Six Anime That Shaped Me to Who I Am Now (Part 2)

Last time, I talked about only four anime that shaped me, so here are the other two. Like before, you can just skip the synopsis if you’ve already known or you just don’t care about it at all.

And don’t judge me for list mostly yuri (girl love) anime, okay?

5. Adachi and Shimamura （安達としまむら）

Source: WallpaperAccess

• Synopsis

High school first-year students Adachi and Shimamura stumbled upon each other on the second floor of the school gymnasium. As their friendship grew, the feeling for one another became more ambiguous.

The nature of their relationship started to shift when Adachi developed a feeling beyond the platonic relationship. They both had to realize if forming a relationship more than friendship would bring them close or tear them apart.

• Back to the habit of reading and other impacts

This anime has a big influence in my life. I watched it when I was having anatomy dissection course whose examination is extremely strict and difficult. This anime was the light in my stressful time. As for the story, there’s not really an adrenaline inducing moment, but the character is the one which make the anime interesting.

At first, Adachi seemed like typical cool introvert character, not wanting to interact with other people (which is kind of true). But deep down, she just wanted the attention from the one she loved.

As for Shimamura, oh! I love Shimamura so much!!! If I have to say, I have never seen this kind of character portrait in anime. But it's difficult to describe her because if I do so, she'll be downgraded to be like other anime character's tropes.

I fell in love with these two characters and after finishing the anime (which was adapted only 1/3 of the light novel), I was so eager to read the original story. I didn't want to read the English translation. So, I read the Japanese one and started from the volume 1 because I wanted to know more about them and their relationship. It doesn't mean the anime failed to convey their personality. It's just me who is too curious. Now there’re 11 volumes of the light novel and I still love this series as much as before, if not more than before!

So yeah! Adachi and Shimamura make me love reading Japanese books, and go back to the habit of reading. I read them because I want to, not because I put the pressure on myself that I have to read Japanese books to learn Japanese and Kanji. Now, I read not only Adachi and Shimamura, but also other Japanese books. It's like three birds with one stone. I read the books I love, learn Japanese, and go back to reading habit as I did when I was a child!

Moreover, the light novel played a big role in pushing me to make this blog. I love the way Hitoma Iruma write the story and characters so much. The book is written in the first person style with the changing of perspective from Adachi to Shimamura and vice versa, so we can understand a lot about the them, especially when they had a thought about certain events such as Valentine's day and summer festival. Because of the admiration for his art of writing, I started to write my own novel in the first person perspective and made this blog to post it. But my writing isn't as good as 1% of Hitoma Iruma's. I'm even afraid that saying that I am inspired by him degrades his reputation.

I'm so grateful for what this anime and its light novel did to me - encourage me to read, to write, and to blog. As I said before in My Journey of Journaling, I'm not just a medical student anymore. I'm a blogger, and this hobby makes me feel more "alive" than ever before! Thank you very much, Adachi and Shimamura!

6. Bloom into You（やがて君になる）

Source: Wallpaper Abyss

• Synopsis

Yuu had always admired love shown in romantic shoujo manga and lyrics of love songs. She kept waiting for love and expected fully that it would be amazing. However, when she got confessed, she felt nothing, not even a slight of excitement. She then came to the realization that she understood love as a concept, but couldn’t experience the feeling first-hand.

When she entered high school, she was amazed by Touko, a seemingly perfect student president council, maturely rejected the confession from another person. She asked Touko for advice, but unexpectedly got a confession from Touko herself. From that time on, Yuu was entangled with a “relationship” with Touko to find the emotion she had always wanted to obtain.

• Finding out my own romantic orientation

The impact of Bloom into You on me is different from other anime because it wasn’t the anime which directly shaped me, but it was the fan base.

I’ve known about Bloom into You since it was just a manga and there wasn’t an anime adaptation. But I didn’t understand the manga well because it had a theme I had never seen before. Yuu wanted to experience love but she couldn’t feel anything. Even though she was confessed or kissed, she could only feel emptiness. On the other hand, the reason why Touko loved Yuu was that Yuu didn’t love anyone including her. I was too dulled to connect or relate to them. But because of the great story and character written, I ended up loving them. So, I was really hyped for the anime adaptation.

Thanks to the adaptation, Bloom into You became more well-known. There were many videos and articles analyzing it, especially its characters. One day, I discovered a video titled “Bloom into You Changed Me” by Mathwiz, and because of the it, I came to know the word “aromantic” (people who experiences little to no romantic attraction to anyone). Later on, I also discovered that Sayaka, one of the characters in the manga/anime, was a demiromantic lesbian (meaning she only loved woman and only woman who had a strong emotional connection with her). So, I became very interested in this topic and curious about my own romantic orientation. I started a journey to figure out who the hell I am.

At first, I didn’t really understand my own feeling (even now, which supports the romantic orientation of mine at the end), so I thought that I loved someone but didn’t want them to reciprocate their feeling back because it would make me lose interested or end up disgusted. Thus, I thought I was a lithromantic. However, somehow it felt wrong. I didn’t even know my feeling, so how the hell could I say I love someone romantically? So after searching a lot of terms, I realized that I was, in fact, a quoiromantic, the person who can’t distinguish romantic feeling and platonic feeling so becomes unsure if one has experienced romantic attraction or not. (For more story related to quoiromantic and alterous attraction click here)

And quoiromantic is in the spectrum of aromantic…

So I’m kind of aromantic…

Oh… No…

Let’s…. talk about it in another day…

Anyway, Bloom into You didn’t change me, but it indirectly pave the way for me to understand who I am. It’s such a great feeling to know more about yourself. Don’t you think so?

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So, these are my six anime that shaped me to who I am now. Of course, there will be new anime that potentially changes me in one way or another in the future. And what about you? What anime changed/shaped you? Feel free to leave in the comment!