How “School Days” and “Higurashi” can change my life.
Okay, so these are anime. One of the best, actually, but the main reason why I think these will change my life is not because they are the best, or that they depict my actual situation. (Actual situation is soooo far from it, I cannot emphasize it enough.) But before I state my reason, let me tell you what these anime are.
Both of these anime have some things in common. In the pro side, both appear to have concepts of friendship and love. In the con (or not-so-con-for-me-now) side, they all have bad endings. Not just bad, subtle endings, but the endings where you actually see sharp, stainless steel kitchenware, and liquids actually flying out of people’s bodies — and in different colors too (black and red, take your pick). Both anime have the same number of main female characters. (Although, School Days have more total female characters.)
The difference of the two series are the male protagonists. School Days’ Ito Makoto is a good-natured, but indecisive womanizer, and Higurashi’s Maebara Keiichi is a once-paranoid person that led him to murder his friends. (Thank the eternally repeating June 1983 because that’s the reason why he realized his mistakes.)
And now, the reason. Well, there’s none. There’s no particular reason why, but after watching these, there’s a weird feeling inside me that forces me to look at better things in life. It might be because of those murder/suicide things, but for comparison, these “weird feelings” don’t occur when I watched Death Note. It might be the female characters, but Negima! has enough girls (31, plus several other minor characters, to be exact) for my sensitive eyes to devour on. Probably the concepts of love, but I can just watch Bokura ga Ita so I can cry. Maybe it’s the combination, I don’t know.
These two anime have this weird effect. When I watched the whole first season of Higurashi (composed of 26 episodes), this effect went on for two and a half weeks. School Days, with 12 episodes, six days. This effect that I’m talking about is the change of my state of mind. It just — changes. I feel more composed, and less depressing thoughts are made. Heck, it even made me productive in academics (INTROSE recitations, for example)! Kinda ironic, don’t you think?
The disadvantage is the length of effect, or lack thereof. If there is something (or someone) that can act like a lifetime life-changing object without killing me, then by all means, I’d accept.