Evans and Anime: Something to do with Human Interest.

I guess I’m a whole different person now.

Just a few weeks ago, I was a classical musician. The next Horowitz. All due to that amazing show I watched, Your Lie in April. Then, a weekend later, I was reintroduced to Bill Evans, through the show Kids on the Slope. I immediately realized that my passion was in jazz, not classical music.

But then I watched White Album 2, which reignited by youthful spirit to form a band with a couple of friends. And then it was Cowboy Bebop, taking me back to jazz, and somehow my lust to become a space bounty hunter thing that also happened to be part of a criminal syndicate. Just watch it, you’ll see why. Actually, why don’t you do yourself a favor and watch all of those. I guarantee that you’ll like at least one of them.

Even the bounty hunter one. Trust me.

Junk and Treasure

The funny thing is, had I not watched any of those shows, I probably wouldn’t have gotten interested in any of those hobbies/wishes I just mentioned. It goes to show that everything we watch dictates our decisions.

And, when you think about it, most of what we even do is based on something we learned in school, at home, or from something that entertained us. Ideas are created, then passed down, and changed. It’s quite rare that we get someone who is able to create something completely revolutionary, with little to no real-world input. They needed something to stir their thought.

Sometimes, the best information and ideas come from what we’ve already seen. Every human looks at things differently, and as that classic (or in other words, cheesy) adage goes, “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.”

The Main Idea

Clearly, there’s a lot of influence on our lives, especially from streaming the thousands of hours of Netflix, Crunchyroll, YouTube, and every other cable-killing video service.

And that begs the question, where do we get our interests from? How has that changed overtime?

A History Lesson

Remember growing up before 2010? I don’t. I do, however, know a couple of things about it though. Thank the parents for that. Friendships were made over popular objects, like TV shows that aired weekly (that you couldn’t binge on late into a weekend night unless your mom bought the DVD after many agonizing weeks of not watching), or video games (that you bought from a brick-and-mortar store).

Conversations became predictions. Everyone got the content around the same time, and helped each other through it in the process of completing/watching/playing it themselves.

This may sound similar to what we do today, and in many ways, it is. For example, many of said cable-killers only release an episode per week. Here’s the difference. Before 2010, If you missed an episode one week (let’s assume you didn’t record it, either), you wouldn’t be able to watch it, and instead would be forced to get the information from your friends or fellow-watchers.

Today, we can just close all our blinds and watch all the way from episode one to the most recent one. No breaks. No shitty ads about toys that people are never gonna buy. No getting up 20 minutes early on a Monday just to watch an episode. No getting cut off by Dad to get your ass to school.

Now today’s kids sound spoiled.

Why that History Matters

But there is something a little worse about the new system. We lose some interaction with others. All that time locked up in your room, eyes glued to your screen, could have been spent with your friends, talking about getting together to watch as a group. Must suck to be the one who doesn’t get to go. Why? Because you had to finish episode 6 after (generic character name) supposedly died, only for them to come back to life, like, 2 episodes later.

It seems silly that we lose interaction with others about a certain topic while we spend more time devoted to that topic, but that’s how social lives work.

And remember, someday you’ll watch something and realize what you can become or create.

So why not stop using your ex’s Netflix account to binge on House of Cards and instead go out for a walk? Get some inspiration, so that you can be the thinker, not the copier.