Thanks for the post.

@sybilant: Don’t worry, I’ll steal kyun-kyun away from you some day. Twenty year age differences are nothing these days…

At least I have kyun-kyun now.

A really great post overall. As a Geass-tard I should mention Lelouch has a similar moment when he’s walking away from the Academy before heading off to China with his happiness-is-glass soliloquy.

Reminiscing and nostalgia really kinda sucks, especially in regard to people you’ll never see again. There is a very fine line between bittersweet and just bitter.

It is said that the outcome is not what matters, but the journey. I say people say that because the outcome has a bad tendency to suck boatloads of ass. Life is the journey and at the end of it you die like a punk.

It’s the difference between a Solanin (which is arguably bleaker than H & C and a Bokurano I believe (unless one looks back fondly at the memory of naked little girls getting broken then killed, as a minor consequence of an endless loop of competing universes annihilating each other).

@DiGiKerot: as I said toward the beginning of my post,

Now, I understand that the entire premise of this post is a technicality. sybilant is welcome to enjoy what she enjoys and dislike what she dislikes, and if the ending of H&C is too sad for her, it’s too sad for her.

So yes. If Takemoto’s ending is depressing for someone, it’s still depressing for that person. I’m not telling people how to feel.

As for ghostlightning’s “post,” there is none; this post was inspired by an IM convo :P

But putting that aside for a second, such a large part of nostalgia is the yearning for days gone by and the knowledge that such days will never return, the craving for past experiences you’ll never have again. It’s depressing, mournful, sad – nostalgia is inherently tragic.

Is it tragic to appreciate the past? As far as I can tell, definitions of nostalgia involve affection but not mourning. You celebrate the past, you are happy for it, and you wish for it. This is different from actively bemoaning the present.

I imagine that a sentiment of longing for the past and a sentiment for hating the present can go hand in hand (see: Takaki), but it is not the latter that’s in question here (it is not the latter that makes Takaki smile).

The question was why can they smile, right?

I dunno, as long as someone can smile, I don’t see tragedy. But then, I’m an optimist and this is a very dumb semantic argument as has been established. I’m going to quit while I’m ahead.

But putting that aside for a second, such a large part of nostalgia is the yearning for days gone by and the knowledge that such days will never return, the craving for past experiences you’ll never have again. It’s depressing, mournful, sad – nostalgia is inherently tragic.

So, if you want to argue semantics, it thereby follows that whilst the ending to H&C isn’t a tragedy, it is still tragic ^^;

Or it could just be that I’m depressed and I don’t realise it, whatever works for you. I think my actual point was supposed to be that regardless of whether or not it’s a tragedy, it’s still difficult for anyone who relates to Takemoto not to find such an ending at least a little depressing.