If you liked
Hyouka
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...then you might like
3-gatsu no Lion
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The Moms for Liberty’s movement advocates for how narratives can become a tool to help us understand, echoing Min Jin Lee’s philosophy (https://news.mit.edu/2018/novelist-min-jin-lee-understanding-through-fiction-1101) which she explored in her best-selling novel, Pachinko. On the movement, Patricia McCormick writes: “Teen-agers are currently facing a crisis of mental health: rates of depression and suicide are high, and resources to help guide them away from dangerous outcomes are frightfully limited. Many children endure traumas that leave them feeling isolated, ashamed, angry, and afraid. But, when those children see their experiences rendered in books, they learn that they’re not alone; they might even begin to see a path out of their pain. I know this from spending many days visiting classrooms and juvenile-detention centers, and from the thousands of kids who’ve told me about books that saved their lives—books that were the only safe places they had, and that allowed them to temporarily escape the messy, violent, unfair, warming world they’ve inherited.” Experientially, seeing one’s narratives mirrored on screen can often be an incredibly healing experience. Narratives have often been a way for me to conceptualize the suffering in the world, and not just become a way to escape my life, but a way to live it. To this end, the stories chronicled in Hyouka and March Comes in Like a Lion have aided me through many a tumultuous times in my life. The ways these animes are similar are that they explore the coming-of-age of two adolescents who are largely outcasts within their society. Seeing them attempt to make sense of the emotions they feel (albeit, MCILAL takes a far more jarring approach that explores mental illness), and watching them think about the life they want to lead, it felt a little bit like Mieko Kawakmi’s novel Heaven - not in the underlying themes, but in the way that it was an exploration in applied philosophy. Hyouka and MCILAL both explore how both protagonists make choices to retain autonomy over their life, and explore how altruism - through intrinsically believing in it - can lead to the highest form of self-actualization. The protagonists of both characters are at their best when engaged with others, and are able to overcome the monotony and angst they feel as a result of daily life.