This picture almost moved me to tears. Almost. I could feel my tears knocking behind my eyes, begging to flow. Why must a person suffer so much? Is it really because of society? Or is it because of himself? Because he has accepted all of society’s feedback and marked them as important?

…

In the case of something like ‘Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu’ I can understand shifting around the episodes to make it easier. Nelvana here in the US re-arranged/re-made the ‘Cardcaptor Sakura’ series, turning into the laughable kid’s show ‘Cardcaptors’, and at the time I was utterly outraged, but as I matured as an anime fan I came to terms with such things. They were the company that originally made CareBears (if you know what that is), so the fact that Sakura had a crush on Yukito, Rika was in love with her teacher (which was even reciprocated I believe), and Syaoran’s confused feelings toward another guy- all of that seems pretty damned mature when you compare it to the totally kid-friendly themes CareBears used for it episodes/movies. The show was purchased to be aired on morning television for very young audiences, so no one can fault them for their changes- and Pioneer released the original 70 episode box in Japanese, and without changes, shortly afterward.

There are millions of perspectives in this world, different ways of looking at things, motivations behind actions- and we’ll never know most of them no matter how deeply we read into what’s going on. If I have any advice to give to you as an anime fan, it’s not to take things ‘too’ seriously in an effort to offset the kids and companies you think aren’t taking anime seriously enough as an art-form. I’ve seen fans rant for days on problems with the anime industry, from CG usage to fan-service overloads, bad dubs and bad subs, shows getting licensed that shouldn’t be, and shows not getting licensed that should be, etc… It’s not a bad thing to research the industry of something you love, like knowing player stats and who’s getting traded to which team, it really enriches the experience, but when you start to take it too seriously it might end up hurting your love for the game itself. I’m not saying this is going to happen to you, but just to be careful ^_^;

Sorry if I’m overstepping here, I honestly don’t know much about you and we haven’t had the chance to talk yet, but as I’m one of those people who crashes from taking things too seriously myself, I really felt it important to voice my concerns on this. I hope you don’t mind.