The first anime I ever watched (that I can recall) was “Bocchi the Rock”.  It was maybe a year ago, I had heard good things about it and saw some clips on YouTube, and thought “what the heck”.

And I loved it.

But it’s not really because “she’s just like me fr”.  She’s really not.  I mean, yes, she is a lot like me, but there are some significant differences.  I did identify with the social anxiety a lot, though.  I also identified with the way she kind of seemed to secretly want to be dragged into doing stuff she was scared to do.  To be clear, I hate that, and often resent people for doing it, but about half the time I end up not really being too upset about doing the thing itself.

What I loved about it was its atmosphere.

When she’s in the live house, I can almost smell it.  It’s musty, kind of dank, maybe with hints of smoke or some other stuff, maybe smells a bit like booze or coffee, and I can see absolutely why Bocchi said “I’m home” when she walked in.  That was the atmosphere of the anime.  That was what the anime was about.  The whole thing felt like Starry.

To me, that’s the genius of Bocchi, and pretty much every other anime I really love.  It makes you feel like you’re there, it makes you feel like you want to be there, it draws you into its world and makes you feel stuff.  Not every anime does that.  But the ones that do, do it very well.

And, looking back on it… I think that’s what’s missing in all of my artistic endeavors, and why I keep failing.  It’s not even that I don’t know how to do that… it’s that I don’t even know what doing that is even like.  How do I take the sights and smells and sounds of my memories and turn them into things that let others see and smell and hear the same things that I did?  Because that’s, ultimately, what I have to do.

I did it once.  In a fanfiction.  And I don’t think I’ve ever done it again.