When was the last time that you actually had a good cry?
No no, not those few drops of tears that come and go, not those tears that envelope part of your eyes that it blurs your vision either. I’m talking about a legit cry, a cry so real that it hurts deep inside giving you a feeling that you’ve not had for a very long time. A pain that you don’t expect it to hit that hard, in fact, you don’t want to stop the tears. You can’t think and all you want to do is to cry the hell out of your heart. When your brain simply cannot find the word to comprehend your feelings at the moment, tears took the stage.
You don’t necessarily need to watch a sad movie or anime to make you cry, all you need is the willingness to care about something. When we genuinely care about something, we wouldn’t want to let it go. We want to cherish it, we want to stay with it and the last thing we want to have are accepting our regrets that we couldn’t do anything as we lose it. Love and longing are the oldest of all human tropes, but they are the most important ones to give us a message that we’re alive and we can feel.
So that we would know, our memories are not plastic.
That we are not the perfect angel without sadness.
That we can love, and deserved to be loved like a beautiful violet.
That the bitterness of regrets, only comes after the story we cherished ended.
That, love is never too late if it can reach out, at the end.
That it’s never the lie, but the truth that hurts the most.
The deeper we love, the deeper we ended up struggling to keep that moment.
We only learn the importance of having something after we lost it.
Like the beauty of sakura that blossoms in the spring.
Most of the time, it is the sharing of little moments without words that matter.
In the end, we could never reset our life, because our memories are what made us who we are. And they will, continue to.
And with that, I summarize the 10 anime on love and memory that I’ve discovered so far:
- Plastic Memories
- Angel Beats!
- Violet Evergarden
- Clannad: After Story
- Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day
- Your Lie in April
- Steins;Gate
- I Want To Eat Your Pancreas
- Garden of Words
- ReLIFE
Bonus: The Place Promised in Our Early Days
End notes:
Love and memory could be the most precious thing we have, but they are often associated with regrets. This makes it way more important to appreciate and enjoy the moment we have and will have.
By comparison, Kimi No Na Wa is actually the most notorious one when it comes to emotions revolving around love and memory but since it’s so popular that it’s impossible you haven’t watched it, so here are some 10 other anime that you should definitely watch if you haven’t. On a side note, Tenki no Ko is going to be premiered next week, and I’m as hyped as everyone to witness whether it could be a masterpiece that is on par with Kimi No Na Wa or even beyond it. Let’s hope it could top this list!
Thanks for reading, hope you will/did enjoy these anime!
Anime as a Cup of Tea 
That was very clever, and VERY well done! (As well as true and interesting…)
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Thanks, I’ve wanted to do a list like this for some time now but I haven’t watched that much anime back then. Haha!
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A single screen shot opened a world of remembered pain.
I think that’s a beautiful testament to just how powerful those shows were!
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Exactly! It’s so true that some screenshots have a thousand words and emotions behind it. The impact of these shows were just that great!
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This list is so well written, and contains several anime that I dearly love! If you like all those shows, I thought I might mention to you some recommendations of shows with similar themes or styles.
–The Pet Girl of Sakurasou: about art, love, friendship, failure, jealousy, healing, and understanding others.
— Orange: it’s about saving a suicidal boy from himself. Themes of pain, love, memory, healing and redemption.
— Nagi no Asukara: same sort of themes as Pet Girl but with a fantasy setting instead of an art school.
— Kokoro Connect: highschoolers become linked and have to learn many lessons of understanding each other.
— Ishuukan Friends: can a girl make friends if she loses all her memories once every week? Is it worth is to make friends? It’s a cute story.
–Haibane Renmei: fantasy, psychological, with a peaceful aura and themes of family, loss, growing up, acceptance, and healing.
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Orange is good… and Crunchy has the manga too.
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I have seen Orange. it has a really good plot.
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Thanks for these recommendations! I’ve been dreading for some for a while now, I’d watched Sakurasou and the ending was quite emotional, same with Nagi no Asukara which was quite a ride.
Orange definitely sounds interesting, I’ve heard of Kokoro Connect before but wasn’t intrigued by it, the way you phrase it makes it sound much more interesting than the synopsis itself. Ishuukan Friends and Haibane Renmei seems to be worth checking out as well.
Damn, you should make a list like this yourself. Now, I’m getting excited to watch these four!
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Orange (better explanation) plot:
Sixteen-year-old Naho Takamiya discovers a letter from herself from ten years into that future that tells her to watch for a new transfer student, Kakeru Naruse, who will become one of her friends. Though happiness has not eluded future Naho, she has many regrets over things that she wishes her younger self had done differently.
As predicted, Kakeru joins her class that same day, and he’s quickly absorbed into Naho’s circle of friends (both male and female). Though she knows from her letter that Kakeru will not live to see the end of the school year, teenage Naho can’t help falling in love with him.
Orange at its best can be an emotional watch, not because we know that Kakeru does not exist ten years from now, but because his death didn’t have to happen, and we get a front row seat to all the missed moments that future Naho hopes to change to make a better future.
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I have heard almost every anime you mentioned.
I loved Violet Evergarden! It has amazing artstyle,moving plot and emotionless Violet trying to understand better human feelings…. just beautiful)
Then there is «Your Lie in April»,« Anohana:Tha flower we saw that day», «I Want To Eat Your Pancreas» and «Garden of Words». They are all beautiful,emotional,moving and you’ll watch them again and again!
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True. Looking back at this post, I can still remember the strong, melancholic feeling that I experienced watching them back then :’)
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