Anime

Naruto: 5 months of frustration-pt 1.

/ toseealife / 2 Comments

Well…it’s time. Whoo-oo.

I finished all of Naruto and Shippuden in about 5 months, skipping a lot of  later filler because my siblings and I got tired of wasting our time on stuff that had no plot relevance.

I started off kind of liking it, I thought Naruto was cute, I thought Sasuke was okay, I did not like Sakura, but I wasn’t alone in that, at least 90% of the fandom doesn’t either.

About halfway through the OG show I stopped liking Sasuke completely, and about halfway through Shippuden, I stopped liking Naruto also. I began to like Sakura briefly, but before the Ninja War started I stopped liking her again.

However, I do have favorite characters, The Three Sand Siblings, Shikamaru, and the surprisingly great Sai (seriously never expected to like him as much as I did.) I also like Hinata, naturally. I’m going to devote a separate post to them so I can get into more depth.

Anyway, so I do have some positive feelings for the show, but overall it was the most frustrating thing I’ve ever seen.

I don’t need to go over the bad framing, horrible timing, and repetitive character types, because that’s not saying anything a million other people haven’t already said. Plus, those are aesthetic, cosmetic complaints that would not really matter if the quality was still good. Phineas and Ferb proved that repetitive humor and character types can be used in a genius manner, bad framing is annoying but not a death sentence. (Framing, in this context, means the plot points that set up a big confrontation or development. And the ones that follow it to create a cohesive story line. Avatar’s framing is famously well done to be just the right amount of filler and non filler so you don’t feel bored or exhausted.)

What killed this show for me were two, maybe three, consistent issues.

My Little Pony has shown that you can build an entire series out of one main message, split into many different facets and themes, like Friendship, and it can still be fun and profound.

So when I say the show Naruto has one or two basic messages, I do not mean that makes it bad inherently, I have no problem with repeating the same message over and over if you’re doing it well. I grew up on shows like that.

My problem is the messages themselves.

The three main messages are:

  1. Don’t ever give up on a friend who’s lost their way.
  2.  Choose love over hate.
  3. The world is a dark place but by sharing our pain, we can make it better.

Since the friend, Sasuke, is the biggest problem with this series, I’ll start with him.

Like many fans, by the time Shippuden was over I really hated Sasuke. I had been told he was going to go to the dark side, but starting a 500 episode series, I figured there was no way they could drag out his redemption arc till the last 30 episodes…or the end, depending on how you look at it. I was wrong. So, so wrong.

Even so, I don’t think that was what made it bad.

Sasuke starts out as an okay character. He’s introduced as your typical dark, edgy, emo, anime boy. Everyone’s favorite. Literally, on the show, everyone likes him. It’s a bit of a mystery why since he’s antisocial and openly rude to most of them,and we never see him do anything kind or noble around the other ninjas. He finally does something cool at the end of season 1 by saving Naruto, and becomes more likable. For about two seasons after that he’s a good character, he and Naruto have a rivalry that makes some amount of sense. Sakura is annoying, but Sasuke doesn’t treat her terribly and she’s not totally bad all the time. So far, it’s okay, and Naruto is adorable.

About this time we start to get to know our side characters, and Shikamaru grabs our attention. Gaara is introduced, and it’s pretty compelling.

Then, Orchimaru shows up, bites Sasuke (ew) giving him a curse mark that gets activated when he loses emotional control, and says Sasuke will come seek him for power. Permanently traumatizing Sakura, who has flashbacks to this into the following show.

After that, over time envy and hate and resentment take over Sasuke’s soul, and he finally leaves to do exactly as Orchimaru said. He spends the rest of the show going from bad, creepy scientist to bad, creepy cult, to being his own band of bad, creepy people, all the while rejecting every attempt of Naruto, Sakura, and their teacher Kakashi to get him back. Ultimately, he holds the entire world a hostage to get his way, and Naruto fights him, finally winning but at a high price. Then Sasuke leaves again to go on his hero’s journey of atoning for his sins.

(If you think this is poetic coming after my Jellal post, then yes, I’m aware.)

Sounds okay if you only outline it, but the execution was horrible.

I sat through arc after arc of this show knitting my stress scarf waiting for Sasuke to start sucking less…it never happened.

The problem of Sasuke’s character in one word is: Stagnation.

After his brief period of being Naruto’s friend, and not a good friend, by the way, just one who didn’t totally hate him, he goes back to being the way he was before, and after that he stays that way the whole time. He NEVER CHANGES…EVER.

Like stagnant water, Sasuke gets more nasty and sour and gross over time. No matter how often he’s proven to be doing the wrong thing, he never gets it. He goes from one bad decision to another. When he eventually begins to care about “truth” he finds it out and still concludes he should do the same dumb crap that got the ninjas into this position.

Sasuke initially wants to kill his brother Itachi, who’s presented as basically the worst person imaginable, and then retconned into being a tragic hero because, for the sake of the village, he agreed to murder his family and entire clan, including children of all ages, old people, and people not involved in the politics of it…he was so noble, doing all that to protect Leaf Village, just, wow…

I repeat, Itachi committed mass genocide on his own people because Leaf told him to, and didn’t warn any of them to get out, and killed children under the age of 12, and he was portrayed as a tragic hero of the Leaf…

Sasuke finds out that Itachi was forced into it…not that anyone actually told Itachi if he didn’t do it they’d kill his family or anything, they just said he could spare his brother…for some reason…so, you know, they were generous.

But yeah, totally forced. No other options existed. So, Sasuke decides to learn from the past and not stop at one clan, but wipe out the entire village, including the innocent children, and the new Hokage who was not part of the assassination plans and wasn’t even in the village when it happened. You know, cause clearly the problem here was that Leaf was the one that survived, not that genocide is wrong or anything…

What’s really hilarious is when he explains this idiotic plan to Naruto, Naruto doesn’t tell him it makes no sense, instead he tells him he can’t just destroy their bond, and that he’ll have to go through him to get to the village. Sasuke for some reason agrees to this plan and says he’ll kill Naruto first, Naruto being, in his own words, “his closest friend.”

If this hasn’t gotten insane enough for you yet, it gets better.

Later on Sasuke finds out from a reanimated dead guy that the Uchilha clan has always had issues with being unstable and turning on their friends, and abandoning their people in order to seek out dark power, in fact, one such person is the one currently trying to destroy the world as they know it.

Sasuke decides to do what Itachi did and protect Leaf Village…by holding the entire world hostage until he can kill off the current five kages, (three of whom are so new they had nothing to do with the massacre, and have been trying to implement more merciful practices into their villages,) and take over as Hokage. You know…totally unlike the previous rulers who messed things up to this point.

I mean, clearly, holding the whole world hostage till you get what you want is better than what that skunk Madera did by putting the whole world asleep into his jutsu dream prison. Huge difference there.

It’s really a thing of awe that Sasuke is so oblivious to his own hypocrisy…until you realize that’s because the show itself is.

You see, after a certain point, I realized I couldn’t blame the character. Some characters are written to be bad, others are just badly written.

Kishimoto, the writer of Naruto, seems to be the one with the Sasuke infatuation. Somehow, no matter how many bad choices Sasuke made, everyone kept defending him. The plot itself defended him by not having him get himself into serious trouble at any point where he should have.

When Sasuke is confronted by his friends, they never take the tack that what he is doing is horrifying and inhuman, instead they try to convince him that he needs friendship and love.

And he does…but he really needs to be hit over the head with a big stick first.

Even a lawyer who believed that “we are the product of our environment” couldn’t defend Sasuke’s actions because they make no sense. He was admired for no reason, worshiped simply for having good genetics, and at the end of the day he does not rebel out of disgust for that, but because he is too stupid to learn from the past.

However, Sasuke’s one good trait is simply that he hates BS. His open disgust with his friends and village is understandable because they don’t treat him realistically. He knows he’s a villain, and he gets sick of them acting like he’s a lost puppy. Naruto literally laughs it off when Sasuke tries to murder the girl who Naruto’s had a crush on for years, twice. And then threatens his entire village. You know, just Sasuke’s usual antics. What are we gonna do with that boy?

I have a trash can he’d fit in…

I honestly found the show’s attitude disturbing toward Sasuke, it never bothered to prove him wrong, or have him learn that relying on dark power is unwise. On top of that the show then turned the guy who cursed him into comic relief. This guy experimented on people, made them fight to the death, and abused children…and he never repents of all that, he just says his curiosity is now directed elsewhere…and he’s not even imprisoned…

The attitude towards villains on this show was disgusting. No matter how terrible they were, if Naruto fought them and won them over they were hailed as tragic heroes. After all they were just trying to do what they thought was best…even if that was putting the whole world into an eternal trance.

Now, the argument can be made that all anime does this. But there’s a difference in how they do it. Fairy Tail redeems nearly all its villains, but the villain are confronted with the wrong way they view the world, and they admit that love was better. It’s not always well done, but there’s a clear statement of what was wrong with their way, usually.

Naruto never provides that. Naruto himself is often unable to answer the villains.

What killed it for me was the Pain arc. This is the 2nd message: Choose Love over hate.

At the end of this arc, Pain is changed when Naruto gives him a speech that is based neither on facts, nor logic, nor virtue, but on a very vague idea of hope that he might find a better way than Pain’s to fix the Ninja world. This was not the first time Naruto gave a bad answer, but since he was up against someone with a very developed, though terrible, ideology, it struck me as 100% ridiculous that Pain would be moved by such a clumsy argument.

It wasn’t even an argument, just blind, baseless hope.

Naruto can say nothing about the value of love, about the folly of letting pain control you, and of the blindness of choosing to filter the world through only the lens of the horrible things in it.

Instead he uses a book that is fictional, as the basis for his defense of not destroying the real world. Not cleverly, but vaguely. Because Pervy Sage believed in it.

Though Jiraiya was a failure who couldn’t even define what he wanted and walked out on his students multiple times, though the show tried to retcon him into being a good mentor… it didn’t work.

Supposedly, Naruto is walking the path of love, but yet he is unable to defend it by anything more than he believes in it just because.

Yet, Pain listens to this stupid speech and decides to undo all the death he caused…for Leaf, not for anyone else… and leaves the future in Naruto’s hands. Yay…

3. Sharing our pain.

The show is sadistic toward it’s audience.

The show likes to introduce characters who are more lighthearted than the others, get us to like them, and then kill them off in front of us.  Most notably with the jinchuriki they introduced later in Shippuden. We know they’re gonna die, but they still are so likable that it stings when they do. And in senseless ways. No honor.

The show also liked to take any happier moment the characters had and just murder it with something going horribly wrong.

If that wasn’t enough, everyone in this world who isn’t a main character, or a side character of some importance, is a horrible person. All the kids are bullies, all the adults treat anyone who’s different like an outcast. And to expect a common sense approach to problems is like asking someone to jump over the moon…actually that’s more likely, because in one of the movies they go to the moon.

Ninjas can’t seem to not pick the worst possible way to deal with a problem. Either using a forbidden jutsu that is extremely destructive, or ordering murder.

Apparently it’s a cruel, cruel, cruel, cruel world, but it’s also mad.

The reason this kills the show is because of the first two points, that of how Sasuke is handled, and how Weak Sauce Naruto’s defense of his Ninja Way is.

For some more context, back in season one of the OG show, Naruto’s way of ninja was formed when Kakashi told them about Zazuba murdering his fellow ninjas as part of an exam. Naruto was quite properly horrified at this, because at that point the show hadn’t started treating mass murder as negligible in the list of crimes a human being could commit…(again, I am not kidding here.) Naruto resolves he will never be cruel enough to kill his comrades just because its what’s done, and he’ll change the Ninja system.

Which is great. I liked it. Sasuke and Sakura even seem on board with this way of thinking.

But Naruto later changes his Ninja way into meaning he will never go back on his word, even if it was a promise that doesn’t rely just on him in order to be kept, like bringing Sasuke back.

The focus shifts from Naruto seeing the world differently to his obsession with Sasuke, and his guilt over failing to convince him. But Sasuke rejected Naruto because he was his friend, not because he was weak or not good. It had nothing to do with Naruto’s approach.

Instead of being realistic about this, Naruto resolves to try harder next time, but not to change his outlook. However, it’s not necessarily bad writing because Naruto grew up with no examples of love until he was 12, and then it was still never taught to him directly what a healthy relationship was. It’s reasonable that he would not get why this is such a bad thing.

However, at no point is anyone able to explain to him why it’s destructive, no one seems to know what to say to Naruto.

Later, when my boy Sai criticizes the oh, so precious Sasuke, (not a lot, he simply states what Sasuke literally did by abandoning Leaf,) he gets punched. Later, Sai is the only one who bothers to step in and stop Naruto allowing himself to be abused for Sasuke’s sake. And to confront Sakura to make her stop using Naruto herself. Good for Sai!

His reward? Nothing, no acknowledgement whatsoever from them. Instead he gets flipped off by them and the plot and treated like an outsider.

All this comes together when the show’s big moment of preaching that we should share pain is used as a way to win Sasuke back. At that point, my sisters and I started laughing because why the heck would Sasuke listen to Naruto? Naruto knows nothing about sharing pain.

Naruto tries to take all the pain on himself, no matter if it even involves him or not. He tries to be the savior of the world. Instead of demonstrating this very destructive mindset to be faulty, the show gives Naruto god-like powers to be able to fulfill his fantasy. And they thought Madera was insane.

Naruto continues to go on about Sasuke and him being like brothers, and the bond, and all that nonsense, even after Sasuke has divorced himself in every way from morality and a bond with them. He’s completely delusional. Which some people point out. But they don’t stick by that opinion because somehow through pure optimism, not results, Naruto wins them over.

The message of sharing pain is further undermined by the fact that the show rarely bothers to show characters interacting as friends, and never shows them talk about what they’ve gone through, or heal from it. (There’s one exception to this in Shikamaru, I’ll cover that in part 2). The show also devotes pretty much zero time to building up the friendships it does have. They don’t get to be happy, and the romances get almost no attention, and it’s usually pretty clumsy when they do.

So, with no human interaction to back up the claim, we are expected to believe that Naruto understands anything about love and the way it softens pain. Great.

Sasuke would have been justified in laughing in his face. But instead it works because the show was ending and it had to. Not because anyone still cared…well, some people did, but not me.

Anyway, I could go on for a book’s worth of words about why I hate these messages being delivered in such a bad way, but I’ll conclude with this:

The real sin here is that the show lies to its audience, and to its own characters. In real life, Sasuke and Naruto’s relationship would be entirely abusive, but it is abusive on both sides, became Naruto never grants Sasuke the freedom to make his own decisions. He wants to ignore Sasuke’s free will and make him come back and be his friend. Sasuke doesn’t get a choice. Because the choice would mean he had to suffer consequences for it. And we can’t have that.  Either Sasuke was destined to be at odds with Naruto because of the 6 paths, or he was destined to be his friend because Naruto said so, but either way he had no choice.

And with that, I end part one, if you made it this far, thank you and sit tight for the next part which will cover the good things in the show– Natasha

Death= Redemption.

/ toseealife / 1 Comment

I got the idea from this from a comment conversation I had under my last post. I have been thinking about writing it for a while, so let’s talk tropes.

Although this trope is not exclusive to anime, as I’m sure all of us have seen it in movies and shows, anime uses it a lot.

Correction: anime pretends its going to use it a lot.

All us weaboos know the annoyance of animes that pretend they’ll kill everyone all the time, and then never kill anyone…except that one person you were kind of rooting for to make it. (sniff, Pyrrha.)

Then there’s Death Note where everyone dies.. (I don’t watch it.)

Well, I don’t care if nobody dies, I just hate being lied to and faked out so many times.

Naruto is almost sadistic about killing characters, it will inform you a character died a whole two or three seasons in advance, and then bring in the character later for a side arc, or flashbacks, and show them being cute and lovable and ready to actually be happy…and then they show your them dying, alone…(I’m still salty about The Bubble Guy Utaeka, I think.)

But, sometimes villains die, and they might stay dead, and then you have the redemption arc.

Anime accomplishes the arc part usually with flashbacks, while American media tends to either show you the villains in the beginning of the film and hint at a possible redemption, or maybe drop small hints throughout the movie or show, and then they have the death be a surprise.

Anime rarely makes it a surprise, by the  time they’ve actually died you’ve been watching for like, three episodes, or seen half a dozen flashbacks dragging it out.

Anyway, before I get into the meaning of it, I wanted to point out that not every redemption death is for a villain. Sometimes it’s a good character who left the fight, screwed up royally, or never committed to actually helping until that point. They aren’t a villain, sometimes they are a chaotic neutral, if you will, but they choose to sacrifice themselves and end up a hero.

The most infamous example of this in America may be Darth Vader from Star Wars, everyone loves that redemption moment of self sacrifice.

Often in kids media, its common that the character not actually die. In The Little Mermaid, Arial’s father sacrifices himself without dying exactly, (but I always found it much more horrifying to be turned into a worm-thing than just straight-up dying.) Or they will appear to die, but end up being okay.

Anyway, the kinds of characters you’ll see get a redemption death are usually villains who were shown to have a human side, maybe a person they still loved, even more likely if the person is the hero, take Thor and Loki’s back and forth relationship in the Avenger movies; another common one is bad parents who couldn’t seem to get it up until then, but show they love their kids by dying for them (Darth Vader); also the mentors or sage characters who failed to stop the villain make a sacrifice to give the heroes more time to figure it out. That’s even in The Lego Movie.

MHA has used this trope in a slightly different way, equating losing your powers with dying, for a hero, in a way. Thereby adding a weight to their fights that actually has a longer lasting impact on the show itself, not just the characters, because it means they can no longer use that character as a fail safe.

So why is this so  common?

The simple answer is that it’s easier to use death to create sympathy for the character and often it just doesn’t seem practical for a villain to survive, they would just go to prison or die anyway, why not let it be a blaze of glory instead?

But mechanics aside, I think there’s a deeper reason this is used so often.

The thing about tropes is, people mock them, but the reason they are so common is because they reflect meanings about real life that people feel to be true. Romantic tropes mirror what happens in real life, Chosen One tropes mirror the feeling of purpose we all want to have, and fallen Hero tropes mirror the knowledge we have of our own human weakness.

The Death=Redemption Trope is no different, it mirrors a feeling human beings have that death is somehow the only thing that can make up for our sins.

The Bible says “without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.” For thousands of years that meant animal blood, so that people could be pardoned. After Jesus came and died, His blood was enough to cover all men throughout time.

Fiction has felt this truth, whether the authors admit it or not, and that is why villains die so often to redeem themselves. somehow death seems to be the only way to blot out the memory of their evil.

Anime is interesting here, because as I pointed out in my last post, it has many bad guys who end up living. And without fail, those bad guys feel they must atone for their sins.

See, when the death part does not happen, the good guys are faced with the much more complicated problem of still remembering what the bad guys did and having that reminder in front of them. Even if the bad guys are sorry, the good guys may have a hard time seeing past that, sometimes they do not want to. Like Katara with Zuko on Avatar.

If the villain is dead, you can’t punish them anymore anyway. Only rarely will a character obsess over not getting to kill the villain.

Plus, dying for someone is just so hardcore noble, that it can challenge the heroes to think maybe the villain was never as evil as they thought. a lot of shows choose to later reveal that the villain did some good things along the way, often that they even help the heroes by leaving clues as to how to solve future problems.

Naruto did this with Itachi Uchiha…I hated it…

Now that I’ve discussed why this is so common, the better question is, does it work?

IS it good to send this message?

The answer is yes and no.

While death=redemption can be a beautiful way to symbolically show how we need to die to our sin, and how “greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (-Jesus) there is one problem I see with it.

The whole point of fiction is to be symbolic. Sometimes when shows try to break down too much if death really equal redemption, then you have to start being more realistic.

The discussion then becomes “Should you have to kill yourself in order to be redeemed? Isn’t there a better way than that?”

Fairy Tail did this over and over again, and nearly always concluded on the side of life. But one time, at the end, they had Irene, the mother of Erza, kill herself because she did not trust herself and wanted to prevent herself from falling to the temptation to use Erza or her friends again.

When this happens it’s similar to Jesus telling us that if our right eye causes us to sin, pluck it out. If you really jsut cannot control yourself, then it’s better to lose an eye.

The bible is not saying self mutilation is a good idea. It’s saying that if we view sin that seriously, then we will put that kind of effort into getting free of it.

But we do not have to die fro our sins.

In the real world, this questions is also prevalent in our legal system. Should we just imprison people? Or should we kill them? Can’t anyone be redeemed? The real thought behind the more merciful system in America is that men can turn their lives around. But some men don’t, so we still need the Death Sentence.

Of course, Christians know that men on the verge of death for their sins have been saved, the thief on the cross is the most famous example. It happens nowadays too, in prisons and hospitals alike. But they still die.

The Bible does not seem overly concerned with whether men die in the body or not, as long as they are alive spiritually. That is, it is pro-life, but holds biological life as second in importance, if you follow God. And if you die immediately after accepting Christ, you are not the loser by any means.

Basically, with God, no one has to die for their sins, but some people still will because men cannot know for certain when there’s a change of heart, but that death is just of the body and not seen as a punishment to the christian anymore.

That said, you could say Death=Redemption really hangs on how well the villain understood why they were changing. You have to feel that, had they lived, they would have kept changing, not that they died out of some unhealthy, spur-of-the -moment, self hatred.

Dying for love is the preferred reason. And the one that reflects the most what Jesus did for us.

Though nonchristians may deny that, I don’t know anyone who hates this trope. It seems to be written into our psyches to see meaning in self-sacrifice. I know a YouTube reviewer who will give a movie a win every time there is a self-sacrifice in it.

Death is a tricky subject in fiction where death can be undone. Or prevented in ways we in the real world can only dream of.

Did they have to die? Does their death truly atone for their sins?

Death is all that can atone for sins, but yet, if they keep on living, can they live free?

Most often the answer is, they have to learn to love, to be a good person, to change.

Christianity ties these two things together by having a way to die before you die, to die to your sinful self, and to live in Christ.

As crazy as that sounds, the proof is in the pudding, more people become good because of Christianity than any other reason I know of. Throughout history, the bad kids, the rebels, the slaveholders, the cruel, the arrogant, have made 180 degree turns because of Christianity. Whole countries have changed over it. They still are.

In closing, there was one time Naruto did something with this idea that I thought was profound. When Gaara, a former murder/demon possessed person tried to learn about love, he later got kidnapped and killed in order to steal his power. He lost the demon (thank goodness)but also his life. But then a woman who had stuck him with the demon to begin with gave her life in order to resurrect him, with a little help from Naruto himself. Gaara is essentially given a new life, someone else’s life, and able to live free from then on. No longer needing to worry about losing control.

Easily one of the best examples I’ve seen, up there with Frozen.

Until next time–Natasha.

 

 

 

Anime Bondage: Fairy Tail

/ toseealife / 5 Comments

It’s been awhile…hey. 😁

Well, I think anime fans, sorry, weaboos, might laugh at me for using Fairy Tail as an example in this series.

I’ll admit Fairy Tail is on the lighter-hearted side, this is more about an anime trope that fairy tail introduced me to, but I’ve since realized is common.

It’s really pretty sad how common it is, and unquestioned.

For lack of a better term, I dub this trope the “I am too much of a sinner to be happy.”

In Fairy Tail, the character who fell under this trope was Jellal, who also happened to be criminally underused, and the other half of one of the better ships.

Saltiness aside, I was a bit surprised.

As someone who’s grown up on American media, and English Fairytales, I expect happy endings, pure and noble characters, and positive messages.

While anime features characters so relentlessly good they’d almost meet George MacDonald’s standard of the “common good uncommonly developed” it is a lot darker as a rule than our stories. Happy endings are hard come by and can feel rushed and incomplete compared to the rest of the story.

I started to like anime because it showed very real problems and made love and goodness the answer to them.

But I started to get frustrated the more I realized anime is incomplete also.

Here’s the skinny on Jellal if you don’t know:

Jellal is a villain in season 1, but he’s being controlled by another character. he began as a very brave, kind, and noble boy of around 8, and in a moment of weakness to hatred, was possessed by dark magic from a different villain looking for a victim.

Jellal goes on to try to kill all his old friends, and resurrect the Black wizard Zeref, causing a lot of pain and suffering along the way.

Later he survives being blown up (like you do on anime) and loses his memory. he meets his love interested again and tries to prevent a catastrophe. Then gets arrested and imprisoned. About 6 years later (time skip) he gets out and forms a group of former villains turned good guys to try to atone for their sins.

At this point he meets up with his love interest, Erza, again, and turns down her offer of a relationship and forgiveness. Telling  his new friends that for someone like him, love is out of the question. Love and happiness.

He then spends most of the show running from just that, and treating his own life as negligible. At the end he is told he should try to live to make Erza happy. We’re given a hint that he intends to do this, but it’s not shown.

Now, I’m happy it worked out in the end…but the pattern went on for a long time. It’s gone on longer on other animes. Including freaking Naruto (almost done with that finally.)

The reason I would call this attitude of self-inflicted punishment bondage is because it does not even work, even if it were acceptable.

No one ever changed themselves by punishing themselves.

I’m more concerned with how unchallenged the idea goes on anime then that it appears in the first place.

It’s even on my favorite MHA when Iida chooses to leave his hand injured until he can deserve healing.

It’s a very real struggle people have. My dad is one of them. In the past I’ve wondered about it myself, if I need to punish myself for things.

I remember it was humorously explored in one of the Anne of Green Gables books, the 7th one, Rainbow Valley. Where four children elect to bring themselves up by implementing rather creative punishments whenever they do something wrong. It does not work.

Interestingly, the Bible has strong words to say about people harming themselves, and treats the idea of self punishment as rather abhorrent.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 “Don’t you know that your body is a temple that belongs to the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit, whom you received from God, lives in you. You don’t belong to yourselves. You were bought for a price. So bring glory to God in the way you use your body.”

Leviticus 19:28 “You shall not make any cuts on your body for the dead or tattoo yourselves: I am the Lord.”

In 1 Kings it says of the prophets of  Baal “And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them.”

This worship practice is not something you’ll find God telling His people to do.

Now, we are sometimes told to repent in physical ways, dust, ashes, sackcloth, fasting, but there is no health damage in any of this.

The same applies to emotional damage. Making ourselves miserable is discouraged by the Bible.

In speaking of guilt, Paul says “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” (2 Cor 7:10).

After repenting initially, we are supposed to receive God’s forgiveness, and give up thinking about our sins.

We no longer need to be haunted by regrets.

The reason for this is that God takes even our mistakes and uses them, once we’ve repented, to bring us into more freedom. We have to take sin seriously in order to want to be free of it, true repentance is not wallowing in guilt, but acknowledging how serious sin is, then trusting that God can deliver you from it.

There are many christians haunted by regrets, but that is not biblical. Some churches have taught it because they misinterpreted the teaching of the bible…or ignored it.

In my experience, actually, it’s not the chruches fault. A christian chooses to live in regrets.

I have had, since becoming a christian, been mostly free of regrets. Early on I embraced the idea that I do not need to beat myself up anymore about my past.

Probably because I watched my dad live that way for years, and saw how little good it did, and then had to deal with him imposing that on me because we treat others how we treat ourselves.

I let my past go, I only wished he’d do the same. I still do.

And so, when it comes to the self-punishment thing, I just can’t get on board.

From a logical standpoint, nothing is really accomplished by choosing to keep yourself either injured, or emotionally empty.

One might say ” I do not deserve love.” But welcome to the human race. None of us do.

Love is not about what you deserve, it’s about what you need to be a full person.

Jellal never has much success atoning for his sins while he is doing it out of guilt, the few times he does it out of love are when it ends up working out. Contrast it to Erza, who learns earlier to start forgiving herself and living out of love, and has success after success against impossible odds because love’s power fuels her.

The bondage of guilt is one any honest human being has to face, but we do not have to stay in it. God’s forgiveness sets us free if we just ask it.

And human forgiveness is good too. Honestly, more people need to learn to accept each other’s forgiveness and quit worrying about it.

Perhaps I leaned more on the christian side for this, but I can’t separate my idea of forgiveness from my faith.

Christianity is a very free religion in that way. The only one I know of that says guilt can be completely gone, that you can no longer require punishment, and can live free and happy no matter what your past is.

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

Pure, Abundant, and Long Suffering Love–More we can learn from Gray and Juvia.

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The other day I wrote a post about one of my favorite ships and I touched on some subjects I thought it would be nice to expand on.

Here’s an excerpt from the post Stand By You that contains what I wanted to talk about more:

“But Juvia acts out of her strong love for Gray and manages to convey a lot without knowing she’s doing it. She fights for him, and is always there whenever he does choose to open up. Sometimes it’s simply that she does the right thing by accident that seems to mean the most to Gray, because she wasn’t trying to make him see a point, she just honestly wanted to help.

There’s a time to teach someone, but there is a time to just be there, and love them however you can.

And I like the additional message that love is messy and we aren’t smooth about it all the time, but our honest efforts rings the most true to people.

It’s beautiful. And its not something you have to be an expert on relationships to do, that’s the great part, you can start off knowing nothing, and still be able to do this.”

What I mentioned here was that Juvia and Gray are not really experts at love.

That gives me hope at least, because I am far from an expert at love.

I write about it a lot, I talk about it, I can give theories and examples, but at the end of the day, love is what you practice, not what you preach.

I’d like to talk about a couple different aspects of love this ship made me think of, and that I’ve also noticed in my own life.

First, Love is Pure.

Love has to be pure, first and foremost, or it will be hollow.

In my own life, I have a parent who is great about saying he loves me, giving me all kinds of praise, and verbal affirmation.

And he would berate me for not being satisfied with that.

Red flag, by the way, to anyone who does this with someone they know. If you are criticizing someone for not receiving your praise…that’s part of the reason they don’t receive your praise. It’s a bit of an oxymoronic thing to do.

The reason I didn’t like my father’s praise was that there was nothing behind it. He might call me good things, but he didn’t know any of the good things I really was. He didn’t often ask me about my life, and when he did, if I told him, he’d make the conversation about something he wanted to talk about.

He didn’t know what I liked, or what I hated. He didn’t know who my friends were, for the most part.

And, he wouldn’t do anything to back up those words.

My father’s love was not pure because it was not honest, it was based on an idea of himself and me that wasn’t accurate. And if I did not line up, I would be punished with coldness or criticism.

I find this is too common in human beings. We tend to want things on our terms when we give love. We’ll go so far, and no further. If it’s not received well, we pull back.

Juvia, on the other hand, is never daunted by how well she is received. To the point where you might almost call her inconsiderate. But not really. If you look more closely you’ll notice Juvia does not ever put more on Gray than Gray can handle, even if it makes him feel a little awkward, he’s not mortified. If he shows it bothers him, she’ll pull back a bit (in most cases, as I mentioned, the show uses it for humor.)

Second, Love is Abundant

Juvia pours her whole self into loving in the wonky way she does. It’s not always graceful or subtle, it’s extravagant, open, and overwhelming.

But, deep down, doesn’t every person want to be loved that way?

The truth is, if you don’t like being loved like that, it’s certain you have issues.

I don’t say that to judge, since it’s one of my own problems to not receive love as well as I wish.

We were made for extravagant love. In fact, as the Bible describes it, there is no such thing as love that is not like an ocean, an all consuming passion. The Bible doesn’t call a fleeting fancy love.

Love may not be a feeling always, but even the action of love is a full on commitment. Whether you feel the warm, fuzzy stuff, you are supposed to pour yourself out however you can.

Paul wrote of his ministry “I am being poured out like a drink offering.” (2 Timothy 4:6)

David also said “I am poured out like water” in Psalm 22:14, which is a prophecy of how Jesus would pour himself out on the cross, the highest act of love.

Fitting that Juvia’s power is literally being water.

It is daring to love in this manner.

People are broken, many more so than Gray, and they rarely know how to accept love, let alone how to return it.

And that leads to the third thing: Love is long-suffering.

Juvia waits a very long time to get what she wants, at least when you’re in love, it feels like a long time, doesn’t it? And yet, it also doesn’t.

In Genesis, one of my favorite Bible love stories is how Jacob worked 14 years for his wife Rachael, and the writer tells us that his love for her made it seem like a short time.

How valued must Rachael have felt, right?

Wrong, actually. Rachael had insecurities she took out on Jacob even after such devotion. She wasn’t satisfied with human love.

It’s just a part of life, that the people we love cannot be happy solely on our love, even if it makes them happier.

Jacob continued to love Rachael till the day she died, and treasured the sons he had with her more than his other children. In the end, he told her to take her problem to God, not him.

A wise thing to say.

Sometimes the best thing we can do for our loved ones is to stand by them and let them go to God. Something my family has implemented with my dad lately.

Juvia also does this for Gray. She wishes to be able to help him at all times, but sometimes she has to trust him and do her part in other places.

If you’ve noticed I’ve used only Juvia for an example here, well, she’s my favorite.

But Gray does bring something worth mentioning to the table also:

Gray, like many men, and many women, does not really understand Juvia all that well at first and makes plenty of errors on that account. He also does not know how to respond to her love, and often tries to push it away.

But the thing Gray does right, that is beautiful in its humility, is stick around for it.

Instead of avoiding Juvia, Gray spends time around her and gradually learns to be more receptive. He is uncomfortable without being dismissive entirely.

And the thing is, as flawed humans, if we’re totally honest with ourselves, sometimes our most loving act is simply to hold still and let ourselves be loved.

Most especially with God, but I’ve hurt people by pulling away from their embraces, and I know I’ve been hurt by people rejecting my efforts at loving them.

I know that sometimes I really do have to force myself not to run, sometimes all I can do is sit there and just not run. I may not even be able to ask for what I need, but I can stay, and give someone the chance to help me.

Gray screws up a lot, and he feels ashamed… but in the end, he lets himself be comforted and adored. He probably can’t express how grateful he is, but he accepts it as much as he can.

A little tip to guys, if you have a decent girlfriend or wife, than the most kind thing you can do for her sometimes is just let her take care of you. It’s like magic in a woman, we feel better when we do that. Even if you don’t feel like you need it, let her do it.

I’m guessing some men feel the same way. (Obviously I don’t mean being condescended to, I think most people can tell the difference on their own.)

There is so much more to say, but I don’t want to make this too long.

I think I covered the central part anyway.

Something I apply to myself, I want to keep on loving even if I’m not requited. Even if the kind of love I feel has to change with the situation, the point is never to stop loving.

I may talk about that more another time, but for now, stay honest–Natasha.

Anime Bondage: Naruto, (final part)

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Hello readers, I’m back with the final part of my Naruto Bondage (though not the last part of this series, I’ll be moving on to other animes after this.)

You all seem to like this series so far, thanks for the support.

This time I want to talk about MC himself.

Again, I have not finished the show yet. So I won’t discuss how I feel about it. I’m using these characters for examples, not reviews, I just don’t want any fans to think I’m criticizing or praising the show itself for anything except a portrayal of the issues.

With that out of the way, let’s begin.

I was gong to just talk about Naruto’s fox spirit problem, but with Shippuden, I’ve come to realize in technicolor that his issues are two-sided.

In Naruto, the OG show, the Fox Spirit inside Naruto was treated like an eccentric old bachelor living alone in his weird mansion, Naruto could sass it and it complied, briefly, it almost seemed like it might get fond of him.

While it was less freaky than Gaara’s problem, I did think it was problematic to portray having a demon inside you as a chill thing. I love MHA, but Tokoyami’s quirk really can’t be taken too seriously without very disturbing implications.

I have been greatly satisfied to find it was treated as an actual problem in the follow-up show, and very accurately.

Naruto begins to struggle with the Fox spirit tempting him to use it more, it’s getting stronger every time. Hurting his body now, where it didn’t used to, and now controlling him, whereas he used to retain his own mind when he used it.

The fox goes form being mildly annoyed when Naruto uses it, to tempting him too. It seems like a bit of a shift, but it’s reasonable to think the Fox realized it would have more freedom if Naruto began to lose himself to it, and so began to actually wish him to rely on him.

I want to note that this show portrays beautifully a very overlooked truth: You are what you rely on.

The Bible says “Do not be deceived: God is not to be mocked. Whatever a man sows, he will reap in return. The one who sows to please his flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; but the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”  (Galatians 6:7-8)

If you sow to the flesh, you are entrusting yourself to it, and you reap destruction. If you sow to God, you reap life.

The fox spirit tempts Naruto based on his flesh, his weakness is feeling he is never enough. He fails to save the people he most wants to save.

Yamato (I do not remember his real name) tells Naruto that he needs to save Sasuke with his own power. That he can do this and does not need the Fox.

Naruto, horrified at how he’s hurt people he loves by using the Fox, agrees, and from thereon begins to resist the Foxes’ efforts to take over. He does not always succeed without help, but he begins digging himself out of the hole.

It was shown with Gaara that he also did this, he began to choose not to tap into the power.

The show interestingly made the statement that free will is involved with the corruption of the Jinchuri (the people with demons in them.)

Naruto also is shown to be in contrast to Sasuke here, in that Sasuke was also cursed, but chose to rely on that curse and corrupt.

In real life, with demonic activity, the question of free will is tricky. Demon possession is horrifying mostly because it undermines a person’s free will.

Usually, at one point, the person opened a doorway, as we call it, and allowed it to come in. In that moment they sacrificed their free will. hey had a choice, you can choose to lose free will like you can lose a driver’s license, by making poor driving choices.

However, like I said in my Gaara post, someone can have a curse put on them by someone else, and it not be their fault that they suffer from the problem.

The Bible says a curse without a cause falls void (Proverbs 26:2). And as a popular christian children’s book, Punchinello, put it “The stickers only stick if you let them.”

It is sadly true that human beings could not be cursed if we had no sin. Sin breeds death and allows curses to have power over us. Most people activate curses by sinning. If we were all pure, it wouldn’t matter.

Gaara, Naruto, and Sasuke all deal with this in their own ways. Gaara was never given a fair chance to control himself, but he chose to make it worse by playing along. When he chooses to stop, his curse becomes weaker, and eventually, he gets freed from it entirely and gets a new life. (Literally, it was awesome.)

Naruto has a harder path because it does not seem likely he will lose his curse any time soon. He’s trying to manage it the way people mange mental illness…with about as much success. Good days, bad days, trying to live his life despite having that hang over his head.

But unfortunately, he has other issues the curse only makes harder.

Naruto’s emotional scarring about Sasuke becomes more and more of a problem with each time he fails to get Sasuke back. He blames himself each time for not being powerful enough.

To the point where he pushes himself beyond healthy limits in order to get stronger. He is obsessed and driven, to where he will not rest, and finally ends up hurting his own body in the process.

The absolute insanity of it is that his friends and teachers allow this, they even encourage it, shrugging off the consequences because “Naruto can handle it, he’s got stamina.”

At no point so far has he been told it’s a bad idea to desultory himself on Sasuke’s account.

I do not know if he is later, but I find that it has gone on so long already to be disgusting to my sense of wisdom.

The same thing happened with Sasuke. Kakashi waited until Sasuke was already ready to kill Naruto to tell him revenge might not be the best plan ever… long after Sasuke was past the point where that might have helped.

And it’s horrible for Naruto himself.

Naruto lives in guilt and shame over never being enough. It actually ties into his complex still left over from being an outcast. Nothing he ever did was good enough for Leaf Village to accept him. He was isolated just for being cursed.

Now he brings that into how he views Sasuke. He projects his own feelings onto Sasuke, and thinks it’s not right if he can be free but not free his friend.

It’s noble to want to help your friend, but if you are willing to destroy your own life over it…you have a problem.

Naruto however, is hardly an unrealistic example here. There are many people who sacrifice themselves for others in a way they shouldn’t. In my own family, it was what contributed to years of an abusive cycle.

That may be why I feel so strongly about Naruto’s case. I have lived to please and help someone who would neither be pleased nor helped, and I have damaged myself a lot in the process. I’ve seen my family damaged themselves even more than me.

Thank God we are beginning to heal, but it took so long.

I blamed myself too for not being better at loving, I had to realize that if someone will not receive love, it doesn’t matter how good you are at it. God himself cannot help someone till they receive it from Him (directly, of course He is always helping us in other ways.)

So, I know all about Naruto’s problem. And I know it’s common.

I will put this kind of bondage down to two things, neglect and abuse.

Naruto was abused by having a demon sealed in him. You could liken it to how all of us are programmed with bad behavior by our parents, at least if we have parents with issues.

Naruto was then neglected for most of his life, ad still is because people thing he is stronger than he really is. His strength is often brittle, and superficial. While his true strength is not nurtured by the people around him.

This combination would give anyone unworthiness issues. Naruto simply puts himself on the back burner.

I do the exact same thing. I shelve my needs in favor of my family’s.

I am so glad that I have God, because I do still take my needs to Him, even when I don’t to others. And if you take your needs to God, you will still get healed, even if God and people combined is faster.

But people alone is an imperfect solution, and for Naruto it’s not even a viable one most of the time. There’s a couple people in his life who would help hi,m, but he pays the least attention to them.

It’s not his fault, for it all comes of what he is used to. You tend to go with what  feels normal to you. If being treated meanly or neglected is normal, you’ll hang around people who treat you that way.

I know I have. To me, that was just how people treat me.

If you are blessed enough to meet someone who treats you better, and you like theme enough to let yourself get sued to it, you are one of the lucky  ones.

Often it has to be a choice to start seeking out better relationships.

What I would say in Naruto’s case, is that the best thing for him is to finally admit he is valuable enough for what’s been done to him to be worth getting angry over. He needs to cry about it. For himself, not for his friends.

He needs to start saying he deserved better.

And he needs someone to come alongside him and help him to stand by that.

For me, that’s God. I don’t think anyone else is as good, but even human beings can bring immense healing to each other.

The last thing, is that, Naruto (and us by extension) needs to let go. He can’t save everyone. He does not need to save everyone. We human beings are not the savior of the world. That position is filled already.

It is in God’s hands whether people are saved or not. And it also is on each individual themselves.

And it is not his fault. It is not your fault if someone in your life refuses help. Whether it’s your sibling, your child, your parent, your friends, your spouse, they have to want it.

You cannot make them want it. You cannot do that for them.

That’s a good thing.

And once you accept that you are merely human, you can begin to heal.

That is all for this post, until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

 

Stand by You: Gray x Juvia Tribute

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I want to take a detour from talking about anime bondage (another part is coming soon, it’ll be interesting) to talk about one of my frequented subjects on this blog.

Well, you all know how much I love talking about love, and using fictional couples to illustrate it.

Today I want to highlight one that is certainly not an unknown one, if you’re knee deep in the anime world, you’ve probably seen ads for or watched Fairy Tail, I’ve mentioned it once or twice..

The show has plenty of cute ones that’ll fill up your romance tank if you’re a ship junkie, but there’s one in particular that for me went from cute to amazingly good, up there with the List of Great Ones I keep mentally.

And that is the Gray +Juvia ship.

Spoilers ahead if you care:

It’s a canon ship that has come to completion, so I’m not going to be speculating, there’s nothing to speculate about. I just want to talk about how well it was written.

So, Fairy Tail is a bit of a zanier show that occasionally has very serious moments that it brings home with a bang!

Gray and Juvia’s relationship could represent the best and worst of this show as a whole. It’s played off for humor 70% of the time, and is sometimes funny, often it’s a little uncomfortable.

The other 30% of the time it’s incredibly profound in its own simple way, which I will now elaborate on, enough build up.

Gray and Juvia meet on the battlefield, on opposing sides. Juvia falls in love on the spot. Gray doesn’t exactly get it, but he does feel some kind of connection. He wouldn’t call it romantic, but he later admits he sensed they could work well together with their abilities.

He also saves her life and is otherwise a gem in the course of their fight. Juvia falls head over heels by the end and later switches sides.

Juvia is by far the crazier of the two–outwardly. She initially stalks Gray, though she doesn’t do much besides watch him and send him gifts, finally she works up the nerve to approach and ask if she can join the guild he works in (Fairy Tail, naturally.)

Gray is down for that, though he doubts their master will be so willing, however, Juvia ends up helping them out with their current crisis, and gets in no problem.

From thereon out she begins the pattern of pursuing Gray, who seems consistently uncomfortable with her affections, but never acts like he dislikes her personally.

At first, we get the feeling Gray thinks she’s crazy but good hearted, and doesn’t want to hurt her feelings, so he puts up with it.

But over time, we get hints Gray actually does feels something more for Juvia, but is in deep denial. Unlike your average anime protagonist, he’s not oblivious, he’s simply…unwilling.

My sister and I speculated as to the reason for this, the show itself provides clues, but it was finally at the end of season 2 we got confirmation we were right.

So, what we figured out was this:

Early on, Gray was shown to have deep guilt issues. He’s one of those tragic backstory guys. He’s not as bad as some, (I mean, I’ve been watching Naruto, so talk about messed up origin stories.) He lost his parents to a demon, and later his teacher/mentor to the same demon.

Gray blames himself for going to seek the demon out in order to kill it, and having people always need to sacrifice themselves for him.

This gets reinforced later on when the daughter of his mentor makes a similar sacrifice for him and his friends.

It caps off when he long-dead father is reanimated by another villain, and forced to work for the evil people, but rebels and fights Gray in order to try to die for real and be able to be at peace.

Gray refuses to kill his father, and they have a heartfelt few minutes. But while this is going on, Gray’s father, Silver, speaks telepathically to Juvia, who is elsewhere, fighting the very person who is controlling him.

Silver asks Juvia to kill the Necromancer (that’s the villain) and let him die. Juvia does not want to do this to Gray’s father, but understands that if she doesn’t the world will be in jeopardy, and Gray also will not be in a good position.

Juvia succeeds, and Gray’s father thanks her and gets to go to heaven and be at peace, leaving Gray with a final gift of the power to defeat the demons.

Up till this point, the show had begun to use Juvia a bit more seriously. Early on, she was almost pure comic relief. No one took her feelings too seriously.

Her backstory is pretty sad in its own way, though it lacks the traumatic twist of most anime stories. She was unable to control her water magic very well, and it led to being depressed and isolated from people who couldn’t take how gloomy it was around her.

In a heartbreaking thought humorous shot, Juvia is shown making an army of Japanese Rain-Away dolls, which she always wears one of on her clothes.

Yeah…dark without being gritty, what a novel idea!

When Juvia falls for Gray, she is able to stop the rain for the first time and see blue sky. Light has entered her heart, if you follow the analogy.

In a later arc, Gray is shown to have deep shame in himself, that keeps him from expressing happier emotions or doing light hearted things like dance, or other displays of beauty or joy. It’s a weird episode, but managed to pack in an emotional punch amidst the silliness.

Juvia, in a still later episode, wants to do something nice for Gray to celebrate their anniversary of meeting (sort of) and knits him a scarf.

Unfortunately, this anniversary happens to be the same day his teacher/surrogate mother died.

Here the show got very profound very briefly, Erza, one of the wiser characters, comforts Juvia, after Juvia finds out and feels horrible for trying to be cheerful when Gray was feeling so sad, Erza tells her that she doesn’t need to feel bad. Every day is a good day for some people, a bad day for others, and what matters is what it is for her.

Gray also comes around to realizing it wasn’t Juvia’s fault, and also realizes her gesture reminds him of something his teacher did once. He finds a sort of comfort in it after all.

By the way, Snow is used to represent Gray’s sadness and shame. It’s always snowing when he feels that way. Like the rain for Juvia. (And yeah, it is a lot like Frozen. Writers love this metaphor.)

This culminates (well, for season 2) in a short but awesome scene at the end of the Tartaros Arc, the one she defeats the villain controlling his father in.

Gray is feeling sad again, and shame, because he couldn’t do as much as he wanted, and he couldn’t prevent his father dying. Though he knows his father wanted it that way, it still stings. It’s snowing.

Juvia comes up, feeling pretty bad over it, to confess what she did, and say she doesn’t have the right to love him anymore, because she killed his father( indirectly) who he loved, and she is sorry.

Gray seems angry at first, and is shocked also that is was her who did it.

But suddenly, he starts crying and says “Thank you…you freed me…I’m sorry…” He seems to be apologizing to no one in particular, or maybe to everyone he feels he failed.

This scene was powerful for me, in a simple way.

Juvia and Gray are not perfect, they actually are very human. Both can be shortsighted. Gray can be kind of a jerk, unintentionally. Juvia can be easily distracted by her emotions to the point where she neglects caution, and can be obsessive.

Juvia is also not free of emotional problems. Many anime ships have one messed up person and one stable person, but Juvia and Gray are neither wholly messed up, nor wholly stable in of themselves.

Juvia often feels she is unworthy also to be loved.

The show brilliantly shows us in this moment that Gray is the same way. He acts cold because he doesn’t feel he deserves to be adored. He’s just himself, and he always thinks he is too weak.

Why does he say Juvia freed him?

It’s simple, if Juvia hadn’t defeated the villain, Gray might have had to, and kill his own father. Something that would have haunted him his whole life.

Perhaps he even thought he had, since he didn’t see the fight and just saw his father disappear.

Juvia did something for Gray that he wasn’t able to do for himself.

It brings it full circle, in the past when Gray saved Juvia, she felt he had done something for her she could not do for herself. The rain had stopped.

I don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll try to keep this short:

I love this so much. To me, it doesn’t matter whether I like the show or not, if this was the only thing I got out of it, it’d be worth it.

It’s not even about romance. This goes further than that…or, I should say, it’s an aspect of romance not often explored.

But, think about it, in marriage, who wants to be with someone they cannot take their heart to? Who cannot be shown all the ugly parts of their past, and find them still lovable?

I certainly don’t want to marry a man I can’t tell this stuff too, he’s going to see me at my worst, after all, as well as my best. Why not learn why I am the way I am.

Juvia and Gray are a very realistic example, for an anime, of how a couple can help each other. Juvia often finds herself at a loss for words with Gray, she learns more about his past over time, but has nothing to say, it’s so different from her own, and she’s not very good at expressing herself anyway.

But Juvia acts out of her strong love for Gray and manages to convey a lot without knowing she’s doing it. She fights for him, and is always there whenever he does choose to open up. Sometimes it’s simply that she does the right thing by accident that seems to mean the most to Gray, because she wasn’t trying to make him see a point, she just honestly wanted to help.

And that, ladies and gents, is Real Love.

There’s a time to teach someone, but there is a time to just be there, and love them however you can.

And I like the additional message that love is messy and we aren’t smooth about it all the time, but our honest efforts rings the most true to people.

It’s beautiful. And its not something you have to be an expert on relationships to do, that’s the great part, you can start off knowing nothing, and still be able to do this.

Until Next Time–Natasha.

 

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