Anime Lessons #1

Life Lessons That Anime Taught Me

When people look at me, the first thing that they would notice would be my oversized thick-framed nerd glasses. A gift that I got from watching a lot of television especially cartoons at a really young age, ignoring my parents’ pleas and warnings. Just like any other spoiled daughter, I was naughty in my own way. However, compared to the life lessons that I got from them and how they shaped my thoughts, now I just shrug this off as no more than a small side-effect. Unlike cartoons, I didn’t watch a lot of anime but most of my lessons were from the very few I watched. As a way of thanking them, I thought about writing the lessons that they taught me. The first one in this series is Cardcaptor Sakura.

Cardcaptor Sakura:

This was the first anime that I accidentally stumbled upon when I was 9 years old. I was intrigued by the protagonist who was of the same age as me and capable of magic. This show unleashed my love for anime forever. The story focuses on Sakura Kinomoto, an elementary school student who discovers magical powers after accidentally freeing a set of magical cards; she must retrieve the cards to prevent catastrophe. Each card has a specific power within it, that needs to be fought with, arrested and then captured. For example, to capture a fight card, it must be fought and defeated first. Though the plot seems interesting with all the magic, ideas to capture and mysteries, the central theme of the show is love and human relationships. It taught more than that.  

It Showed Me Leadership:

When I was young, I wished to be the leader of the class at least once. To be one, I had to be the topper of my class. Wondering how these are related? Enter India. As many from India could relate, in most of the schools like mine, teachers never bothered about leadership qualities. The topper of the term would be the leader of the class in the next term. So I wanted to be one mainly because the leader of the class gets to be dominating, gets to threaten students and though there was a lot of back-talking, the whole class is always nice to him because duh, he’s the leader. If I think about it now, it’s kind of the system that formed the base of our political system. Ok, let’s not deviate. So I studied really hard and became the leader for a term. With my head held high, I developed a bossy attitude with ‘One more word and I will tell on you’. Once my term ended I realized that my own friends kind of ignored me and despised me. I thought leaders are supposed to be this way and assumed that they were just jealous. And on one boring day, as I watched this show, I thought about how lucky this girl Sakura was as she gets to master all the cards and gets to do magic, being the master of all of them. Slowly as the show progressed, I understood that she wasn’t lucky but she deserved it. This dialogue exchange here destroyed all the myths and thoughts that I had about leadership and made me grow new ones.

“Hear my voice, Clow cards, I am not your mistress and I may never be. I am your friend, and as your friend, I make this request, please help me”

And the next moment, though she didn’t have her wand, didn’t have her strength, didn’t dominate, with no attitude, she was able to get all the powers from those cards.

*to Yue* - I never want to be your master. I just want to be your friend. - SAKURA

This kind of symbolism easily gets inside a child’s head in minutes compared to the essays or long dull speeches about leadership. The next term, I made new friends and took more responsibility instead of bossing around. That’s when I realized the difficulty of it, that I couldn’t handle it well and declined the title even when I became a topper.

It Taught Me Friendship:

I now believe that our entire set of habits, behaviour, and character is framed by our friends more than our parents. Humans being social animals, always need constant reassurance and encouragement on what they do. This kind of social acceptance starts at school. Every individual gets this ‘social acceptance’ from friends. Nobody wishes to be unique because if you are unique, you are tagged as ‘weird’. So if you are a guy and if you like holding hands with other guys, you’re the laughing stock of the year. Believe me, I have mocked people too. I wish I had looked back at this show and realized the truth instead of being swayed away by the opinions of people in the surrounding. If I think about it now, if something is right, without social acceptance, it does not become wrong. In schools, when two friends argue, the common friends around them support either one and end up creating the ego ‘I won’t apologize first’. Right or wrong doesn’t matter, the person with the least supporters would have to apologize first in-order to stay friends with the group. So, I had this friend at school with whom I fought for some silly reason. We spent days without talking and giving each other a self-satisfied smirk whenever something bad happened to the other. We were just mad over each other forgetting the reason behind it too. I had a group of girls on my side so I decided that we would deliberately talk about her, ignore her till she apologizes. Until...

Yue glared at her. "I am not your friend, Sakura. I am Yue the Judge,

and I'm only warning you so you know how truly hopeless your chances of

defeating me are. The Judgment begins now." Yue raised his hand and

formed a crystal. "You may use all of the Cards in your possession.

Now…try to defeat me.”

"I won't fight you, onii-chan!" Sakura shouted. "I won’t!"

In spite of Sakura’s friend turning into an unknown person whose only wish is to defeat her, she refuses to fight. Even when she’s badly hurt, she only fights back in order to bring her friend back and not to defeat him. Though everyone around her asked her to fight back hard and hurt him, she did not. This is because no matter how much he tried to hurt her, she knew that her friend would never mean to. No matter what others say, she should not believe them because they don’t know her friend, she does. This made me think of my friend and the memories that we had together. The very next day, when I initiated the apology,  she told me how badly she wanted this to end soon but she just couldn’t initiate. I realized that I should never let ego kill any of my friendships ever again.

It Showed Me The Power Of Love:

Like friendship, love also requires social acceptance for a couple to be in it. For instance, if the girl’s beautiful, an average looking guy can never get her. If the guy’s really rich, the girl should be too beautiful to fall in love with him. Oh and don’t get me started on caste and religion. This is what the filthy people with guava-seed sized brains, forming the majority of society, have created. Syaoran Li is yet another 9-year old boy who lands in Sakura’s town as her rival. Gradually he starts to respect her and begins helping her. By the end of the show, he falls in love with her. The feeling becomes mutual. Unlike Bollywood, their friendship slowly earns trust, respect, affection, understanding, attraction and when they see the beautiful castle they built with all of these, they name it love.

The Hug!
https://lunastarredshaw2497.tumblr.com/post/173614987737/cardcaptor-sakura-clear-card-episode-14-hug-i

Well, the expectations set is just right!

There are much more anime teach us. Not just symbolism and magic, they teach us life. In spite of just watching them, I always used to associate my life with them. I was so influenced that I believed that I would definitely get magical powers when I grew up.

Now when I look back, I guess I did! I just didn’t know I did.

Ending with a final quote,

The world you can see isn't all out there. In the world, there are a lot of fascinating things that no living soul has ever seen! And just in knowing that is one cause for happiness. I'm sure you can find happiness meant for you! It might be something you might not quite understand yet. But you'll find it, that much is certain! - Fujitaka Kinomoto