I watched the first three episodes of Lamune maybe two, two and a half years ago? Maybe it’s been less long. But. It was a while ago. It bored me, and I didn’t appreciate that. In the interim, I’ve watched Aria.

There’s something magical about the summer
The way the clouds look like fire,
and the sky’s so dark in comparison
The normal green of nature glows, fades to yellow
You know, that raincoat yellow you never see out there,
It’s there in the hues of summer

And a sky so wide—I don’t see it here
I’ve seen it twice, and it blew my mind both times

I wrote an essay about it, you know… about AIR, and summertime bliss
It was the first A I got in AP Language & Comp
It was the first time I put into words
Why I like AIR
The atmosphere, the sounds and the sights
It’s not about the huge gaping eyes
Or the gargantuan chins
Or the moe noises, or the rainbow hair
It’s not about the sick girls and it’s not about the words or the story

Yukito became a crow? What the fuck man, that’s shit
I couldn’t give a fuck about his scars or the past
Reminiscing, it makes me emo, why would he do it
Why would the creators do it
AIR was shit
Its plot was shit
Its characters—what characters

(I did this with Kanon and Lucky Star, Kyoto Animation you are whores)

But that’s not important because despite Owen’s hateful prodding
I know that I like AIR, and I know why, and it’s totally subjective
There’s no way for me to be wrong
Because it’s my aesthetic and I’m not forcing it on anyone

AIR glistens in my past, in Tahoe, in the summer
Every blue sky, every nostalgic moment, every bright day

I remember the beauty.

Majime na Lolikit

In July 2005, I went to Lake Tahoe. I had seen AIR earlier in the year (while it was airing), and happened to be listening to some tracks from it on my iPod as my father’s car turned the first bend that granted us a view of the lake. I think it was Aozora playing, or maybe Natsukage—I looked down at that lake, that glimmering blue body of water, and then up at the sky and saw that the clouds looked nothing like anything I’d seen in meatspace before.

I’m not a huge science person, nor am I very observant despite calling myself a writer, so I don’t know why the clouds were so different over Tahoe. I also don’t know how the brain works; how do we make connections? In what order do our experiences influence each other?

I don’t know any of that stuff, but that was the best trip of my life.

I spent hours lying on a pine beach, Natsukage in one ear through my headphones and in the other through the reality of where I was. It was summertime. It was buzzing. There were shadows everywhere, and lights everywhere, and vivid color. People were happy. I was happy. I saw some meadows around Tahoe, fields of red and yellow and purple. I was in awe.

Eventually, I stopped needing cheap thrills from my anime. In fact, twenty minutes ago I yawned my way through Mnemosyne. Maybe I’m desensitized or maybe it’s just not interesting to see all this crap thrown at me. I much prefer something more mellow, something more gentle. Aria enlightened me, in a sense. I’m not trying to sound elitist right now—I’m not going to say that Aria is the apex of anime and everyone should subscribe to it. Just, it changed my mind. About a lot of things. Opened me up to new perspectives. That’s an enlightenment.

A couple weeks ago, I blazed through Lamune. I started from the beginning. The first three episodes benefited from the feeling of nostalgia I had as I chomped through them.

All the symbols of summer were there. Watermelons, watering hoses, sunflowers, green and yellow, dazzling skies. Lamune lacked one key thing AIR had, though: the sound. If Lamune had favored me with the notes of Kawa or Enishi or Niji or Natsukage, I might have come on the spot. Instead, I was just moved.

Wait.

I just said that Lamune lacked something AIR had, yet the title of this post would indicate that Lamune was better! LOLIKIT YOU’RE NOT MAKING ANY SENSE

-sorry for that, I’m kinda tired as I’m writing this

But here’s the deal: Lamune failed to deliver something AIR delivered. But you know all that shit AIR did wrong, all that dumb shit I mentioned before? The nonsense plot, the stupid twists, the retard girls? Somehow Lamune didn’t do that. Lamune didn’t fall into those pitfalls. If it had had something to rival AIR’s soundtrack, I might like it more than Aria, even.

Why did I like it so much?

The atmosphere. The summer.

Why did I like it for those reasons?

AIR.

AIR changed the way I look at the world; it changed the way I interpret visual cues (like that summer imagery shit, and colors). That’s also an enlightenment. I couldn’t be more grateful to it. But still, it’s shit in comparison to what it opened my eyes to: the real world summer. And that, combined with my new-found love for boredom (hurray Aria!), led me to love Lamune. The sweetness of the characters’ emotions and the lack of generic anime idiocy and harem ‘comedy’ in Lamune also added to my enjoyment, but really, it’s all there in the summer.

The colors.

The imagery.

The sounds and nostalgia they evoked. Woow I’m fail otaku. I’m going to shut up soon because this is about to be 1000 words written inside the WordPress posting box. No images, no jokes, no abbreviation tags, no links, minimal formatting. What the hell is this blog coming to? All I know is that I want to go back to Tahoe, where there’s a wide sky. Word.