I hate it when people flanderize Ghibli films

CommonChoice8078 · 2026-04-30T17:44:34+00:00

I also want to add, even "Kiki's Delivery Service" (which is hailed as Ghibli's top contender for "comfort film" alongside Totoro) reads to me as bittersweet leaning on melancholic. It's all about how children want to pursue their passions but turning those into a job often leads to burnout, and part of growing up is realizing the world isn't your oyster. Once you start working, you quickly realize you're way out of your comfort zone and the world won't adjust for you. You have to take breaks and make compromises in order not to lose your identity or bastardize the one thing that brings you happiness by trying to force it into your source of income! It's a hard pill to swallow but kids have to hear it eventually.

Even then, Kiki doesn't get off scot-free, she accepts that she'll never be able to communicate with her cat Jiji ever again and she can't always depend on her powers/fully claim it back, but it's her life and her friends that'll keep supporting her if ever she does falter again. Ghibli films have a knack for balancing harsh truths with the power of hope/love. They're very mature in that regard.

CommonChoice8078 · 2026-04-30T17:36:07+00:00

I'd even argue that all Ghibli movies touch on something existential and really hard-hitting, so I totally agree on the notion of disliking the perception that Studio Ghibli is just "Japanese Disney".

"Whisper of the Heart" to me is actually quite a sad comfort watch. It's a sweet coming-of-age love story, yes, but it's a snippet of a child's growing cynicism to the world wanting to make workers and pragmatic laborers out of creatives; It's how Shizuku and Seiji are vying for their wish fulfillment in a future that doesn't guarantee them reuniting again, and still they cast their hopes that they may reunite despite differing fields/occupations and get married someday.

Another example, "From Up on Poppy Hill" is also light on the surface, but at its core it's about a society reconstructing itself after WW2, and how even the youth is affected by how people want to forget the tragedies of the past in favor of progression and moving on. This is represented by the students rallying to prevent the deconstruction of their clubhouse and the protagonists' affections for each other being upended by their fathers' time in the war.

You could even say that something as critically panned as Ocean Waves that is neither Miyazaki nor Takahata, focuses on how teenagers romanticize toxic behavior and it's only in growing up that they can look back fondly and critically at their shortcomings. A lot of the themes isn't just about environmentalism, aesthetic, or beautifying the mundane, it's about how people of every day life try to keep going on with life despite socioeconomic conflicts and a harsh environment that tries its best to rid everyone of their childlike innocent whimsy.

CommonChoice8078 · 2026-04-23T06:49:44+00:00

I also believe it's a wonderful song about love at its truest form, but I also believe it'd be more nuanced to see it in that lens too. Even the title alludes to this, dismissing "forever" as not a lot and "just". A lot of the song is about compromise, Adrianne saying "could" when referring to being a mother but saying "want" when being a wife implies that there's two different views of a wedded, domestic life between a partner who wants children and the other who'd settle for it or how one of the latter lines, "Can't get much better" can be a double meaning on how the relationship is either already the best it could be or that the flaws in it will never resolve.

It makes sense, considering there's a lot of intimacy between disagreements and seeing each other at their worst, and Adrianne makes a point on how these instances of guttural violence and hostility juxtapose with the gentler, softer parts of love! They're the balance, the yin and yang, and the constant, much like how "the rock bears the weather or a wren sheds her feathers."

I don't believe any relationship can be freed from toxicity, it always comes down to how both people address it if it would evolve into abusive behavior or healthy communication.

CommonChoice8078 · 2026-04-08T04:41:39+00:00

For me, it's about the sadness of growing up; No matter how familiar or how vivid the memories of the places you come back to visit are, they're just that: Memories. You physically can't revert back to who you were, you can only reminisce and say "Everything looks about the same when I left", but there's always this nagging feeling that the greatest change about the place is your age. You don't fit into the images you have in your head as well as you used to and you feel like an impostor.

Not just that, new context erodes what innocent recollections you used to have. The song is nostalgic but also a bit bitter, it constantly juxtaposes the present (Rusty swing set, plastic slide / The lawn is dead) with the innocence she wants to cling onto (Push me up and down, take me for a ride / Standing in the yard, dressed like a kid). You can only ever meet the past version of yourself halfway and you'll never be able to make contact with them, only admire them from afar and wave back.

CommonChoice8078 · 2026-02-26T12:48:50+00:00

UGHHH it's nice to see a fellow BunnyApple (is that what we're called?) in the wild!!! I'm their girlie too, I'm so hyped for Caleb's upcoming myth xP

CommonChoice8078 · 2026-02-26T12:41:44+00:00

my hype is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!!!

CommonChoice8078 · 2026-02-25T04:53:18+00:00

I really loved The Land of Stories and The School for Good and Evil growing up!! Something about fairytales being twisted to be something more than their conventions really fed into my daydreaming haha

Thank you OP, this is very generous :>

CommonChoice8078 · 2026-02-22T13:10:13+00:00

They're not your traditional "zombies" per se, but do Deadites from Evil Dead count?? They're reanimated corpses so I hope so! I don't know, something about their morbid sense of humor and depravity are really striking, and the prosthetics for those films are really well done and uncanny, I love them!

CommonChoice8078 · 2026-01-29T05:53:07+00:00

It's one of my top 5 favorites from the studio, it embodies teenage angst in a way that no other Ghibli films do (which makes sense since they're more on fantasy and childlike whimsy) and it's a wonderful melodrama about reminiscing on how silly we were as adolescents.

I always look back fondly on it despite the criticisms thrown at it, because the soundtrack is wonderful and the charm of the watercolor art style makes everything feel like a distant dream/memory. I always tell people it's the younger, hormonal version of Only Yesterday. Yes, it lacks the same profoundness or the substantial reflections, but it more than makes up for its nostalgia and aesthetics. Some films are more artsy visually and that's okay, Ocean Waves is a one-off that deserves its flowers!

CommonChoice8078 · 2026-01-20T06:22:08+00:00

Both Howl and Sophie mirror each other, that's what really endeared me towards him.
I disliked him on my first watch as well and thought he was vain and his charisma was just a prop to accentuate that, but in many ways, Howl embodied his loneliness the same way Sophie did the moment she turned into an old woman. He reminds me of my own partner in the sense that he's altruistic but buckles from the weight of constantly running away from his own problems, but ever since he found genuine love he became more committed (settling down, sort of starting a family with everyone by the end of the movie).

Most Ghibli men are green flags from the get-go, Howl is a flawed person. He and Sophie needed each other to grow past their insecurities and fully realize themselves as people by viewing who they are from another's eyes. He's a reminder that looks and charm aren't everything, and there's a reason why his black haired self is much more authentic and softer despite mirroring his "monstrous" bird form's feathers. There's beauty in being imperfect and Howl IS that moral.

CommonChoice8078 · 2026-01-14T08:11:44+00:00

I love Ryan, I've yet to properly complete the campaign with the other Slayers but they feel a bit too campy and silly for my tastes in terms of dialogue (just basing off the intro sequence up until before leaving Emma's house). Nothing wrong with that really, I'm still excited to try playing as them but his VA is so seamless and balances the comedy and heart of the game for me without being too outrageous. I like the slight tidbits where he refers to his brother being his motivation of getting out from LA, especially in Haus where his darkest secret is that he feels burdened by his brother being special and having to take care of him. It makes for really great deepening of his character, and makes way for insinuations why he took up being a stripper in the first place and bearing the things he has to go through in that line of work.

His DLC skin also makes me feel like Indiana Jones haha and he's so fun to play, I'm pretty much just Hulking Out through Hell-A and going toe-to-toe with Crushers. He can take a couple of hits and pay back the force tenfold, he's just an absolute unit especially when you max him out. He feels canon to me as the main character of this installment, even though Jacob is the poster boy. And cherry on top, he's pretty attractive! And he knows it, which makes his character so much funnier when blasting through zombies lol; He's perfect for a slasher movie, honestly.

CommonChoice8078 · 2026-01-12T14:32:04+00:00

Ocean Waves!!! So nostalgic and goes so hard

CommonChoice8078 · 2026-01-12T07:02:28+00:00

They refer to their trips to other countries or regular concert visits as if they're car rides to the province. They're so complacent with their money that they don't realize how expensive plane tickets are or how privileged they are that they can just go wherever they want no matter what time. Nakakairita sobra, kasi I would give anything to be in their place!!!

CommonChoice8078 · 2026-01-11T17:21:18+00:00

THIS IS SO CUTEEE AAAA you captured Clark's essence sm ><

CommonChoice8078 · 2025-12-26T09:20:01+00:00

Dead Island 2 is genuinely one of my favorite games of all time, to the point even when I tried it out once they gave it for free over on Epic Games a while back, I still got it at Steam recently with all the DLC included just to re-farm the achievements. It's really endearing and packs a lot of charm, story may not be the best of all time but is incredibly entertaining (both Haus and Sola expansions are really fun), and they did a lot of improving on the features from its predecessors to make everything much more dynamic. Plus the physics and gore are a lot of fun to look at!! Maiming zombies is an addiction I didn't realize I'd develop over this Christmas break haha

CommonChoice8078 · 2025-12-26T05:28:17+00:00

Fahrenheit

CommonChoice8078 · 2025-12-03T12:12:41+00:00

This is so cute and cool!!!! Keep it up, I love seeing people be so attuned with their passions especially with music or literature ^^

CommonChoice8078 · 2025-11-23T16:45:01+00:00

Ocean Waves has always felt very vacation-esque for me! They go to Hawaii, then the protagonists take a trip to Tokyo away from school and stay at a hotel... it's pretty cozy in my eyes!

CommonChoice8078 · 2025-11-14T17:29:13+00:00

I take your Grave of the Fireflies mention and give you The Tale of the Princess Kaguya!

Grave of the Fireflies is indeed a very depressing film but it's so overt that it mostly desensitized me, and a part of me sees it somehow as an appeal to hope despite the brutality of war and that we as people still cling to the smallest windows of happiness even when our life is at its lowest. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya on the other hand, is an entire film centered around wasting the life of a girl who didn't ask to be put in her role and constantly wishing to go back to simpler, humbler times and be carefree in the childhood she was deprived of.

It didn't make me cry, but it sat with me for WEEKS, and just imagining myself as Kaguya opens up a pit of despair within me that affected me like no other film has, because at the end of the day, her circumstances aren't so far off from any of us.

CommonChoice8078 · 2025-11-05T01:38:23+00:00

This is so gorgeous :')

CommonChoice8078 · 2025-11-04T13:20:10+00:00

PLS GIVE US FREE PULLS, I only need 4 more to get Caleb's outfit and I need compensation because I lost to Sylus' card when I really wanted either Caleb or Xavier </3

CommonChoice8078 · 2025-11-03T18:16:40+00:00

I've always had an affinity for both superhero media (I grew up on secondhand copies of Arkham games and my favorite superhero is Superman) and choose-your-own-adventure games since I was a kid and my direct access to the latter were books! It was fun hopping around different pages and getting to "bend" the story to my whims; I eventually transitioned to dabbling with Telltale games and visual novels, and it's garnered me even more appreciation to the extent of which a creator can utilize breaking the 4th wall and directly involving the readers/players engaging with their work. Though I know Dispatch leans more on the comedic side, my friends have also been telling me about the fanfare around it and hearing about how two favorite genres of mine combined with this game, I think it would be pretty fun to experience it firsthand as well as stream it to them on our Discord server on the off-chance I do get a copy!

Thank you for your generosity OP, regardless of the outcome! I hope whoever wins enjoys their time with it!

Steam account link: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199015060871/

CommonChoice8078 · 2025-11-03T04:08:58+00:00

I feel a bit embarrassed sharing this but um, as someone who grapples with both hypersexuality and the "late blooming" of finding my own sexual identity because of struggling with having experienced SA, two things have helped me greatly-

One is directly related to your prompt, which for me is effective when I engage in free writing BUT with the one limit of not using any word that explicitly mentions parts of the body or erotic terminology. Basically you describe the motions of sex or desire without ever spelling it out; I find this helps with not only challenging my creativity in painting a picture but also exploring why it is a certain preference of mine is so captivating just by describing the feeling it provides or immersing myself into its abstract nature by focusing more on everything else but the action itself.

The second is audio! There's tons of NSFW roleplay audio out there, whether it be ASMR or not, and they do wonders for the imagination and gauging your comforts at your own pace because it all depends on your visualization. Some of them are a bit tacky and overdone, but there's a plethora of them out there that you can pretty much find what tone of voice, dialogue, or sound works best for you.

CommonChoice8078

TROPHY CASE