This is a true story. Please be warned that it contains otaku-ish themes. I used to attend an anime-focused vocational school. One day, we were told that an alumnus who was making it big in the industry was going to visit our school. He was in his late twenties. Apparently, he hadn't had much work until now, but he had just been put in a proper position of responsibility for an upcoming anime series. Thrilled to meet a "professional animator" for the first time, we fawned over him and treated him like a big deal. Getting carried away by the attention, he said with a serious, practiced expression: "Listen up, everyone!! Dreams *do* come true! When times get tough, look inside your pencil case... Your pencils will always be there. Aren't those the swords you use to fight with?" We got super pumped up and went, "YOOOOO!!" It was an exciting day.
As he was leaving, he signed everyone's sketchbooks and went off saying, "Make sure to watch the anime!" Then, the anime he worked on finally aired. PANDERING shamelessly to the fujoshi demographic, it bombed so hard that it was hard to remember anything quite like it in recent years. Over on 2ch, the replies weren't even bashing it anymore—they were just overflowing with pity. The town chosen as the setting for the anime seemed to have been eagerly waiting for fans to flood in for local revitalization, but naturally, nobody made a pilgrimage to the sacred sites of a total bomb of an anime. Comments poured into the thread mourning, "That anime really did that town dirty." And then there was him. In the early weeks of the broadcast, he kept posting glowing tweets: "Please witness how I live!!" "Put your soul into the pencil!" "Man, I'm really living right now lol." Gradually, his tweets decreased, and by the end of the broadcast and onward, he was just repeatedly posting: "Uh, currently looking for work." It felt like looking not just at his future, but at ours as well. It went beyond heartache—it was downright painful.
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