[ShiShiLeo]

Wow is it just me or is this show absolutely amazing?

Perhaps I don't watch nearly enough anime these days, but it feels so different from everything else. I don't think I've ever seen slice of life melodrama and kaiju-mecha battles blend together so fluidly.

But my favorite aspect of it all is the young love. We've been treated to all forms of it. We have Koyomi's regretful past love, yomogi's unrequited but respectful affection for Yume. Yume's familial love for her sister which shows how complicated those kind of relationship are, and Chise's love for her friends and senpai. We also get peeks into Gauma's repressed love for something he seems to be longing for (perhaps a woman in his past?)

Yomogi thinks he likes Yume, but it's the wrong place and wrong time. Yume could very easily return his affections (and she has begun to do so), but her world is just not in the right place because of what happened to her sister.

I often think about how timing is such an important part of a relationship. I'm reminded of a letter written by John Steinbeck to his son in 1958...

Steinbeck's son wrote to his father that he fell in love with a girl and is too afraid to say it for fear of rejection. In reply, John writes “If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.” Full letter

A boy like Yomogi could very easily be rash and judgmental towards the aloof Yume. If he were impatient, he would get angry and frustrated that their relationship isn't taking off or that he's been "wasting his time" with her. But with the time they've spent together he's come to see Yume as a complex human being with faults and concerns far beyond him. Yume, at least from Yomogi's perspective is a sort of Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but we actually see the opposite, and her aloofness and strange behavior actually stems from a traumatizing event. She has had many boys vie for her attention but only one has stuck around and actually tried to get to know her.

Koyomi seems to dwell on the past- something very common in interpersonal relationships. The idea of "what if" can haunt you, but by nature it is unknowable. Acceptance of things as they are is a supreme Buddhist belief. Under this lens, regret is often viewed as a selfish attachment to something you were never owed. Understanding this is a path to enlightenment.

I could go on for paragraphs about each character and the microcosms they represent, but I'm just happy they are here and not treacly or at the cost of incredible mecha scenes. This show is so good.