Am I Wrong? Media That Rips My Heart Out

dilettante

dilettante

Well-known Member
Location
Michigan
Have you heard a song or a poem, read a book, watched a movie that hits you very hard? The sort of thing that leaves you feeling painful loss, even anxiety? Maybe so much so you're not sure you can ever return to it again?

List it, link it, and spill your soul here.
 

This is from a highly rated very western-friendly Japanese anime franchise.

It is an example of an "OVA" (Original Video Animation), usually a "short" that exists alongside some full length movie, movie series, TV series, etc. This one is just over 3 minutes, a mini-story.

It opens with 3 kids who seem very familiar but somehow different. These 3 kids look like people we have "lived with" (through the main story) from very, very young through about 18 years of age through some serious stuff. That story (largely) exists within a parallel universe to ours, beginning in their 1899 to 1905. The starting year is vague, because, reasons.

So here we have these 3 kids we think we know. They cross a field into a small city, but when they arrive they are in a modern city of the year 2005. What's this?

Turns out they are looking for Great Grandfather on his birthday. As they get to his home we cut to an old man, vaguely seen but somehow more than vaguely familiar looking!

He lays down a photo of two brothers, two brothers we know very, very well. In the photo the boys are somewhere between maybe 19 to 25.

We hear the kids arriving and jabbering, calling out. But we notice the old man's "automail" (prosthetic) hand and arm. This is the main character of the main story, one of the brothers in the photo. Not his Father at all, despite the resemblance.

A subtitle appears, saying this is 2005 and he is 100 years old.


Did his devoted year-younger brother survive to old age with him? What about his wife, who the little girl resembles so much?

Such a gut-punch to me. I've seen the two TV shows and two movies many times, but I just discovered this OVA.

Am I wrong? Should I shrug this off and feel nothing? How stupid am I getting in my old age?
 
dilettante said:
This is from a highly rated very western-friendly Japanese anime franchise.

It is an example of an "OVA" (Original Video Animation), usually a "short" that exists alongside some full length movie, movie series, TV series, etc. This one is just over 3 minutes, a mini-story.

It opens with 3 kids who seem very familiar but somehow different. These 3 kids look like people we have "lived with" (through the main story) from very, very young through about 18 years of age through some serious stuff. That story (largely) exists within a parallel universe to ours, beginning in their 1899 to 1905. The starting year is vague, because, reasons.

So here we have these 3 kids we think we know. They cross a field into a small city, but when they arrive they are in a modern city of the year 2005. What's this?

Turns out they are looking for Great Grandfather on his birthday. As they get to his home we cut to an old man, vaguely seen but somehow more than vaguely familiar looking!

He lays down a photo of two brothers, two brothers we know very, very well. In the photo the boys are somewhere between maybe 19 to 25.

We hear the kids arriving and jabbering, calling out. But we notice the old man's "automail" (prosthetic) hand and arm. This is the main character of the main story, one of the brothers in the photo. Not his Father at all, despite the resemblance.

A subtitle appears, saying this is 2005 and he is 100 years old.


Did his devoted year-younger brother survive to old age with him? What about his wife, who the little girl resembles so much?

Such a gut-punch to me. I've seen the two TV shows and two movies many times, but I just discovered this OVA.

Am I wrong? Should I shrug this off and feel nothing? How stupid am I getting in my old age?
Click to expand...
I honestly was confused with the whole thing. I read what you wrote and watched the short video. Sorry, but it was not clear.
 

Basically it is about a character, one we knew well as a child growing into a young adult. Bang! Flash forward and the main character is now 100 years old, seems to have lost his brother and his wife and spends his time alone looking at old photos from his youth.

He does have great grandchildren, and they resemble the trio at that age themselves. Presumably still at least a grandchild, a parent of one or all three kids. The poor old guy seems very isolated though.

You may be right. It probably seems meaningless, ho-hum to anyone looking in from outside. But the bigger story set in the past makes us love and respect the characters and all of the people around them so much! We're never given much of a reason to imagine them so old.

Maybe this is a classic case of "You had to be there."
 
Ahh, I just remembered a point I didn't have in the front of my mind.

Ever since I first saw the first TV series I always thought of my two older sons when I saw the two boys who are in that photo.
 
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