What are emotions?
I’ve always had a hard time with feeling. Society always registers crying as something bad, that if you cry, Santa won’t bring you gifts under the Christmas tree, or if you cry, you aren’t a true man.
But I’ve always felt these emotions, No matter what others would say, I would always cry. Inside-Out tore me apart, Toy Story 3 left a gaping hole in me that I could not fill. No matter how sad or lonely I felt, I’d always keep it inside me, and as the number of movies I watched grew, it became harder and harder to control those emotions and to hold back the tears.
So the best way I could avoid crying was to just avoid the films themselves. I started hating Disney movies. I would never watch a single Studio Ghibli movie. I was much more into the intense fight scenes, and while I also enjoyed the philosophical and psychological implications of stories in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or the Dark Knight, those kinds of things always struck me as different, something that wasn’t something with a terribly sad soundtrack, but instead something that was thrilling, something that I could relate to while cheering on those exciting moments.
It was at this point where I started hating emotions all together. Seeing people cry, or be happy, realizing the revelations that I had already gone through, it truly disgusted and hurt me. I wasn’t going to be like the others. I was going to be someone different. I was going to be someone who had the pressure of the whole world under his shoulders, who, after experiencing so much, felt like he had mastered and understood pain after sleeping with it, singing with it, and writing with it.
It was around this time frame when I discovered anime for the first time. Steins Gate, Attack On Titan, Hunter X Hunter, offered just the thing I had always wanted from shows, shows that would leave me screaming and wanting more, shows that would make me question my morality and relate to the characters; shows that I could proudly say I watched to my friends when they asked what Animes I had watched.
And then I watched Evangelion for the first time.
Evangelion will always hold a special place in my heart because it’s the anime that opened my heart. After years of feeling left out without a voice, hating emotions, and hating other people, Evangelion hit so hard because it was the exact thing that I had always envisioned of me writing. The harsh cuts. The dead eyed look of Shinji, the voices in his head screaming and him running away, those are all things that felt so real to me because I’ve felt them before. In my emotional mess, I would always gravitate toward the darker, chaotic, and more destructive way of expressing my emotions. It lit me up, because although I was angry that I wasn’t the first person to make something like that, I felt like I had someone that finally understood me.
It was my experience in Evangelion that led me to seek out similar stories, stories that captured the essence of me. I tried watching Gurren Lagann, with not much success. I tried watching Code Geass but couldn’t get myself to like the character of Lelouch. I was able to watch Assassination Classroom, which was good, but also not what I was looking for.
I desperately wanted that pain again. I re-watched Anime Music Videos to relive through the ideas that Evangelion brought. I re-watched Eva, over and over and over again until I was numb to the pain that I witnessed.
In the past few months, I had heard a lot about Violet Evergarden. Before, I’d always dismiss it as a simple romance anime, just like how I’d dismiss watching Disney movies. So when I decided to give it a shot, I really wasn’t looking for much, and the fact that the first scene already had felt like a Disney movie felt like glass was cutting into my heart. I didn’t want to go through that pain again, I didn’t want to cry again. I had to force myself to be exposed to that pain once more.
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Evergarden hurt. Watching each episode felt like 40 years had past. I hated it, I hated everything about it but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. Violet was scarily relatable, she was everything that I hated about myself. Having my childhood stripped away from me, not having the ability to feel, hearing the words “I Love You” but never understanding them, always doing my best to help other people and to follow orders in order to give myself the least amount of pain. I didn’t watch these movies because I was running away from my emotions, running away from the pain.
The soundtrack, the fluidity of the animation, the beauty of the show, they’re tremendous, but are also the reason why I sometimes could not continue. While for the longest time I really wanted to write about Evergarden I also did not want to finish it, because of the pain I would feel.
It was here, in the midst of the melancholy soundtrack, the beautiful scenery, the detailed pieces of animation, paired with the deep, depressive tone of Evangelion, that I realized I had forgotten how to feel. Like Violet, I had suppressed my emotions because I was really nothing more than just a tool to be cast aside, an emotionless fiend. I write and write and write but can never capture what makes something special to me. I hear praise, or the words “I Love You” but I don’t understand, I truly don’t understand them.
So I’ve devoted my life to it. I write to feel. I can never capture something that is technical, I’m not smart enough for that. I can’t give numbers or grades to show, I can’t expect to know anything about the plotline, or the story coherence, or the characters, or the worldbuilding. But if there’s anything I know how to do, if I’ve lived for anything, I remember the intensity of the emotions. The intensity and the pain of Violet Evergarden. The dark and harsh tone of Evangelion.
I won’t ever pretend to know anything about rating tv shows, movies, or anime. For fucks sake, I watched Citizen Kane and did not see the thrill behind it at all, even when it’s 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
But I remember feelings. I remember pain, happiness, melancholy, sadness, cartharticism. I remember how Hunter x Hunter made me relate to Killua’s story, how Attack On Titan made me jump up and cheer, how Steins;Gate made me grip my seat in anticipation.
That always has been, and always will be, the focus of my writing. How to feel. Because more than the economic numbers, more than the “plot” or “fluidity”,to describe something is a want to create something that is magical. A deep eternal want, a search within myself to find what is missing.
I want to know what “I Love You” Means.
