Lynna’s Journey (Entry #4): Forgetting Stories

Lynna’s Journey will be posted on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month this summer.

Have you ever forgotten an anime?

I have. Not just the boring ones, but some that I enjoyed.

Recently, I saw a thumbnail from Akagami no Shirayukihime. Although it was from a season I hadn’t watched, it took me an embarrassingly long time to remember who those characters were, and this was despite me liking Akagami fairly well. I did eventually remember, of course, but even now, I can’t really remember precisely how the first season ended or what all the core plot points were, and even the scenes I especially like lack crispness in my mind. Maybe it’s because it was episodic, but I had expected to remember it a little bit more.

When I was a child, I was so good at remembering stories, my parents would complain to me that they really didn’t need to know every detail that had happened in that movie I had watched at a birthday party. Now, if I don’t finish a book fast enough, I have to go back and remind myself what even happened.

Is there a remedy for this? Do I even want a remedy?

After all, one thing that is nice about forgetting is that it might be more fun to re-watch. How much I wish I could get back the experience of watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood for the first time! But unfortunately, I don’t know if I’ll ever have time to re-watch shows like Akagami, so I think I’ll have to be content knowing that I watched them, I enjoyed them, and now my partial memories are all that remain.

Sometimes, when I do get around to going over an old favorite, I don’t like it as much as I used to. I found this with a lot of my favorite childhood books. But even then, even though revisiting them was bittersweet, there was something fun about finding small details and scenes I had barely noticed before, or reminiscing about my old thoughts and opinions on certain scenes and characters.

A lot of the old anime that I first started watching were very cheesy, and I cringe a little at the thought of them, but at the same time remembering the things I used to like is like a small window that I can wave at my past self through. Although the person I used to be was somewhat embarrassing, I still don’t want to forget her.

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featured illustration by ふゆ (reprinted w/permission)

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