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Well, let me tell you friends! I really love a good movie that gets my depression and self-loathing pity running back into full gear, and this is just the film that did it for me! I say that in the least facetious way possible, I love having a good end-film cry. So this is the film that I recommend for exactly that: a good end-film cry. If the plot doesn't get you, the soundtrack will. Trust me on this one lol.

Okay, moving on from that.... In all seriousness, When Marnie Was There is a fucking gorgeous film with a plot that will keep you ... guessing. It is also a wonderfully accurate portrait of what it's like to live with social anxiety. Personally, my only grievance is that while guessing how the story would end, I actually found myself liking my own fabricated ending more than the actual one??

(SPOILERS,,, BUT AMBIGUOUS, NON-SPOILER TYPE SPOILERS)

Hear me out,,,, this rarely happens. I hardly ever guess plots in movies that I am absorbed into, but this plot is one that kind of encourages it. Having said that, the reason I was a bit disappointed was because I wanted an open ending that would allow Anna and Marnie to be in love. I don't hate the movie because that didn't happen (it's actually my favorite studio ghibli film), but I tend to erase the ending from my memory a bit, to play into my preferences. I feel cheated, almost? The one time I wanted an (implied or open ended interpretation of) romance between two characters that I genuinely love, it doesn't happen. Ahhh. Woe is me.

I fell in love with NANA the second I looked at the cover of the first volume. It is so beautiful and atmospheric, just like the opening phrase Hachi says each episode. There are little parts of the story that I will always carry with me, like a new found affinity for things like strawberry printed glass cups, woodworking, and bathtubs. In my opinion, NANA is a very good thing to remember, and at times angering to watch. I say watch in a manga review because I haven't been able to read past a certain point in the manga (my library doesn't hold the series ... to where it stopped), but I have seen most of the anime so I am using that to go off of. I really love NANA. It has probably my favorite atmosphere to any piece I've read. However, I found the characters to be a bit frustrating at times. Hachi would make such god-awful decisions that would turn me off of the story. To be honest, I am a person who would love a Nana x Nana endgame where they end up together and support each other and are a cute couple who don't constantly back stab each other, but I highly doubt that sort of conclusion would have been possible. All and all, NANA is a piece I highly recommend. It will make you feel some type of way when you look back on it, and it is just such an iconic must-read for shojo fans.

The world of Pretty Soldier: Sailor Moon is one to best delve into via the form of its original manga, in my opinion. There is something so special about the manga, a feeling I can't really replicate perfectly in words. When I started reading it, I really had to slow down because I felt that there was something here that needed to be deeply appreciated about the finished work I was holding. What I'm trying to get at here is that Sailor Moon feels like a work that its creator, Naoko Takeuchi, put her entire heart into. Each character feels so special, like she put ... so much love and pieces of herself into every wisp of hair she so beautifully rendered. Even with the ridiculously stylized shojo features every character has, it all just feels so honest. I think I saw an interview of her painting a piece of art for presumably a cover or art book, and she said something along the lines of, "I work looking out at the sunset (and maybe ocean too?). I try to paint the art quickly so as to capture the colors and feeling of the sunset, and sometimes it ends up looking a bit messy." I feel like you can really see that in her colored works. Gorgeous pieces with vibrant background colors that run into each other and are a little wild but have a lot of heart.

Having said all of that, I must confess that I don't have much of a review for the manga's story. I just came here to gush about how much I admire Sailor Moon. Reading the manga gives me such a whimsical, lovely feeling that I hope other people can experience when they read it.