We watch anime for many reasons. For fun stories about characters we can relate to, or for themes about being teleported to another world and acquiring a harem of elf girls. While anime is usually a quick escape from the stresses of the day, sometimes it hits much deeper than we expected. What anime affected you deeply?
What Anime Affected You Deeply? J-List Customers Respond!
I asked the J-List Customer of Culture™ to share what anime deeply affected them emotionally. We came up with quite a good list!
Bunny Girl Senpai, coincidentally. Mai-san’s story was pretty emotional, and the final bit with his sister hit me harder than it should’ve. And the movie was hella emotional as well.
Gakkou Gurashi. It wasn’t an anime about cute girls living in their school after all.
How about Made in Abyss? It really hit me in the feels.
Kill La Kill: come for the fan service, stay for the messages of found family and body positivity ✂️
Higurashi hit me so deep, and Clannad’s VN is doing the same currently too.
If you know, you know. (Violet Evergarden.)
Recently, Bocchi the Rock.
Sukasuka and Angel Beats.
Related post: What anime took your breath away when you watched it? Read the blog post here!
The Pet Girl of Sakurasou did it for me.
Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni and Elfen Lied.
5cm Per Second. I can’t listen to that ending song without it all starting again for me.
What Anime Affected Me the Most?
It’s not going too far to say that anime is my life, thanks to running J-List. Let’s look at three anime series that really affected me deeply over the years.
First was Space Battleship Yamato, in the form of the original Star Blazers in 1979, which changed my life more than anything. The shock I felt when seeing the final death of Captain Avatar at the conclusion of the first arc was really deep. Were they even allowed to dramatically kill characters in animation???
Then came Kimi ga Nozomu Eien, the first really emotional anime I got into. When Haruka gets hit by a car, she goes into a coma for three years. During that time, Mitsuki gets closer to Takayuki, trying to help him past his feelings of guilt about Haruka. The download speeds back in 2004 meant I had to wait weeks for each episode, which added to the dramatic tension of the unfolding story.
Finally, there’s the Air anime, my introduction to the great marriage between Key visual novels and Kyoto Animation. These days we’ve all cried our eyes out watching intense scenes from Clannad or Violet Evergarden, but stories like this were unheard of back in 2005.
Thanks for reading this post exploring the way anime can deeply affect all of us when we least expect it. What anime deeply affected you emotionally? Tell us below, or reply to us on Twitter!
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