Thinking for myself again… thanks anime!

When summer rolled around this year, I decided to use my lack of a busy schedule to take a break from watching current airing anime and picking up the shows I had in my queue for a while now. Thanks to this, I missed out on a few titles from the summer season and filled up my queue with the titles I saw my friends hyping on Twitter. One of these anime was Orange.

I’d been meaning to pick up the manga before the anime adaptation finally came out, but eventually, against my better judgement, I decided to binge Orange. I was told it was heart-wrenching and unbearably sad, and I felt like watching a romance and could’ve gone for a feels trip, so it felt like a no-brainer. But what I got was less of a romance anime and more of an awkwardly calculated suicide prevention story with a bitter-sweet ending. And it wasn’t exactly my thing.

It sort of bothered me that a show so reliant on the intricacy of thoughts and emotions had characters that were so two-dimensional.

The first episode felt rushed, the next few were fantastic, and the last six or seven were passable, and it didn’t make sense to me. Everyone online loved Orange, so why didn’t I? Maybe I should’ve read the manga first?

Eventually, I concluded that Orange wasn’t very good. Others could think it’s AOTY, but for me, it’s nothing too special. And that’s okay because I’m allowed to have opinions.

This isn’t too much of a revelation, obviously. In fact, maybe this is a stupid thing to write about. But I’d just like to reiterate the concept of an opinion for myself because as of late, I think I’ve been letting myself become too reliant on the thoughts and opinions of others. Whether an artist is good or bad, whether a song is worth listening to, whether I should celebrate or condemn something, whether an anime is great or garbage. These are all subjective things, so I should let myself craft my own thoughts and not submit myself to some other guy’s think-piece. My WordPress tagline is “Anime and Opinions,” after all.

I think that Amagi Brilliant Park was a disappointing anime by KyoAni’s standards, I think that AnoHana was messy and not very sad, I think that Tonkatsu DJ Agetaro is amazing and underrated, I think that YuruYuri is one of the greatest slice of life anime ever, I think that ecchi is oftentimes a flimsy and exhausting gimmick, and, as noncontroversial as it is, I think that Studio Ghibli is absolutely fantastic and I’m beyond excited to see Miyazaki returning to film.

So, yeah. There’s a worthless ramble, I guess. See you when I post again in like five months!