The Balancing Act of Being Critical: Part 2 – Yes, Sometimes it Does Hurt

This is the second entry in an informal series I’m writing about my approach to anime criticism. You can check out Part 1 here.

Content Warnings: Discussion of mental illness. General discussion of sexual assault. Discussion of abusive internet practices.

Imagine a situation, if you’ll humor me for a moment. Let’s say you’re someone experiencing mental illness (which I suspect will be relatable to many folks reading this). Many people might not be able to detect your symptoms on the surface – your anxiety is fairly well-hidden in your day-to-day life because it manifests in being unable to do things like make phone calls (unless truly an emergency) or start your homework until the last possible second, and everything tends to work itself out in the end to the extent that it’s technically taken care of. But your insides are constantly in knots because the world feels out-of-control, and though you don’t recognize it at this time, you definitely could benefit from some talk therapy and perhaps even some medical intervention.

The one thing you look forward to every week is attending your college anime club and watching anime with your friends, and this semester’s lineup promises to be great – one of the series the group is watching is Welcome to the NHK, and it’s one you’ve been looking forward to for a while. The first couple episodes you’ve seen on your own seem very sympathetic to your state of mind – the protagonist also suffers from mental illness and social anxiety, and the way that this is reflected in the character’s behavior feels very realistic to you. Even leaving his apartment to apply for a low-level job for which he’s almost guaranteed to get hired is a monumental task; his perception that everyone on the street is staring at and judging him makes your stomach drop, because it’s so relateable. He seems to know the actions he needs to take in order to better his life, but doesn’t have the executive function or the self-confidence necessary to make himself do them.

As the weeks and episodes go on, however, this feeling of elation begins to sour. At times, the main character’s social anxiety feels pushed aside in favor of more palatable otaku-style antics – an unsuccessful attempt at producing a pornographic video game, an accidental inclusion in a group planning to die by suicide (wacky!), unintentional involvement in a shady direct sales group… The emotional truth of the character’s situation begins to deteriorate, with a few very painful gasps here and there to remind you what the series was purportedly attempting to depict. And through the series’ many messy ups and downs, the audience around you laughs at the character’s misfortune. You feel smaller and smaller each time their laughter rings in your ears, because you know in your heart that, though they might not realize it, they’re laughing at you.

It might be obvious to most of you by now, but that club member was me.

I didn’t lead off with this story to complain about my life or to make anyone feel ashamed about an anime series they might enjoy – I still see Welcome to the NHK get recommended to new viewers all the time in spite of how old it is, and I think there are good reasons for that. But I hope that you readers will keep the anecdote in the back of your mind while I try to address some more concrete topics.

Visual content in anime, as in most other media, runs the gamut from completely tame to extraordinarily, well, extreme. Anime and animation has the tremendous gift of being able to portray things of almost supernatural beauty, while also sometimes showcasing some of our world’s great and terrible ugliness. Live action media can be used to portray these things as well; anime is not singular in its ability to represent actions and feelings. But I think the simple fact of being a (mostly) hand-drawn art form with very few limits on what can practically be portrayed allows animation an extra layer of emotional weight that I personally don’t feel similarly from live-action TV series and films. It lacks the uncanny detachment from reality that occurs when live-action doesn’t get things quite right, because animation is not meant to look and feel exactly like life an in its unreality feels more real.

The consequence of this is when anime and animation takes on serious topics it can feel real and personal (sometimes maybe too real and personal). Because its a medium composed of artwork rather than real human beings, it can also be used to tackle unsavory topics or portray scenarios that are untenable in live action.

A popular argument I often see expressed within the anime and adjacent fandom communities is that drawn or written characters can’t be harmed. The thing that makes many real-life crimes especially heinous is that, when committed against real people, the effects aren’t limited to the immediacy of the crime. Being a sexual assault survivor, what I can say about my situation is that the physical harm faded quickly, but even after years of therapy the emotional effects are unlikely to ever completely go away and they inform a lot of the ways in which I approach aspects of my daily life. They affect how open I am with people, they affect my ability to trust others, and more related to the subject at hand, they affect the ways in which I approach the media I watch.

A (rather flippant) response I often see when folks like me comment critically on material in anime or manga that portrays really heinous acts and attitudes is “they’re only drawings; drawings can’t be hurt (checkmate, SJWs!)”. I think the perception is that, because I write something like “I think it was a bad move and dismissive of survivors for the antagonist of this anime to rape someone to show that they are evil,” I want for that piece of media to be disappeared from the internet forever. I can only really speak for myself in this case, but for me that’s not really the end goal at all. I think there’s room for media that portrays the awful things that exist in our world, because for some these stories are a way of processing those evils and understanding why they happen, even if those stories are lacking in sensitivity, realism, or nuance. There are lots of things I don’t personally want to see, but I’m capable of either not watching or reading them, or engaging with them in ways that I can protect myself. That said, I take issue with the idea that no one is being “hurt” when the victims of vile acts are drawn rather than real.

I used to watch a lot of anime on my bus commute to and from work. One day on my way home I started the series My Little Monster, which is a fairly well-regarded romantic comedy that had some minor buzz at the time. Partway through the first episode, the male lead (whose personality is rough and adversarial) grabs the female lead, covers her mouth, and tells her not to scream or else he’ll rape her. Comedy! I instantly felt my stomach drop into my shoes. Luckily I held it together until I reached my bus stop that day, but the damage was done; even though this was a one-off in a show that was otherwise probably pretty good, I never returned to it to see for myself. But while the moment itself, like so many others, was mostly picking open a scab on an old wound, the aftermath is where the harm was done.

Being critical about certain content in anime and manga is like playing an extended game of Russian Roulette; if you manage to do it long enough you’re guaranteed to get a bullet to the face. There are folks who seem to enjoy nothing more than reacting to people’s expressions of their trauma with “devil’s advocate” arguments, dubious examples meant to contradict their emotional reaction’s “lack of logic,” or simply straight-up old-fashioned verbal abuse. I’ve been witness to (and target of) some of the most gross examples of “my-logic-trumps-your-feelings” arguments in my time on the internet, all in service of attempting to excuse some truly gross character behavior.

Because it’s just an anime, lighten up.

And to be honest it’s not even the fact that people want to passionately defend the material they enjoy that hurts my feelings; every piece of media will have its fans and everyone has a right to like what they like and to share why they like it. I know I like a lot of anime that delves into some pretty dark depths of human behavior (and I do my best to share content warnings so people can avoid if needed). But I do my best to try to acknowledge that these stories I love aren’t infallible and aren’t an extension of myself to the extent that criticizing them is somehow attacking me, which seems to be a big ask of folks who have a “seek and destroy” mentality when folks deign to open up about their trauma. Ultimately what hurts the most is a general unwillingness by even some well-meaning fans to fully try to understand or even just acknowledge that watching media isn’t a detached, objective experience for everyone, as well as the propensity of some fans to scream loudly and angrily at those who are traumatized, picking at scabs or even twisting knives.

“Block and/or ignore” is a refrain that I’ve held to for many years, and to some extent that can help. But blocking someone who thinks being hurtful is a fun and cool game doesn’t really solve what’s ultimately the most heartbreaking part of being on the receiving end of vitriolic diarrhea-of-the-mouth. No matter how many times you extricate an abuser from your comment section, or block a troll on Twitter, the knowledge that there are folks that exist in a fandom that you love that don’t give even half a shit about you as a fellow fan is one of the most isolating feelings there is. Anime fandom has been a place of such joy for me; I’ve had the privilege of meeting so many great people through our shared enjoyment of this hobby. And yet, anime fandom will never, ever be a place of complete safety and that sucks. I’m forever left having to maintain a wall and keep folks at arm’s length because there are fellow fans who think arguing for the logic of bad behavior is a fun game and not an exercise in traumatic apologia.

I think it’s an easy thing to pretend that fiction is completely separated from reality, because it’s a comfortable perspective to have; it sucks to be reminded of real-life political or social issues or to have to think about our own capability for bad behavior when we’re engaged with something fun. The world would be much easier to deal with if every action was the logical progression of the previous one, and fiction – in this case anime – offers the temptation of that sort of world if we are content to only look at the surface. But all art is a reflection of its creators whether we want to interpret it that way or not; none of us is an unmarked slate and our creativity is influenced by the form of our existence – scars included. It takes some vulnerability to allow the invasion of real-life’s messiness into what many people consider an emotional safe-zone of passive enjoyment. Some folks may never reach that point and that’s fine. But the reason why I continue to write about anime in this way is to hopefully reach folks who are willing to examine their relationship with it, and possibly help them make the choice to try to understand their fellow fans a little bit better. Because as lonely as it is to be laughed at and harassed, I have to imagine that being constantly pedantic and brow-beating other people for showing weakness is its own kind of painful loneliness.

Through it all, I still believe everyone is capable of learning and growing; glob knows I had a lot to learn about being a good person when I was young, and I’m sure I still have a ways to go. It’s part of the reason why I always come back to writing about anime, and sometimes sharing a lot of myself in the process. I keep thinking about that kid sitting in a college auditorium, surrounded by dozens of friends and at the same time feeling so painfully alone, and wondering when I had inadvertently been on the other side of the equation without realizing it. Because, yes, sometimes the things that happen in fiction can and do hurt; while the characters might be nothing but drawings on a page, incapable of feeling the after-effects of their treatment, by its very nature fiction is something meant to draw out very real feelings and reactions from an audience. But it’s fiction’s capability to conjure unfamiliar scenarios that also gives it the power to heal through inspiring, directly or indirectly, empathy for others with whom we share our life’s journey.