A groan freely left his mouth in bored nonchalance, out of all of the days for the anime to be not airing, it just had to be today he thought. Normally, this was the case and on certain days anime wouldn't be shown on TV. Hanagaki still hadn't memorised the showings and the anime not being on was going to be more reason as to why today sucked. The room heard an average sounding muttering "Urghhh, guess I'll just have to rewatch one of my older animes... but which one?" He pushed himself off of the chair and started to browse his collection of anime. Despite having a lax outlook on life, picking anime was something that still vexed him.
Ten minutes of time passed and he was still no further than when he had begun. Mentally debating whether he should watch 'For You My Love, The World' A witty deconstruction of the Slice Of Life genre, where a teenage schoolboy gets plagued with love from his 2 year older senpai bordering on yandere. She also runs the writing club and they both have a chance meeting and soon their love spirals from there. The reason he liked it was because of the complex characters, everyone of them gets adequate screen time and enough time to have their character fleshed out, directly showing their character development in some ways, and subtly in others. He started to tap his foot to give even a shred of help picking.
On the other hand, there was 'Dogs that drive don't know whether to stop or go'. The plot revolves around a teenage girl, as most anime do. She can't drive because she was born with a genetic illness that prevents her from using her hands effectively, her border collie decides to literally take the wheel. It encapsulates the bond between dog and human perfectly, and the ending made him cry a little. It also made him consider to get a dog but a look around his room it was decided it wasn't the best location for a pet. What with the junk wasteland and all.
In the end, he made his decision after some deliberation, he popped the disk of 'Dogs that drive don't know whether to stop or go' out of it's colourful case displaying the girl, called Nagisa near the crossroad pressing the traffic light. While her dog, Furoppi, remained sat by her, both of their backs to the camera. Some dust flew off the top of the case, it had been a good couple years since he last watched it back in summer of 2018 when it came out because of a recommendation from someone on TheAnimangaCollections. He is and will be eternally grateful to that person.
Ever since then it bounced between his favourite anime and second favourite, currently he had it on TheAnimangaCollections as 9.8, his highest score on his list. But despite that fact, it wasn't first there. On that site, 'Dogs that drive don't know whether to stop or go' was ranked communally as a 6.7 with people citing its similarity to other popular anime and falling into the Slice Of Life pit hole. Although Hanagaki would argue that it didn't, there was no beach scene and nothing cliché about it, though he would be arguing a moot point because of how people saw it.
That was but one reason he hated society, they cast aside media that isn't rated the best just because other people say that it isn't, but everyone has different experiences with Anime so it's unfair to say that something's a '10' or a '1' when all of it can change someones life when it's a '1'. That was something that 'before Hanagaki' would say but really, the Hanagaki back then was far different from current day Hanagaki.
But everyone changes, much like the water in the kettle he was boiling. Everyone knew it was common fact that the best way to watch anime was with some food, that way you could keep nourished while you watch so you don't have to pause mid action scene or in the middle of a climactic romance scene. In Hanagaki's opinion, there was nothing worse than being hungry while the main romance interest was just about to confess. So he made some cup ramen, filling the cup to the recommended level and seeing it bubble before the heat transferred and it sat there cooking the noodles within and brought it back into the front room where it would sit until he needed it.
It was only an hour and a half though and Hanagaki needed something to do after it, maybe he could take a walk to the park, he did pass it earlier and he did want to get out more. Unless he wants to be constantly reminded of his bad habits and his lazy housekeeping and god forbid he finds a girl to bring back to his home, he would have to hope that she didn't have a reaction to cardboard. That thought made him smile, as if he would be able to be find a girl, that ship had sailed, I mean, who would want a 17 year old who couldn't even clean up after himself and had the social skills of a anti-social hermit crab? No one, but the thought was nice.
After almost crying and finishing off his ramen by slurping the juices, as was tradition. He left the used container on the side, lined up with about 7 others, he was sharply running out of space but that wasn't his concern right now. He left his school uniform on his bed and slid on one of his few hoodies on and already he felt better. Not that the uniform wasn't comfortable, it just didn't have the free space that his hoodie did and definitely didn't have the nostalgia.
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