On Writing, Anime, & Mental Health

I’ve talked about my connection in writing to video games, but not yet the anime portion. You see, Kari’s entire make-up (clothes, attitude, powers and appearance) was a combination of own desires, Kingdom Hearts, Disgaea, and the belovedly ancient anime called Inuyasha. At first, Kari was Inuyasha. She was stubborn, independently lonely, and oh-so in love without ever being able to trust it. Since her creation, I’ve swayed from that set up quite a bit. She’s more of an original character now, though the traces of inspiration remain in her, my villains, and my plot. I think I’ll make another post about that soon, because Naraku was my childhood DREAM. His hair, his eyes, his dastardly plans!

Ehem. Anyway~

Recently I’ve started watching Fruits Basket, a slightly-less-old anime that was remade in 2019. It’s a cutesy thing that I believe would be coined under “slice of life” anime, based on the Chinese zodiac. In the story, each zodiac is a human possessed by the animal spirit, and their back stories unfold around a central human girl, the protagonist Tohru.

Very sweet, romantic, and a tear-jerker, even. Yet this is where the mental health comes in.

We all write from experience, when we can. I’ve heard that readers can tell a lot about a writer from their characters’ personalities and traumas. For those who have read my work, or will in the future, I’ll let you enjoy psychoanalyzing Kari and I with that lens.

I write trauma, anxiety, depression, and a bit of DID, sometimes without ever realizing it. Some of these even highlight themselves within my villains (alongside narcissism or sociopathy). These feel typical to me in writing, and reading. The things Fruits Basket showed me were a little different, and something that probably isn’t very uncommon, but that I would like to emulate as well.

*SPOILERS for Fruits Basket season 1 and 2*

We are all in darkness, some deeper than others, and if we don’t reach for the light, we will never escape.

Promising you’ll stay doesn’t make someone else’s mental health your priority, burden, or responsibility.

As of writing this blog, I have just finished season 2 of the 2019 remake, and these two thoughts absolutely glared at me. What funny little thought-provoking ideas to be had from an anime about an overly kind girl who finds the good in everything, and everyone. Because, like our writing, this anime is so much more than the surface: it is deeper, and meaningful.

In the anime, the zodiac characters are centered around a person named Akito. Akito is revealed to be extremely cruel and heartless, manipulating and emotionally and physically abusing the zodiac characters. For this post, I’m going to center on Yuki (the rat) and Kureno (the rooster).

Yuki starts as a quiet, passive, very lonely young man. As the anime goes on, we are shown his past with Akito: Akito’s assurances that Yuki is worthless and alone, forever meant to be so. Only Akito will ever be his friend, and that word is used very, very loosely here.

We all have darkness, but we need to find the light to survive.

Yuki learns that Akito is wrong, though it takes him many years to do so, and he has one of the bravest messages I have seen in this anime thus far: “It’s okay to feel weak sometimes. It’s okay to be afraid. The important thing is that we face our fears.” Akito was never right about Yuki’s usefulness or worth in life, and Akito never had the right to try and define that; it was always Yuki’s job to do that, in spite of what everyone said or did.

In this, I see a lot of Kari. A demon in a world mainly dominated by humans, she is thought to be dangerous and violent purely on sight. She strives hard to be different, to prove to others that this isn’t true: in the end, though, all that ever mattered was how she saw herself. What an absolutely wondrous message to find in an anime, a show considered for kids.

Kureno is similar but also very different from Yuki; at the time of this blog, he has not advanced beyond Akito, though I believe he will eventually (I have not watched the original anime or read the manga, purely for this first experience). His relationship with Akito is both deeper and more dangerous than Yuki’s was. Through Kureno’s story, I believe Akito has some darkness of their own, as we all do, but it is one they refuse to acknowledge and face.

For me, this is hilariously apt not only in my writing of villains, but also in real life. Haven’t we all had that one friend who went through shit, and never quite got over it? They made appearances, certainly, but you could tell it really pricked them all the same. That’s Akito, and Kureno is the friend, you and I, who said “I’ll stick around, no matter what.”

Well, friends, I’m here to tell you, (specifically thanks to my friend Olivia, who has helped me see this as well) that is, in itself, a form of abuse. That person, our Akito, is using us, even if they don’t truly realize it (though Akito definitely knows what they’re doing.) Kureno, I think, realizes this too, but what does he say? “I promised I’d stick by Akito’s side, no matter what.”

I wanted to scream at my screen, “Kureno, that promise doesn’t mean anything if you aren’t getting the same adoration and loyalty in return!” I was enraged and heart broken for Kureno: he has a real chance outside, a chance none of the other zodiac members have, and he’s holding himself back purely for the sake of a promise. A promise made to a manipulative, cruel, narcissistic person.

I’ve considered how to relate this to my writing for the sake of this blog. I know I have written side characters with this thought in mind, characters written purely to be thrown away, and it makes this all the more worse. I wonder if Kureno will ever get his happy ending, his true freedom away from Akito. I hope he does. I hope all of us do.