Waiting For My Own

With all the many variations of high school focused or generally school based anime, there are quite a few that focus on something as pressing issue for many humans in-between child and adult. That issue being a sense of belonging, and wanting to fit in, mixed with the desire to be unique. Really these two urges are somewhat conflicting in the sense that in order to fit in you need to, at the very least, have some common ground to build a relationship off of. So balancing that is where the tricky part comes in, and there aren't that many anime that capture the aspect of belonging while still maintaining some kind of character independence.

When it comes to people that simply never felt like they have fit in anywhere, there isn't that much to go off of, since they lack the experience that is needed to lean on. So it takes a lot of effort to make someone like this realize that, for the most part, rather than distancing yourself from others, you have to meet in the middle just so both participates don't feel like they are sacrificing more than the other -- and both are on equal footing. The one anime this season that is both taking on such a topic and executing it quite well is Noragami via our rather troublesome Shinki named Yukine.

The more recent episodes featured the quickly spiralling down Yukine into "sin". The driving force most of Yukine's action had to do with him not accepting the fact that he is dead and is a sentient being unable to interact with the living; being surrounded by so many of the living, who have the opportunity to do so much, while his experience is a lot more limited. That essentially backed Yukine into a corner and not being able to do much about his issues, Yukine just snapped and took it out on all those people who dare to enjoy their existence.

Unfortunately, his actions aren't something that live in a box, so it affect others -- more specifically Yato -- and that fact lead to Hiyori asking for help from Kofuku and Daikoku. What Yukine needed to overcome was that his actions do matter, since it negatively affects the people he is ignoring, and truly accept that he is dead. The processes itself was very hard to watch, but I'm glad that it turned out alright. However, the act of accept your circumstances is something that is imperative for both growth and being able to feel like you are a part of something; interestingly enough, not only does Noragami tackle this subject, but so does the anime Chuunibyou Demo Koi Ga Shita! Ren -- which is also in this season.

A lot of what Chuunibyou is is the balance of ones independence and being part of a group. The independence is of course "chuunibyou" which many of the main characters in this series suffer from. The interesting approach taken is the fact that chuunibyou is not only the problem, but also the solution to their problem of not feeling accepted by others. And even trying to bury ones past, like Nibutani and Yuuta have tried, there most likely will be something that will dig it back up; it is up to the character to decide if they will bear with that haunted past or continue to run from it.

At the end of the day, it's a difficult subject to tackle; however, consider the demographic that anime tend to target, I would argue that this is the topic that should be talked about often -- at least for the high school focused ones. There are many ways to approach and I only really covered two. Whether it is belonging by finding a group of people similar to you, or being able to accept some fact and working toward common ground, a medium like anime really does have an interesting position over teenagers; whether that is a blessing or curse, it is interesting to see the different interpretation of finding or assimilating into a group to feel like you belong.