Living from moments of affirmation to the next, challenged by the harsh reality of both that they are rare and they are sometimes colder than what you’d expect, I return to question how I live as a fan, and as a person.

That’s what really pushed a story like Welcome to the NHK to my mind’s fore. The manga takes a much more worldly and humane road. Do people even think about having your parent walking on you while masturbating? Or rather, they probably don’t do so out of a positive force, but out of fear. That’s something I can’t really relate to well, but maybe you can tell me just how often this happens.

But we need not to go there–that’s just funny hijinks which makes Welcome to the NHK an edgy story that may be relevant to our interests. What is definitely relevant to mine is how it talks about the NEET/hikkikomori generation. How luxury provided us with escapism. How while hard work pays off usually, but laziness pays off now always. Or for some people, the journey to find your soul is long and tedious. Idealism battles realism, and unfortunately sometimes one has to die. Or sometimes it is just a sad fact of life: not everyone can make it out there. Rejection is a part of life.

In as far as generally emo people are difficult to confront and communicate with, anime can be a powerful platform to communicate something. Real life caseworkers for hikkikomori patients do rely on some of these common topics like video games and manga to start knocking. Persistence to push them to face the music works sometimes, too. It’s about communication, either by charm or by force.

Originally I was going to talk about love languages, but this thread of thought bridges the divide from literary to the literal. The sad fact is that a large number of Japan’s youths are locked up. It happens for all kinds of reasons which I won’t get into here. Be it a middle school in Hokkoaido or Neo Venezia on the Planet Aqua, there’s a connection. It’s about the uplifting message of humanism.

KOTOKO said so as much when she was asked. No man or woman is an island, and it’s hard overcoming that oppressive lie, that gap between what you think it ought to be and what it really could be. People like her puts that kind of emotion into the work they produce. It’s sympathy, compassion, love.

And just in so many ways love can express itself, we are not going to see what we are not looking for. If your definition of love is narrow, you are going to miss a lot of love speak. If you can’t sympathize, you will have problem understanding a lot of love speak. If you can’t love, then there’s nothing to be said. In as much reality is cruel, it’s important to hold onto some trace of innocence and ideals to keep you living like a person who can speak love.