Kasumi does everything perfectly, in a system that tells you doing everything perfectly will net the perfect results. Life isn't as easy as getting everything through hard work, however. Nor is life as easy as loving everything that you have to do in it. So still she fears loneliness, maybe even moreso than the other two given she aims to claw herself so far away from it. Kumi in contrast has her mother and some legitimate experience of what we consider "adulting" not limited to trying to love everything, and Yuri doesn't cope with change; less is bottled up.

Nevertheless, the others are still terrified by loneliness and mortified by growing up, not just in the bodily sense. They all are. No one is safe.

They're already viewed as drivers of productivity too, mind you, kids ranked against each other. Kids are statistics. Kids are to be shaped in fire to be how the adults wanted to be themselves, or as part of some proxy war with other adults, or out of spite, well intended or not. They must become weird hair aliens. This, all while their bodies and minds confusingly try to change their shapes too. Things are difficult and messy at all ages of course. Mistakes are just often bigger with clear impact as you age. You're shielded less, but let's not pretend you're not prodded and moulded. In some ways moulded to accept stabs. We're all pretty broken and bruised.

"Adulthood" throws us all to varying degrees into responsibility, strips us of our time, strips us of social spaces, and expects us to be perfect and fulfilled in an unbearably faulty world, or rather an actively malicious one.

No one is ready for that then, I don't think anyone ever fully is.

In this world where that transition (and many others) is never going to be smooth given what it is, the difficulty of it is raised higher still by what it is we actually have to walk into.

It's unsurprising that childhood is viewed simultaneously as naïve and idyllic, while adulthood is viewed as dark and sensible. In actuality, adulthood is supremely boring for the most part, and childhood is painful but has good moments (or should). Being forced to grow up means you also get forced and force yourself into an ignorant box.

"Joy is naïve. Animation is for kids. A is for girls. B is for boys. There is no in between. Those progressive policies are unrealistic. That's weird. That's childish. Those people fit into this box. It's their fault not the system. It's this easy answer not the hard one. You have to do this because I did even though I didn't like it either. Climate change, genocide, poverty? Oh ignore those, just keep chugging along, keep going, keep passing the time".

Don't worry, everyone! I'm sure constant escapist consumption will solve it! As will bottling up of emotions and concepts in adulthood! Everything else is naïve! To really solve it though, don't forget we've got to couple this all with forcing people down that same path of boredom and boxes!

It's clear people can hold on the surface, or further beneath, distaste for themselves and a notable proportion of everything; desperately clinging to warped but somewhat comforting boxes and scapegoats. Constantly tumbling forward down the conveyor belt, frequently pursuing cancerous growth like a parasite (like our capitalist economies...).

Kids are forced out of their "comfort" zones by adults rigidly in theirs.

Buzz words and bureaucracy function to unceremoniously drain us so that we apathetically ignore or never learn cruel realities and legitimate possibilities.

Kids are viewed with contempt, and the world "childish" is used as a vicious insult by society, because we're still filled with spite on being forced to grow up into a cruel world where we're expected to just keep going, ignore it, and be menial and genial.

No one is saying the world isn't cruel, kids are plenty aware, the solution to that isn't ignoring larger cruelties while scoffing at smaller joys.

The cliché (another box of its own) is old people furious at "loitering" teenagers. As well as the phrase "back in my day". It needs noting that the notion of "Kids these days are lazy etc" has been printed at the top of newspapers since they began and uttered and muttered since time immemorial.

You see - you idiot, you child, you little shit - that fun you're having is childish, because if it isn't, then why did I have to throw it away so completely?

Hope? That's childish, you should stop trying, I did.

Despair? How immature of you, everything is fine, look at me, I'm surviving, and things aren't that bad.

Whether consciously or not we name things, making distinctions, divides and designations, so that life will be easier, with everything fast, but life's not actually easier this way is it, or rather, it's not better is it?

No, we should all hoard what we have and leer at what we were asked to give up. Do you know what this all means? That's right! It's time for us all to become "sensible centrists" on everything! Things might not be great, but you see they also can't be significantly better. From one stagnation to another. One cell to another. One state to another.

Now for your next lesson, I'm going to let you know that you've all got to be individual, freedom and all that, oh but not TOO individual. Don't stick out. Also, you've all got to be part of this "efficient" system, oh but super individual still somehow - wait - no - don't question the system!

Everything is damn oppressive, and that starts from day one.

Borders are annoyingly drawn, controlling.

You're forced to move from one absolute to another as if there's a clean divide where suddenly you can adult perfectly. The same goes for many other concepts, unsurprisingly. A lot of things are rarely 100% untenable, and those who claim so are are often either actively oppressing you for greed, or out of habit and obligation, or because they're furiously trying to come to terms with the boxes they've ended up stuffed into by pushing the same on others as if we can all fit neatly on perfect shelves. A crab bucket..

Variety is the spice of life, but those different spices are in near identical containers, and only those which looked a certain way made it there. Then they're thrown onto the clean cut shelves of a company, which made sure to buy out that other thing that varied too much, and now all that variety is under but a few roofs, and it's altered to run out of steam in time for you to buy profitable variety number 2 then 3 then 4. It's all just enough to keep the illusion going, the consumption revving, the growth unsustainable, the world infuriating.

Not that knowing all of this gets you out of participating in or furthering it, nor does it lets you know how to solve it all, and it doesn't mean you're "better"... I'm passionately shouting at the world in a review while not doing much in actuality. Having energy and motivation is hard at the best of times.

My review turned into a somewhat connected rant again.

Anyways, my point is that childhood and adulthood are both hard, and the transition is sometimes excruciating, and that while suffering is unavoidable, it doesn't have to be the way it is, facilitated by false boxes. Plus, the same can be said for a lot of other things.

So. Uhhh. The character designs are cool, the colour palette is fittingly moody, and shout out to the quality of a lot of these layouts.