had reasons for maintaining the relationship and they were people who at the time I could be comfortable not hiding or spinning, concealing any part of myself but could speak completely freely in front of with no worry of hesitation or fear of "offending" someone. If I can't be my honest complete self in front of you and say whatever comes to my mind, I have absolutely no desire to be around you and will not be. It's since the end of 2014 that I really desired and sought to actively remove myself from the social world in any capacity though.

Now, on to your question about the possibility of what you mention, I do believe it's quite possible in the same or similar fashion to how you outlined it, but it's important to keep in mind that what is desirable for some will differ among every individual. Me personally, I could compromise more in many ways, even that 5% you mention, and probably have what others would describe as a fairly rich and active social life since I'm at least of average looks physically, can be well-spoken and present as educated, from a middle to upper middle class background, etc. I just have no appetite for it because I find myself more enriched in solitude. I never realized how much I felt this way until the end of 2014, which marked the last time I worked a job in any public capacity from outside the home, because I never had the opportunity to realize it previously since when you're in a school or work environment from 3 years-old (preschool) even in a minimum wage part-time retail job where you interface with the public, you can't really tangibly conceive of that 6 - 9 hour chunk of your day not being dominated or impeded in some way by the sheer presence of other people. It's actually quite radical and transformative to be removed from it. Even if I previously still spent a lot of time doing whatever I wanted and maximizing free time and alone time compared to average peers, to not have any social commitment or obligation whatsoever in any capacity is another thing.

So if you took two hypothetical people, say yourself and myself, just because I don't do something by choice doesn't mean it's an avenue which is closed to you even if we have some of the noted similarities in interests or disposition. To be frank I don't advise many people who come to me with this to walk the same path at all since most people are constructed differently it seems like at the base neurological building block level and have much greater yearning for social relations both platonic and romantic which only ever amount to serving as a vampiric emotional drain on me. The concept of really wanting anyone to follow me around for the rest of my life or have to coordinate with other people constantly is really quite an alien one to me at like the most primitive physiological level.

I don't view myself as necessarily dogmatic though because it isn't as if I'm asserting one principle or doctrine as an absolute truth and insisting on it being upheld. It's more like I'm in a state of constant inquiry, into everything about existence and the environment we inhabit. To me, I don't really "get" humans who aren't constantly fascinated by that. It's akin to waking up in a dark closet-esque room and not wanting to always investigate where the exit is and how we can arrive there. It doesn't have to be about life/death metaphysics though. I just mean every detail of the working world around us that so many folks take for granted. Just eating, drinking, sleeping, gossiping, working, procreating, and keeling over to die seems too much like being an automated computer program on autopilot. I agree that for most it's too intensive and time-consuming to do anything but go through the motions, but to be honest I don't see them and their lives as relating to me any more than a giraffe a honeybee or a dog. It's like if I woke up in a dog's body tomorrow but still had my full consciousness and memories the same as now. I would be "fine" with living out the rest of my days as a dog, in a dog's body, the same as I'm "fine" with living out as a human now, but it doesn't mean I'd mindlessly desire and seek to imitate all their behavior just because. If I were thrust into a dog or hyena or millipede's body but with current level consciousness retained, I would seek to live for myself as much as possible, and not bark on command, fetch, mate, etc. That's how I see myself as a person. Having the biological hardware in no way obligates me to live as the most cumulative average or typical member of the species if I have the presence of mind, consciousness and free will to do otherwise.

On Haibane Renmei, just even in the most basic way it was arranged at the surface level, I first loved the combination of genres, since I had never before (or really, since) seen a Slice of Life + Mystery + Fantasy series before or a calm, tranquil and soothing iyashikei that developed into a psychological drama and examination of the self. I like the magical realism. It ties in to my view on metaphysics that everything is magic except to the magician and that the most advanced applications of science once appeared as magical to those who didn't understand them and that's likely the case with many things today which may exist in the future but would be dismissed as magical before the mechanisms behind them are deciphered. Haibane Renmei constructs a plausible fantasy world based on the notions that are actually fantastical to us in the actual world, such as basically the afterlife and meaning and nature of existence. These are "magic" in our reality because they're neither known nor understood. So real life can actually be seen as as fantastical as anything in the typical fantasy genre and Haibane Renmei reminds us of that in a brilliant fashion. I love how it can transition seamlessly from a soothing iyashikei-style scene or moment of Reki cutting carrots for the Young Feathers, the cleaning of Rakka's wings, or baking halos to reminding the characters they are like amnesiacs at the edge and precipice of an unknown abyss. I love the OST especially its contemplative piano tracks and muted browns and drab greens and whites of the color palette which only elevated this sense of atmosphere. I love the fusion of the respective cultural trappings and mythologies of both Eastern and Western faiths and worldly concerns, with the Toga being like a monastic order and the Haibane being both revered and compelled to take on a lifestyle of poverty and parting with material possessions like saints or those entering the priesthood, eschewing money or new or fancy clothes. The overcoming of the circle of sin, which is a Catholic notion but also could be seen as a stand-in for awakening and seeing through illusions or gnosis in Gnosticism and has its equivalent in the Dharmic faiths like the cycle of suffering in Buddhism. Also how many born into Glie are presumed suicides in line with the high suicide rate in Japan which leads the developed world in that area but then there are the tragic premature young children's deaths, which some have speculated are drowning victims but could also be stillborns who never got to grow up. It's just extremely intricate and doesn't provide any one answer or framework for interpreting it because neither does real life. There is the Buddhist and Hindu presence of reincarnation there or Glie could be the Christian purgatory, depending on if they are reborn into a new person or ascend to an afterlife on a higher plane after the Day of Flight, which of course we never get to see. I'm just very into comparative religious studies and how different traditions and cultures view mortality, birth, and death. I think every anime and every cartoon, every live action film or television series, every book ever written and every song ever composed, will always have different takes on them because life has countless takes on it and these are made by real people with real ideas, so are just an extension in a way of life off the page or screen, after all.

Oh no, it's not within my nature to really think within those terms in the first place (regarding stalker-esque behavior) - you're perfectly free to peruse what you'd like to at your leisure. I'm not one to cast such reactionary judgments against anyone typically and least of all anyone for being inquisitive or I have any reason to have an ounce of respect for or sense of kin or fellowship with for any reason. Basically, you (the general "you") treat me well, don't insult or treat me in a rude manner, don't steal from or gravely betray me or attack the few people and things I care about, and I don't question any of your other behaviors, interests, or proclivities besides for curiosity and passing conversation's sake. All I require in my personal dealings is a modicum of respect and loyalty. Whatever anyone else does with others and on their own time, in their own space and heads is their own affair, so people who would appear far more "suspect" than either of us or indeed anyone else I've encountered here still don't really register or phase me. I'm desensitized and like physically incapable of being offended or perturbed in that way.

I'm glad to hear something I've written has reached and found you well since most of the time writing anything on here, I'm essentially writing for myself - my own sake. When I author a longer post in particular, I don't expect the vast majority or in some cases anybody else to read it. It's more to work and flesh out my own thoughts on any given matter and commit them to page. That way at least a form of record exists. I've long maintained a journal but after a while I tire of the pen and hand cramps or even finger blisters. Yet I don't expect much of what I comment on to necessarily be responded to, even less so in a substantive fashion, by others, since many skim and have a short attention span and find tedium in details, whereas I thrive in the detailed. I both write and read on this and other forums to learn or gain information about topics which interest me and to share and put information I have back out into the world, but it only struck me recently that I probably actively socialize back and forth in these venues like less than 99% of the userbase, since as I said I'm fairly insular and kind of just writing for myself.

I had to send that request when I saw your latest post (it was concerning Welcome to the NHK! and Koi Kaze in the AD sub-forum) because then, when I saw your Reki avatar or profile pic, it reminded me of how I discovered Haibane Renmei back in 2018, through scouring for older Koi Kaze reviews from the mid to late 2000s from a Korean user (not on MAL) who did a thorough write-up of Koi Kaze and happened to also tie in and include a section on Haibane Renmei, its symbolism and significance, the perspective from his own religious heritage (as an East Asian Catholic) and somehow connect these two disparate equally rather non-mainstream anime together. Ever since then I considered it like a stroke of fate and was happy to see your profile graced with such a good omen.

I would say unconventional as a descriptor only has the possibility to exist as a disparaging term or epithet to someone whom perceives divergence from the norm in any regard in any arena as constituting an inherent threat and aberration by its very nature which must be purged, any weirdness or deviance as sinful by design and conformity for its own sake a virtue. I never support or oppose anything because it is in line with a majority-held view or outside of it. I evaluate every position on anything on its own merits, and then still, at all times, even for the political, religious/spiritual, or personal ethical/code of conduct views I espouse, recognize and acknowledge the inherent complete and total subjectivity of them at all times.

So yes, I've gone through a lot of different ideologies at one point champing at the bit like an eager termite in a fibrous trunk, but these days I don't subscribe to any one doctrine or feel comfortable assigning an umbrella term label for me as I don't think it's applicable or all-encompassing and no longer believe in any one-size-fits-all ideology either for myself or even for whole nations or the world at large. I'm mostly against those people and forces which seek to impose absolutist moral dogma of any one ideology over my and everyone else's heads and on the rest of the world by force. The ones who believe in their own moral superiority and that their worldview and belief system should be mandated and codified as universal. They have essentially messianic aspirations. This mindset is a lot more common than you or many may at first think just from hearing that description. I see multiple examples of it expressed even unwittingly nearly every day, online and in person, and often more than once per day and from all angles. Most go through their stereotypical communist phase when they're 20 -22 in college, but I went through mine when I was 14 entering high school, went through Marxian socialism, was a mainstream center-right right-liberal (Republican in my country) for a time, a libertarian, fascism, monarchism, paganism and Radical Traditionalism, etc. Now I just don't want any ideology, as I said, imposed on the planet by force of arms. I don't agree with many of the tenets of liberal-capitalist democracy which in my view amounts to a plutocracy, Abrahamic religions and the culture of a secularized Judeo-Christendom in the modern Western bloc states and such, etc. I don't agree with a lot of popularly held modern viewpoints on many issues, which is partly why I explore film and anime more, to experience as many stories as possible through art, to enable me to think and be moved more deeply and feel a heartfelt outpouring in excelsis. To accept and don the title of any other political ideology, religious faith or doctrine, or philosophical movement or discipline in whole would be a lie because I don't believe there's one singular school of thought out there which neatly encompasses the totality of my views and cumulative experiences which led up to those different views, and I also think that's perfectly fine; there doesn't need to be. I don't need to have a label or join a party or group on tribal lines. I'll leave that for most of the rest of other humans to be giddy with. I realize many derive their whole sense of purpose and identity from it.

I can't say anything is objectively true other than certain mathematical equations and scientific formulae. And even in fields of science which are thought to be known and well-established today, there's a lot of ongoing daily developments, new discoveries, and challenges to every new idea presented and every old established one as well, so much so that even for someone with a near limitless attention span and a lot of free time like me, it isn't humanly possible to have enough time to even keep up with and track all the scientific periodical journals online or in print. Everything political/philosophical/religious or spiritual/moral or ethical is a complete and total pure opinion which will vary in every single culture in every country in every era and even within a country in different regions, and on the micro level, among different individuals even within that same culture. I think the problem you identify and describe is with folks having some kind of cerebral block which inhibits them from decoupling their stated positions of support for any one thing from some mythical universal objective truth. It's elusive precisely because it doesn't exist. It's okay to support things which you don't indoctrinate and whip yourself up into a frenzy into believe are some universal truth or serve some good vs. evil role in a world of absolutes. I support and oppose plenty of ideas and policies because they would move the world closer to or further away from, respectively, the world I personally want to see while completely recognizing on the face of it that it's just that - a personal view, and my exact preferences and interests at stake are only my own and therefore by extension my exact specific beliefs only my own and tailored to and unique to me as well. So many folks have difficulty coming to this realization, but maybe their viewpoints on some matters are more by design homogeneous or generic. But then that would be as a result of not questioning. And you'll find if you question anything for any reason in what's deemed the wrong environment and/or to the wrong person, people will fight back against even the mere perception of that ferociously and tenaciously like programmed antibodies on autopilot rejecting a foreign intrusion in the bloodstream. So maybe that's where some of your frustration lies. Me, I confess to not being all that bothered since I started following a rather reclusive path a long time ago and innately have far fewer social needs than most people; that's just my makeup. It isn't right or wrong, but just who and how I am, and I just strive to live in accordance with my own nature as away from false consciousness and all the like, I describe and define that as the most sober and lucid state possible in this world, of feeling authentically me. There is no appeal to social expectations or obligations to me which you allude to; they make me feel like a caged and chained animal in bondage yearning to escape as quickly and fiercely as possible and just rebel and be free. Again, nature.

Oh, thanks - yes MAL can be quite spotty and haphazard with all that and more error pages popping up daily. You likely got the basic gist of it though as it was quite brief. I just said that I recently came across one of your posts in the Anime Discussion sub-forum and that reminded me of your presence since I approved of the sentiment in the message you expressed.

Thank you, observant sir. One of my favorite stories ever in anything produced to date and always shall be. And it's the series which started me on my anime journey a few years ago, so I always strive to pay it its due tribute. Flipped everything on its head about what I assumed anime was, is, could be, and could do.

And it's nice and calming to see a smoking Reki as well, from oddly or coincidentally enough, one of my other Top 3 anime.

Thanks a lot! That's basically the gist of why I make videos to capture the ethos of the show but also how it can affect everyone's lives in different ways.

I absolutely love Clannad AS and don't agree with a lot of the criticisms it gets. I'll make a video dedicated towards it one day.