12 Days of Anime 2019 – the Year of Fluff

I’ve changed a lot over the years. I recently wrote about how maternal I was becoming. I suppose that growing more sentimental goes hand in hand with that! I used to hate cutesy, romantic fluff. As far as I was concerned, it just got in the way of the good stuff (if you know what I mean)… In fact, one of my very first posts on WWB (waaay back in 2012 – dear God, don’t try to find it) was on that very subject. But, over time, as sex dwindled in importance to love, friendship, and commitment, I’ve slowly come to love fluff! This is reflected in the anime I loved most this year. 

12 Days of Anime 2019 – Ty Gets Motherly

Many of you already know this, but for the benefit of the few of you who don’t, I’ve been an anime fan for a long time. An entire decade, to be precise. And while my love for anime hasn’t wavered in the slightest, a lot of other things have changed in that time. I’m not just talking about my taste in shows, but my life circumstances and how these have influenced the way I relate to what I’m watching… 

When I first started watching anime I was but a 15-year-old girl. Chronically unpopular at school, I found myself drawn to shows that featured large casts of characters, shows that made me feel like part of something. I was also desperate for love, for my first “proper” boyfriend (who just had to be tall, dark, and mysterious. Hey, I grew up during that awful Twilight craze!). This meant that when I chanced upon an anime character who met these criteria, I would fall head over heels for the guy and spend hours wishing I could meet somebody just like them… 

Thankfully, I’ve grown up a little since then! I’ve made peace with the fact that I’ll never be Little Miss Popular and I’ve been married for nearly three years now. My husband’s not the tall, dark, mysterious vampire that I longed for in my youth, but I’m still pretty keen on him! Now that I’m older, wiser, more mature and just starting to settle down and start a family of my own, I no longer look at anime characters, particularly boys, with heart-shaped eyes. No, I now view them in a way that is far more motherly. This has never been truer than during this year, when a great number of anime characters have sent my motherly instincts into overdrive… 

Fruits Basket (2019) Episode 18 – the Littlest Sohma

We’ve seen her in every OP and ED since episode one, but during this week’s episode we finally got to meet the littlest (and, arguably, the cutest) Sohma: the tiger of the zodiac, Kisa. It’s a happy coincidence that Kisa’s episode should fall on the very same week I take a look at another victim of bullying: March Comes In Like A Lion’s Hina Kawamoto. It’s interesting that, while the two girls handled it in two very different ways, Hina loudly and defiantly challenging her bullies, Kisa silently bearing up under the weight of her pain, I really think that one was no more or no less brave than the other. It would be easy to argue that Kisa, unlike Hina, (literally) ran away from her problems, but I would argue, even more strongly, that she was, in her own way, just as brave…