I feel the need to clarify early on that I am not a huge anime person. I have watched 4-5 over my lifetime the most recent being Myself; Yourself. I am going to take a minute to explain the anime before I pose my question so that those that haven't seen it can at least weigh in intelligently. I also want to apologize for the length as I wanted to cover not only the question but my response and explanation.
Myself: Yourself is a characterization piece. It is an anime that is based completely around plausible real life situations, and the whole plot is basically the evolution of the various characters over time. The main characters are all high school age so it may seem like the situations would be childish, however most of the themes delt with are those of a more adult world.
Here is the question I pose to the intelligent community of the escapist. Is it possible for an entertainment medium(including books, movies, music, gaming, television)to provide the viewer or reader with a true emotional reaction? By this I am asking if the reaction we receive from entertainment mediums is as concrete and worth consideration as one garnered through real life experience? Is it possible for a reaction from such a medium to be bolstered over a real life experience because such an experience is being added to?
I see forms of entertainment as a way to not only hold my interest, but also to keep me thinking. When I watch a movie or a television show I want to feel a connection to a character and I want to attempt to rationalize choices the characters make. It is because of this that I feel a minor emotional connection with the characters and world I am experiencing. It is because of this that I feel like we can get a true emotional reaction out of these mediums, but only under certain limitations. First I think there must be a real life experience to draw upon. An example being that a death of a relative in a movie could trigger an emotional reaction from one viewer but not another, where one would have that experience to draw upon and the other would not.
In the case of Myself; Yourself I felt this connection to the characters because I could see my past in some of the same experiences. I could see myself in the role of the protagonist through the entire series. I saw one of my good friends from my early time in college in each new role. Situations between characters felt genuine and the emotions that were conveyed through the characters felt real. Perhaps I just had the misfortune/fortune of having similar (let me be clear not the same events, but ones that could be interchanged) events transpire at points in my life. I think this is why for the 3rd time ever watching or reading something I actually shed a tear. The other times were one from a novel and the other from a television series.
Myself: Yourself is a characterization piece. It is an anime that is based completely around plausible real life situations, and the whole plot is basically the evolution of the various characters over time. The main characters are all high school age so it may seem like the situations would be childish, however most of the themes delt with are those of a more adult world.
Here is the question I pose to the intelligent community of the escapist. Is it possible for an entertainment medium(including books, movies, music, gaming, television)to provide the viewer or reader with a true emotional reaction? By this I am asking if the reaction we receive from entertainment mediums is as concrete and worth consideration as one garnered through real life experience? Is it possible for a reaction from such a medium to be bolstered over a real life experience because such an experience is being added to?
I see forms of entertainment as a way to not only hold my interest, but also to keep me thinking. When I watch a movie or a television show I want to feel a connection to a character and I want to attempt to rationalize choices the characters make. It is because of this that I feel a minor emotional connection with the characters and world I am experiencing. It is because of this that I feel like we can get a true emotional reaction out of these mediums, but only under certain limitations. First I think there must be a real life experience to draw upon. An example being that a death of a relative in a movie could trigger an emotional reaction from one viewer but not another, where one would have that experience to draw upon and the other would not.
In the case of Myself; Yourself I felt this connection to the characters because I could see my past in some of the same experiences. I could see myself in the role of the protagonist through the entire series. I saw one of my good friends from my early time in college in each new role. Situations between characters felt genuine and the emotions that were conveyed through the characters felt real. Perhaps I just had the misfortune/fortune of having similar (let me be clear not the same events, but ones that could be interchanged) events transpire at points in my life. I think this is why for the 3rd time ever watching or reading something I actually shed a tear. The other times were one from a novel and the other from a television series.
