1. notleia says:

    I guess it would be a boring story if it was all GO TO THERAPY, DO NOT COLLECT $200. Japan has worse statistics than America does with suicide, and I imagine it doesn’t help that they have a history of ritual/honor suicide.

    Also this isn’t quite a happy nice time anime review, where’s my happy nice time?

  2. Sparks of Ember says:

    I usually think of these types of stories as the lost’s attempts at plugging a wound, not knowing or realizing the only true healing. Often attempting to inspire or instill meaning in their lives through their family or profession.

    (Full Moon O Sagashite is another anime with a strong message against suicide.)

    • Audie says:

      There may be something to what you say. Things like friendship are good, but even they can go bad, or lead us down some bad paths. The Bible has a few warning, for example in Proverbs, about being around bad companions.

  3. Autumn Grayson says:

    What you said about sharing more friendship and love reminds me of some things I’ve been thinking about when people bring up bullying as a reason people commit suicide. Bullying is wrong and needs to be prevented, but I see some people categorize things as bullying that aren’t actually bullying(according to some people simply disagreeing with more liberal viewpoints such as homosexuality are automatic bullying no matter what…) People act like suicides will stop completely if everyone is politically correct all the time and agrees with homosexuality, or any number of other things.

    Instead of teaching people to attack those who are not politically correct or that disagree with certain viewpoints, we need to also help people learn to be strong and independent, and happy with themselves so they realize they aren’t worthless just because a bully says they are. It is important to also teach people to care about those around them, and bullying should be prevented, but suicide rates would probably go down if we could teach people that their happiness and reason for living shouldn’t solely rely on how other people treat them. Realizing this at a young age helped me through a lot. When I had a hard time dealing with kids at school I was still able to be happy because I learned to be content with spending time by myself, reading or drawing or whatever. I also learned to evaluate criticism I received. If it had some truth to it, I would do my best to improve in that area, and if there wasn’t any truth to it, I might feel a little angry, but I would try not to let it get to me other than that. We can’t rely on other people to make us happy, but in many cases we can influence our own behavior.

    Of course that won’t completely prevent suicide either, but it’s something that would probably help a lot of people.

    • notleia says:

      “…if we could teach people that their happiness and reason for living shouldn’t solely rely on how other people treat them…”

      There’s just something really sad about this. Not that it’s there’s not a grain of truth in this, but humans are social creatures that rely a whole heck of a lot on feedback from other people. Feeling bad when people treat you horribly is a normal response, and I don’t think it’s one that really should be “fixed.” It probably can’t be “fixed,” either, just ignored/repressed. Evaluating sources is something that even adults have trouble with, and while it may help, it may or may not actually do anything about the problem. Even if you accept that your teacher or boss is a bunghole, they can still undermine your well-being with unreasonable workloads and unfair punishments.
      But people can accomplish things on a group or societal level that they can’t on an individual level. We can use what power we have to stop crappy things in our vicinity to those with less power. We can stop blaming people who leave crappy situations, because sometimes the best/only way to win is to not play the game.

      • Autumn Grayson says:

        Yeah. And I don’t really see it as a perfect solution or something that anyone can do perfectly, but it certainly helps to work toward not being defined by other people. The way it works for me is that I like people and want good things for them, but I’m not going to let myself feel worthless just because other people don’t like me, and it’s taken a while to get to that point, but I am very nearly there in a lot of other ways. It takes realizing that other people are impossible to please all the time, that they aren’t nearly always right in their evaluations of others, and that they don’t truly have the authority to judge whether I deserve to live or whatever.

        Like you said, though, people can still make people’s life hell through causing problems for them with unreasonable workloads, etc. But I think it helps when we can evaluate a situation and realize if we don’t deserve it. Bosses and teachers aren’t a permanent part of our lives, so if we realize we don’t deserve their treatment we can work toward getting out of that situation, and realize it doesn’t necessarily matter if people blame us for leaving that bad situation. It’s ok to feel a little bad when people criticize us and we need to take other people’s feelings into account, but we should work on not letting them rule us to an unreasonable extent.

        I can name examples of how this has played out in my life if you like and it is something I’m still working on, but I do feel like I’m in a far better place than I used to be.

What do you think?