Naho is a fairly straightforward person. She’s followed the letter faithfully, with as much courage as she could muster, and with reasonable success. The faults that have gotten her into trouble have mostly been overthinking everything, isolating herself, and her reserved personality. But while it may not stop her from saving Kakeru, there’s another thing that’s holding her back, and that’s her reluctance to consider new and different possibilities beyond the letter’s suggestions.
When there are high stakes involved, making a decision can be difficult. Naho and Suwa saw two options before them: repeat the mistakes of their future selves, or convince Kakeru not to run in the race, hopefully to his benefit. Neither of them considered that there might be a third option. As human beings, we all have limited perspectives. Although the future Naho had a better understanding of the situation, her desperation to change the past blinded her to other possibilities. Our insights are valuable and can help others, and similarly, the ideas of others can save us where we would be lost on our own.
Naho needed her friends to show her the way out of the only way she knew, and even Suwa alone wasn’t enough. We need to reach out to others, because when we do we gain an infinitely greater amount of knowledge and support than if we had remained alone. In a similar way, however, we need to seek God’s will and guidance, because he can show up paths we’ve never even considered, if we’ll let him. His ways are higher than ours, and he knows all our thoughts and feelings, as well as everything that has ever happened or ever will. Not only does God know more about a situation than we’ll know in retrospect, but he is very creative and already knows what the best option is, and then the choice is ours to trust him.
The revelation that Naho’s other friends also got letters did not really come as a surprise to me, of course, and I’m really glad that we didn’t have to wait any longer to find out. I am resigned to Naho and Kakeru’s lack of relationship status, and am mostly satisfied that they at least know they like each other. I was a little surprised that Kakeru expected Naho to hold hands with him without their relationship progressing at all. Seems a little unrealistic to me, but they’re young and probably have no idea what they’re doing. I’m glad that they’re going to start deviating from the letter, which seems to have served its purpose. I do wonder, though: if they keep making their own decisions, what will happen if they still fail to save Kakeru? Will it just lead to them wondering if they would have succeeded had they followed the letter more diligently? For the sake of Naho and her friends, I hope not.
- The 12 Days of Christmas Anime, Day 11: Angel Beats! - 12.24.2018
- Lynna’s Journey (Entry #8): Where Would You Like To Be? - 11.28.2018
- Lynna’s Journey (Entry #7) The Old and The New - 11.07.2018