Diary of an anime lived: Ocean Waves and my high school rebellion (part 2)

This is the second part of my diary of an anime lived. Make sure you read the first part before entering this post. In the first part, I talked about how my high school was and how all the conflict began. In this post, I share with you how it went and how it finally ended.

Me against the world!

It all started when I dared said no. I simply didn’t feel like working on stupid sport project after school and all night long. I didn’t care if the school won the cheering competition or not. I had my own tasks to complete, an academic goal to pursue and most importantly, I needed time to relax and did whatever I wanted (including watching anime, of course). I didn’t show up during activity and my absence didn’t go unnoticed. At first the student council members asked me politely then everyone started whispering behind my back accusing me of being selfish. Suddenly I was to be blamed for all the hardship everyone else had to go through. I was pressured and verbally forced to participate and I was pissed. I did my duty as a student but why did I have to obey some delusional people to work on some school project? I stopped participating in any activity completely after that. I wanted them to know that this was a matter of choice and I could choose to say no. They should thank me when I helped and respect my decision when I withdrew. Things had already gone too far back then.

There was no social networking site back in those days, only live chat room and web board. Being a self-proclaimed forward-thinking school like mine, an official web board was available for all the students to talk and discuss. And I turned this particular web board into a battle ground, literally. I called myself ‘The Hermit’ (can you notice CLAMP’s influence here?) and started posting paragraph after paragraph of posts against the SOTUS system, how the student council was abusing their power, how delusional and obsessed they were over some petty sport competition coated with fancy words like ‘honor’ and ‘tradition’.  And above all else I relentlessly reminded them that each student had the right to say ‘no’. What I wrote ignite numerous heated discussions. My posts got a mile long of responses. There were endless arguments pinned at me and I responded with calm and logical words. I guess I reminded them how powerless they actually were and thus, I had to face harsh retribution.

I didn’t know how they found out that I was The Hermit. They seemed hesitant at first but soon they were pretty sure that it was me even though I never said a word about it. Maybe it was simply because I was the only one doing anything against the system and that I was one of the very few people capable of writing something so sophisticated and serious. In retrospect, I was kind of flattered by this fact. But back then, it was pretty hard. I was harassed verbally and even physically. I remembered one day I was approached by two big fat guys who threatened me and told me to ‘behave’. Of course, I was never actually hurt. I spent most of my time at school in public places and in classroom. I was more or less alone for the whole year and I just worked hard on my study (and web board, of course).

Things started to cool down after the sport event and everyone concentrated on the approaching exams. The Hermit eventually put down his pen and faded from the scene. I aced the exam and collect many honor from the school at the end of the year. Nevertheless, it was still an exhaustive and lonely year for me. A year after the event, when we were all a little bit more grown up, the conflict seemed very trivial. I later met some of my friends in the school after-graduation party and the conflict of ideas had disappeared. I think we all realized that we were all kind of stubborn in our own way and that what we were fighting over was generally insignificant.

What does Ocean Waves has to do with all this? Let me show you some photo essay of this anime and then you will know.

Rikako always stands out in studying but she mostly keeps to herself.

She rarely participates school activities.

Her classmates starts to force her to join the activities. But who want friends who force you to do what they want?

Class harmony? Can I eat it or sell it? No? Then I'll pass.

The rest of the world? You mean the rest of school, right?

Bull's eye!

When we grew up, it no long mattered.

I guess we were all wrapped up in ourselves.

Do you see now? Part of Ocean Waves was the exact mirror image of my high school experience. Until now, no other anime has even slightly touch upon this subject despite the large amount of high school based stories. What do you think of all that happened to me? I guess this post ends up more about me than about anime. It got more and more personal as I wrote it. Thanks for reading and feel free to share your opinion.

ps. if all this is just tl;dr, just take this one advice from me; if you haven’t watch Ocean Waves, do it right now! :)