Obviously anime is an effective cope for me, however the very elements that make it a cope also serve to remind me of what I don't have, or more accurately, what I've never experienced.
While it of course depends upon the genre and overall tone of the show, in general I have a difficult time discerning whether or not the majority of stuff I've watched has made me feel momentarily happy or even more depressed. But either way it definitely makes me feel something. After having watched lets say a show with a romance plot/subplot, or maybe a show which involves a group of close friends, if it's executed in a manner that feels even remotely meaningful to me then I pretty much always feel both sad and strangely good at the same time. Not "good" in the sense that food might taste good or in having accomplished/completed something, but "good" in the same manner that crying is a cathartic release.
It's funny how watching media which gives me legitimate urges to rope also feels good at the same time. Maybe it forces me to actually remember myself, basically the opposite of escapism's intended goal. I mostly "enjoy" playing video games because I don't have to think about reality while I'm concentrated on micromanaging stuff like a partially conscious zombie, however I enjoy anime at least in pary because it gives me that aforementioned ambivalent feeling. It allows me to at least superficially understand a kind of happiness that I've never really felt before, and it ends up making me ruminate about how nice it would be to kill myself and just stop existing.
Possibly the strangest aspect of this is that western movies or tv shows can't really reproduce this feeling within me, anything about romance or friendship within them just makes me angry. I suspect it's due to a combination of seeing these things being done by real people, combined with the fact that the way these things are handled in media made for well adjusted adults simply fails to create the intended affect on a person who is perhaps a 15 y/o emotionally, and that's at best.
While it of course depends upon the genre and overall tone of the show, in general I have a difficult time discerning whether or not the majority of stuff I've watched has made me feel momentarily happy or even more depressed. But either way it definitely makes me feel something. After having watched lets say a show with a romance plot/subplot, or maybe a show which involves a group of close friends, if it's executed in a manner that feels even remotely meaningful to me then I pretty much always feel both sad and strangely good at the same time. Not "good" in the sense that food might taste good or in having accomplished/completed something, but "good" in the same manner that crying is a cathartic release.
It's funny how watching media which gives me legitimate urges to rope also feels good at the same time. Maybe it forces me to actually remember myself, basically the opposite of escapism's intended goal. I mostly "enjoy" playing video games because I don't have to think about reality while I'm concentrated on micromanaging stuff like a partially conscious zombie, however I enjoy anime at least in pary because it gives me that aforementioned ambivalent feeling. It allows me to at least superficially understand a kind of happiness that I've never really felt before, and it ends up making me ruminate about how nice it would be to kill myself and just stop existing.
Possibly the strangest aspect of this is that western movies or tv shows can't really reproduce this feeling within me, anything about romance or friendship within them just makes me angry. I suspect it's due to a combination of seeing these things being done by real people, combined with the fact that the way these things are handled in media made for well adjusted adults simply fails to create the intended affect on a person who is perhaps a 15 y/o emotionally, and that's at best.
