I am torn. Whenever I decide to allow myself to watch anime I find myself cracking my knuckles and grinding my teeth, kicking my chair and drumming my fingers… Is it shame? My loss of pride, my humanity? Nowadays, I can’t get through an entire episode without slamming off my headphones and walking out of the room in a fit of disgust. But of what? The disgust of myself, my lack of self-control, allowing myself to be sucked back in again, or the content I am subjecting myself to? What is it? What drives me to torture myself in something everyone else seems to enjoy? Seeing these cute drawings moving around and carrying out their motions brings me some sort of sick satisfaction, an “investment” I can’t fathom to describe. I can’t possibly be investing myself into these things, can I? Yet I am, amidst all of the guilt and indignity. Why is that? What drives that appeal to swallow my pride, my shame, my humanity, of all things, and jump back in, time and time again? Is it what I’m familiar with that gives me this forbidden comfort, or is it the cheap thrill of sacrilege? I cannot escape this cycle. I will forever be tortured by these thoughts until the day I die. This can only be defined as the purest form of all hell, to be tortured by my own sins, to pull myself away to the brink of it all before my mind makes the sick decision to let go again.

Anime is a curse. A curse deserved only to those who are born into it. All of the world’s pain, hatred, anger, guilt, sadness, and embarrassment is funneled into this one medium, and I pity any more soul that is pulled into the seething typhoon, the typhoon that will never suck you into its eye, but push you away at the very last moment, to lock you into a fate of eternal pain and terror.