Girls Band Cry
a review by Animusswtor
a review by Animusswtor
I'm going to be very upfront about this right from the get-go and just say that if you expect to read a coherent structured review here, you can turn back already, because like I once said in another review about a year ago, I don't wanna know what a show's story is about from a review, I want to see the emotional impact a story had on its audience, I want to know how it made the people feel.
And that's exactly what I am gonna tell you about Girls Band Cry now.
I will also leave a trigger warning at the beginning because I will go into some very sensitive topics in here later on.
Quite a few of my mutuals who watched this show had told me that, given my taste and personal preferences, they found it surprising that I hadn't watched this show yet, or even surprising that I didn't watch it while it was airing. And now that I've actually seen it, and am currently in the middle, more the end, of my second rewatch in 3 months already, I gotta concede and say wow... I didn't realize just how right you were...
Watching Girls Band Cry and Nina's little gremlin-antics is like a mirror held against my face, perfectly capturing my flaws, my weaknesses and my shortcomings, but also the potential hidden behind exactly those things. It pulls me down to rock bottom alongside its characters, to then push me back forward at the same time, to push me upwards towards space so that I can try to reach for the stars yet again, that I can still reach any goal I aspire to reach, no matter how slow I will ultimately end up being in the process.
At least now I know for sure that nothing is holding me back from taking that one small step that takes me in the right direction. (<- virtual cookie for the people who get what I'm referencing here)
But why does this show, and specifically its protagonist Nina, have this effect on me?
Well... that's where my trigger warning from earlier goes into effect:
Sometimes it's almost scary to see how close to your own situation a story can get, how real it can feel to you, and how painful relating to it can be due to that. And that's exactly the case with Nina's story here in Girls Band Cry. Something that is pretty much almost exactly like what Nina had to go through happened with me in my school when I was 14/15 right around 8th and 9th grade, though on a little bit of a larger scale than her too.
I usually don't talk about this much, both in real life or when discussing it in media, and mostly stick to making allusions to it whenever I encounter something of this nature, quite frankly because it's painful.
Painful to talk about for me, and painful to read through for you viewers. Painful for me because I get reminded of how powerless I felt at the time when writing it down, and painful for you because some of you might be able to share that kind of experience with me.
I was a little bit of an awkward fellow that sometimes needed a little bit more of a push than others, and someone who wore his emotions on his sleeve, always chirping and talking away about literally everything no matter where I was or to whom I talked, and I had a tendency to butt into some situations that didn't exactly have something to do with me because of that at first.
One day, and I don't even remember how exactly it went down, this lead me into a verbal argument with a schoolmate in one of the breaks inbetween classes in which I thought they were doing some inappropriate things to someone else (which was true, to be fair), after which I found myself locked into the girls' restroom for a few minutes before one of the teachers having a class on our floor came in to get me out.
That's how it started, but obviously that's not how it stopped. It went from "minor" things like taking and hiding away my notes or pens, intentionally bumping into me / bumping me into walls and just verbally making fun of me or insulting me, to pretty severe things like throwing punches and leaving marks on places that wouldn't be seen when I said something that didn't agree with them, ripping one of my exams in half right after we got it back and putting the hood of my jacket - with my head still in it - into a toilet or a garbage bin for a few seconds, which to me felt like an eternity at the time. Unsurprisingly the person I helped being among the bullies, too.
It was HELL.
Every single day.
I got more and more reclusive and more and more isolated, insecure about myself and even more awkward than before, to the point that I STILL have problems speaking up to people now, almost 15 years later. What once was an energetic and lively kid who couldn't shut up about anything, turned into a recluse whose voice seemed to be just a flicker of the flame it once used to be, who didn't talk at all and was noticably to everyone changing and spiraling down into the abyss more and more, which was only more fuel for the bullies to add onto and do more and more.
But I unfortunately didn't really have the luxury of dropping out of or changing the school, the school which unfortunately also did almost NOTHING for me despite being more than keenly aware of what was happening, so I told myself "I only have to endure this for another year and I'll be free".
Gonna be honest, for a short time there, I might've developed a bit of a stockholm syndrome and/or masochistic tendencies because I temporarily started to actually enjoy and look forward to the pain.
But then at some point within that "only one year" came the breaking point. It was a time in which the "severe" things got more and more frequent as the days passed and the people noticed how much they could get away with.
I was at ROCK BOTTOM. More rock bottom than rock bottom could possibly get.
To be as blunt as humanly possible:
I was on the verge of commiting suicide, a 15 - 16 year old teenager in a mindset so heartbreakingly devastating I wouldn't even wish it upon my worst enemies. A mindset so miserable I don't want to experience it EVER again in my life.
I had a plan and I was pretty much ready to execute it. I almost succeeded once.
Funnily enough, the written version of said plan is also what had saved me back then. Because one of the few people I could still call friends at the time, and friendship still going strong 14-15 years later now 💪, found the plan(It’s actually obviously a bit more complicated than that, but saying it like this makes it easier to visualize…), gave me the hardest punch in the face I have ever received in my life and sat me down with a few beers (ignore the fact that we were minors, drinking age here is 16 anyway, lol), and had me pour my heart out, ALL of it.
To me, back then, he was my equivalent of what Diamond Dust's "Void" was for Nina. And even now I know I could call him at 3am to say "I feel like shit" and he'd be over here in less than a heartbeat to talk stuff out.
All of this is why I am a VERY harsh judge whenever bullying is a topic of a story, because of the scars it left on me - physically and especially mentally - that changed who I am forever, even if I am now in a much better headspace than all these years ago because I have found my place in life.
And that's exactly why I find myself so drawn to Nina as a character.
Because I know, like her
I wasn't wrong.
What this show gives me is the safety of reassurance, of knowing it's by my side, and of knowing that I am not alone in this, that there are others like me who suffered through the same fate, and yet are still holding their head high strong to try to keep moving forward ~~until all our enemies are destroyed~~, no matter how painful and unsure the path ahead of us might be.
And the one episode, the one scene, that encompasses this the most, is the interaction between Nina and her older sister Suzune in episode 10, specifically her sister's words of encouragement and gratitude after Nina opens up and pours her heart out to her.
"Thank you for being alive."
Sometimes, something as simple as this, just a small string of words of gratitude put together, can make such a huge impact on you as a viewer that you just feel seen. That you feel understood. That this show sees you, that it understands you, it acknowledges you and is there for you.
Here I am, watching this scene for the third time in context of the rest of the show (SO much more if you count the number of times I watched just a clip of it isolated on its own) and it still hits me so unexpectedly hard.
These words from her sister toward Nina after her ~~trauma-dumping~~ opening up to her in their little conversation they have in Nina's room, as if they were directed not at her but beyond the barrier of the screen, right at myself instead.
This is a scene that I just feel, and one that will probably never EVER leave me again for the rest of my life.
The affirmation of my own emotion that I get from these, what, 3 minutes? of this 22 minute episode, shows me what the true meaning of catharsis really is.
You could almost say this scene was my Emptiness and Catharsis
Aight, I‘ll see myself out now, I know where the door is…
It might not be as "deep" as the other entries in my favorites, it might not be as "polished" (~~not polish~~) as the others, it might not be as "fleshed out" as the others, and it might just be a bit more "flawed" than the rest.
It's erratic, all over the place, unstable and unsteady, whimsical, maybe a bit inconsistent, fickle and mercurial (what a beautiful word for this, don't you agree? xD), sometimes obstinately so - but it is exactly that capricious nature of the show, especially in regards to Nina, what makes this feel so much more natural, so much more genuine, so much more...
human...
to me than most of 99% of the rest of the anime I've watched. Of most of anything that I watched.
It can go from the most stupidly unneccessary and embarassing intense argument (why you holdin' those in public places every time!?) to the most beautifully wholesome scene of bonding, friendship and love just a single second later - and both will have you cry your heart out in the process.
Like this, in a way, it feels like the most genuine thing I've ever seen.
So basically, in summary:
There are GIRLS
They form a BAND
And they - and I - CRY
The members of Togenashi Togeari and Girls Band Cry as a whole oh so desperately tried to reach someone, anyone, with their message.
In the end, the one they reached was none other than myself.
And I will never forget that for the rest of my life.
This show touched my heart, in a way that not many - if any - can say they ever did.
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