There are ways to express oneself that aren’t primal screams, you know.
Impressions:
I think I’m all manic pixie girlfriended out for a while, which is unfortunate, because there’s still more to come this season. At least the dude was slightly less pathetic than the previous one, but the manic pixie girl was ten times worse. It’s extremely overwrought existential drama where they’re all lamenting how they want to do something. And letting out primal yells about how mad they are that either they haven’t found their one true passion that will define their entire lives and leave the mark on history, or that the world allows people without talent to… uh… exist. These idiots are supposedly 15 years old. Anime writers, do you even remember what 15 year olds are like? Even if an adult spontaneously started trauma dumping on me out of absolutely nowhere, I’d be giving them the side eye.
If you wanted to make this work, it needs to be far more grounded and realistic. You cannot have human drama if your characters are not humans, but Shakespeare-esque lamentation engines. But they want to thread the needle where both of them are right, that hard work can have efforts, and that talent is precious. But them meeting each other halfway is still missing the point that you should be doing art (or anything) because you enjoy it, or find satisfaction in it, not because it’s only for the elite or because it will give your life meaning. And that success is 99 times out 100 determined by wealth, not hard work or talent, but that’s a conversation that anime won’t be ready to engage with for decades, if ever.
