Yet another dang post on Kyousougiga.

This is the fifth of my entries into 2017’s rendition of the 12 Days of Anime aniblogger project. For more about the project, read appropriant’s introductory post. Please also check out the spreadsheet containing the work of all the bloggers participating!

A Tale of a Certain Family’s… Despair?

This year, I rewatched Kyousougiga for the first time since its airing in 2013. I expected to like it even more than the first time, and I wasn’t disappointed. The show truly is as magnificent as I believed it to be—and that confirmation felt wonderful. “Oh,” I thought. “What a beautiful thing this is, and what a joy it is to be a person who can appreciate it as such.”

After I finished the show—and finished drying my tears over Koto’s joyful laughs her family reunites at last—I was trying to think about the show in new ways. The family theme is obvious, but somehow I felt there was still something there I hadn’t fully grasped. Something shaded behind the richness of the obviousness of love, forgiveness, and life. And then it hit me—Kyousougiga is about the validity of existence. The entire family drama and resolution is precipitated by Inari’s profound ennui, Lady Koto’s departure is resultant from her so-called “borrowed” existence, and the world in which their children live is a burden to Kurama, a inadequate replacement of better times for Yase, and torture for the suicidal Myoue.

It is only Koto, betraying her assigned role as destroyer, who upsets the existential woes of her family through her sheer desire to not simply live, but live with. Koto, through her loves, impels her family to overcome their collective despair and gives them a reason to exist… Wow. As Koto says, “That’s what love is!”

It made me happy to like Kyousougiga, realizing all this. And that’s a feeling I have about many (all?) of my favorites: I like that I like them. Or maybe another way to put it is that I like being the kind of person who likes Kyousougiga. I would want to be the kind of person who likes a show that says family can be a wonderful thing, that forgiveness can be found amidst hopelessness, that simply being alive is worth doing. What a wonderful color this show has! And to discover those hues undimmed from their radiant first appearance… well. I am running out of words to express how happy I was.

Do I discover anything new about the color I seek by reaffirming I love something I believe I did?

I suppose I believe so. After all, it was in finding things like Kyousougiga that I began to discover this “color” that now forms the core of my desires. Thus, to see that the foundation holds gives me clarity. The old love persists in a new year, the continuity of affection continues on. And as 愛 (ai) exists, its effects will likewise linger in my heart and my mind, not limiting me to the past, but pointing me toward the future where new love can blossom in the soil prepared by a show I love. To remember Kyousougiga in something new is to allow the love of one thing to nurture the love of another. To wit, love does not drift away, only breeds more love.

ココにいるのは大丈夫です。

Another wonderment: What shows that you love have prepared you to love other things?