Unreality makes me feel real — why I like anime
Machine-translated from Traditional Chinese
The thing about anime in the 2D world that touches me most is just two words — purity.
When watching anime, we don't think about people in reality, and even less about human nature. As everyone knows, human nature has no absolute good or bad.
When we're watching stories told by real people, we naturally project them onto reality. The themes conveyed by film and TV works are usually idealised, and this creates a gap between ideals and reality.
But anime is different. The 2D format naturally has no intersection with the 3D world. The kindness, gentleness, courage, innocence and other traits of anime characters, or the idealised themes they convey, don't give us even the slightest sense of disconnect. We won't feel that an anime character is too fake and would never exist in reality, because their non-existence is itself a fact.
The nonexistence of anime characters as a form perfectly merges with the nonexistence of pure humanity (absolute good or bad).
I used to not be very interested in the 2D world. One night, out of boredom, I watched a highly acclaimed classic Nihon anime film. After finishing it, I didn't have any particularly deep feelings. I understood the plot, understood the characters' personalities, and understood the various themes the film expressed. I thought it was very simple — just the kind of trivial things we take for granted in real life.
But there was one thing: when I was watching the film in an immersive way, I could feel a sense of being healed, briefly escaping real life and briefly entering the pure 2D world. This healing feeling was real — maybe because of the anime visuals, maybe because of the purity of the anime characters.
I think that in the future I'll grow to like anime, probably because my real life isn't going well, and anime can give me a brief yet real sense of healing.
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Has anyone ever been deeply healed by an anime? Welcome to share your story ~
When watching anime, we don't think about people in reality, and even less about human nature. As everyone knows, human nature has no absolute good or bad.
When we're watching stories told by real people, we naturally project them onto reality. The themes conveyed by film and TV works are usually idealised, and this creates a gap between ideals and reality.
But anime is different. The 2D format naturally has no intersection with the 3D world. The kindness, gentleness, courage, innocence and other traits of anime characters, or the idealised themes they convey, don't give us even the slightest sense of disconnect. We won't feel that an anime character is too fake and would never exist in reality, because their non-existence is itself a fact.
The nonexistence of anime characters as a form perfectly merges with the nonexistence of pure humanity (absolute good or bad).
I used to not be very interested in the 2D world. One night, out of boredom, I watched a highly acclaimed classic Nihon anime film. After finishing it, I didn't have any particularly deep feelings. I understood the plot, understood the characters' personalities, and understood the various themes the film expressed. I thought it was very simple — just the kind of trivial things we take for granted in real life.
But there was one thing: when I was watching the film in an immersive way, I could feel a sense of being healed, briefly escaping real life and briefly entering the pure 2D world. This healing feeling was real — maybe because of the anime visuals, maybe because of the purity of the anime characters.
I think that in the future I'll grow to like anime, probably because my real life isn't going well, and anime can give me a brief yet real sense of healing.
---
Has anyone ever been deeply healed by an anime? Welcome to share your story ~
