Retroversy

I have been watching a video essay by Salari titled “Japan Doesn’t Understand Nihilism (Mostly)” which explores why anime and JRPGs so often default to theatrical nihilism as the motivation for their villains, and what that tells us about Japanese society, and the conclusion hit me like a truck.

At the end of the video, Salari posits that this kind of writing, which usually advocates for the heroes’ power of friendship as the only cure for the villain’s nihilism, can actually completely backfire if it doesn’t realize that a lack of meaningful relationships is exactly what makes people into nihilists in the first place. To someone who feels as if life has no meaning, the idea that bonds give life meaning, is not only hypocritical, it might even be infuriating. It’s offering the cause of a problem as a solution.

To quote the essayist in question: “The problem is, according to the stories being told so frequently, the solution is to find friends, and to form unbreakable bonds with them, which simply isn’t an option when you’re working 80 hours a week or studying at a school every day but Sunday. It’s a nice message, and these stories can indeed be inspiring, but I think it can also end up serving as a reminder for what people don’t have, and make them feel even worse.”

These words hit me like a truck, because I realized I was one of those people. I grew up practically without friends, and instead inundated myself with stories about how friends are the only things that can save you from utter despair. Surely that can’t have been healthy. I remember getting depressed when I realized that the characters in Persona 4 weren’t actually my friends, that they had been designed and written simply to convince me of an illusion.

Now, contrary to what Salari implies, this realization didn’t make me into a nihilist. I mean, I would say I am a nihilist — at least in the sense that I agree with Salari’s (and Albert Camus’) view that existence is inherently meaningless — but I am not the kind of nihilist that anime and JRPGs usually cart out as the embodiment of all evil. For starters, to me the inherent meaninglessness of life is the very reason why we should provide meaning through kindness and empathy, as opposed to an excuse for callousness and cruelty.

On the other hand, I do believe the often naive moral many Japanese stories love to hammer home has had some negative effect on my mental health. For the longest time I have held the belief that a friend isn’t a friend until your relationship is as intense, your kindness is as unconditional, your values and beliefs are as common and your trust is as mutual as all of these aspects are when portrayed in anime and JRPGs. This has caused me to set absurd standards for other people and be absolutely terrified of opening up too much to others, just in case they might scatter the illusion of true companionship by not thinking or feeling the exact same way as I do on just about any old triviality.

Because of this seemingly wholesome ideal nesting itself in my impressionable brain, I can still only count the number of people I would consider true “friends” on a single hand. Does that mean that there’s less than five people standing between me and absolute despair? I would not like to find out.