This weekend, I did something I had never done before: binge an entire 13-episode anime AND its movie. I usually like to consume media at a much slower pace and sit with what I’ve just watched in an episode, but two things colluded in this case to make me buckle my usual habit: my weekdays are packed (making me wait till next weekend to finish the series), and the story was just so good that it kept me hooked wanting to see the next episode of the arc.

This is not meant to be a review. You will find much better-written reviews by people with far more anime expertise than I do.

Instead, let’s talk about why I related so much with the themes of this show. I think the overarching theme that ran through many of its arcs is that we all hold on to bad decisions or unfortunate circumstances from the past, and it prevents us from moving forward with our lives.

I love the idea of alternate timelines which branch off from the different decisions that we make. It’s a bit comforting to think that we do have free will and a world of possibilities exist in front of us. Certainly a far more uplifting than the idea of fatalism.

This liking of alternate timelines also leads me down endless computational time spent agonising over what could’ve been. There are a few train-wrecks that were inevitable, but I still fantasise about ways to have avoided. There are the people, there are the circumstances, and there’s how you dealt with them. It’s a never-ending Rubik's cube of possible arrangements and rearrangements!

So, anyway, my point (if there is any) is that in addition to having anxiety about your future life and career, you can also have endless fun thinking about all the ways the past could’ve been different too. Just get creative with it, and I promise you a never-ending supply of sleepless nights!