perevision

So many of my favourite anime series revolve around the twin concepts of 'loneliness' and 'friendship'. More precisely, almost every anime I've seen from the simplistic to the weirdly convoluted hinge on the idea of 'connection'. Sometimes it's more 'you are like me', but often it's also 'I did not expect to find this common ground with someone so apparently different from me'.

Lately I found myself between projects (trying not to translate this in my head as 'unemployable'), so I finished the Natsume Yuujinchou anime and the Nodame Cantabile manga. They are surprisingly similar. Beings with talent, finding each other. Growing a connection between them, and working to strengthen it.

Sometimes anime has a funny way of externalising these inner concepts. How lonely do you have to be to make friends with spirits? Or defeat someone (often brutally) in battle, before they can become your friend or lover?

I can't say making friends in the 'real world' feels the same as trying to get along with a giant tikbalang or being punched repeatedly in the face before someone pity-friends you. But as someone who grew up VERY awkwardly socialised, even meeting people the normal human way is a bit difficult. It's easy to add someone on Facebook, but isn't it better if you know this person thought about you at least a few times a week? If they kept you in mind? That seems to me just as hard to achieve, sometimes, as battling monsters.