We were at a small diner pretty early in the evening getting some dinner. It was pretty much empty excluding the staff. Just the two of us. She looked amazing. Gorgeous. Top 3, one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen outside of a computer screen.
She hasn’t said a word to me all night, but her quiet laughter and shy smiles were all that I needed. I could talk to her all night without ever getting an audible response and it’d still be an amazing first date. As we were leaving the diner, she grabbed my hand and we ran to the car. Driving in the night, I sang along to all the songs that played while she just laughed and smiled. Comforting. We stopped at the park to watch a fireworks display that was going on. It was a truly beautiful sight. Not the type of beautiful in the overused meager kind of way that most people describe visually stimulating things, but actually beautiful. Just like she was. Perfect. As the fireworks went off, she turned to look at me. She pulled me in closer, and as the colors lit up the sky, we kissed. That too was beautiful. Cinematic. The type of clichéd scene in a movie that’d win best romantic comedy. I could live in this moment forever. As she pulled away from me, she looked in my eyes and started to speak. That's when everything went wrong. I couldn't understand a word she was saying. She was speaking to me in Japanese. My brain stuttered in a confused panic and quickly started to fill me in with what she was saying via subtitles. But before I could read what she had said, I woke up.
It was one of the best dreams I’ve ever had, but I couldn’t help but feel a little bit cheated. What could have caused this sudden turn of events? Maybe it was binge watching the last 8 episodes of Ao Haru Ride (Blue Spring Ride) all of last night. Maybe it was also finishing all 38 episodes of Kimi Ni Todoke the previous week, and all of Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun (My Little Monster) and Golden Time the week before that. I was on a romance anime kick, and much like how much money a year you spend on dakimakuras, it was starting to become a problem. It was at the point where I couldn’t even escape the feels in my sleep. My most inelegant, maladroit, and graceless state of being. The polar opposite of the way romance anime is meant to make you feel.
The fantasy portrayed in romance anime is that of the worst kind. The kind that teases you with its perfection and plausibility, but ultimately ends with the realization that nothing will ever be as pure and ideal as whats being presented to you. Even romance anime that portrays more realistic relationships (such as Golden Time) with flaws and work that has to be put into them, they still project some sense of fantasy, because in the end that is what they are. Fantasy.
Why I think romance anime is so great, is because of this fantasy. It brings out the best in the clichéd ideas we all have about this confusing thing called love. Sure, none of my romances in the past have ever been anything close to the romances portrayed in anime, and they more than likely never will be, but at least there’s the hope and goal of a kind of relationship to strive for. These are the actual types of things that the hashtag #goals should actually be used for.
Romance anime appeals to the inherent want of an ideal companionship most people search for in this world. As a hetero-male, there are all sorts of expectations of masculinity that reject things like emotions and warm feelings. There’s always a certain apprehensiveness I see in guys when the topic of romance anime comes up. They either play their man card and proclaim to only watch shōnen shows like Dragonball Z and Bleach or they are all in and will spend two hours talking to you about the subtle complexities of Nisekoi when you really just want to hurry up and go out because this is not how you wanted to spend your first Saturday night off in 4 months. It’s usually the former rather than the latter. But in the end, things like emotions and feelings are things we all experience. At least I hope so. The cynic in me will always get annoyed when I feel people are being way too obnoxious with their affections for each other out in public, but I wont deny the warm feelings I get when I see some kid pull off some elaborate ass plan to ask the person they like to prom. Or videos of people from the military coming back home and surprising their loved ones with their presence. Those ones always fucking get me.
When it comes to anime, I like to refer to these feelings as heart boners. It’s those moments that give you that warm fuzzy feeling and tug at your heart strings and possibly turn you into an emotional mess, whether it’s because you're happy for what just transpired or because you just realized that your life is shit compared to this moment right now. When two characters who I’ve watched for countless hours go back and forth with their feelings until it finally culminates in that confession or kiss, it gets to me. I care. I can relate to that anxiety filled struggle. I can relate to doing those subtly cute things to get the girl. Maybe more than anything, its a sense of nostalgia for an innocence a lot of us long for in love.
Obviously, people are different and interpret things differently. I know people who didn’t have the same tear jerking reaction to the end of Clannad as I did. Heartless. Romance anime just isn’t for everybody. I get that. What I would hope for to come out of this, is for people to not approach romance anime with the pretense of them being the anime equivalent of a “chick flick”. There’s more to a lot of these shows than just that. While a lot of the shows do overlap in their themes, I do find that there are genuinely good shows that have brought up some interesting moments regarding relationships and how they function. The Pet Girl of Sakurasou, Toradora!, Ano Natsu de Matteru (Waiting In The Summer), and Anohana just to name a few that I didn’t already mention above. There’s also shows that aren’t romance anime outright, but do feature romance as a prominent theme within their plot, such as Eureka Seven, BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad, and Full Metal Panic!. Either way, I do hope this encourages some to give romance anime a try if they haven’t already, or if you already do watch romance anime, help to give some perspective on to maybe what you like about it. But what do I know? I’m just a nerd with a laptop.
I’m currently typing this while catching up on all the Fallout 4 I’ve missed because of college.
- Daniel