Anime for Hard Times: Ruminating on Recent Events

5 min readJan 28, 2025

Welcome, weebs, to Animated Observations

Nearly every election of the last few decades in the United States has been the most consequential of our lifetimes. Climate change, money in politics, healthcare, queer rights, and so so so much more. What’s worse, conservatives have moved further and further to the right on policy while left-wing factions have done little to nothing to stop them, at some points even enabling them.

This phenomenon also has not been limited to just the U.S.. Europe has also seen massive right-wing shifts in its politics. So much so that every country in the culturally western world saw its ruling party lose to opposition, something that hasn’t happened in 100 years of recorded elections. All of it can be scary, especially for members of minority groups whose legal protections are actively being ripped away.

Retreating into a bubble of little to no information on these subjects is never a good idea. In the digital age, information is one of the strongest tools at someone’s disposal. However, amidst the seemingly endless release of new media, there is always going to be a handful of them that bring comfort in hard times. So, in the interest of sharing some Joy, here is a list of mine.

Soul Eater

This is one of the first anime series I had ever watched as a kid, and while I won’t say it defined my personality, it influenced it quite heavily. By influenced, of course, I mean it made me annoying as shit. Halloween is also just a really cool aesthetic, and Atsushi Ohkubo definitely new what he was doing when writing it. Death scythes? Demons? Witches? It honestly could have been a lot worse and still been pretty enjoyable.

Luckily, though, the series itself is actually pretty good. There are some annoying bits (Blackstar) that rear their head upon returning to the series, but there is way more good. Maka has long been a comfort character of mine, and Crona is one of the reasons I put the pieces together about my own gender identity. It’s a series that has been with me for damn near half my life at this point, and safe to say I would be a lot different without it.

Fairytail

Despite my opinion on Fairytail souring heavily as an adult, it was another show that was a large part of forming my identity as a person, and in that way, it is incredibly comforting. Natsu, like most shonen protagonists, is kinda just a big dumb idiot who wants to protect his friends and mess around a bit. However, growing up with the show and finding out about his past as the show went on while also doing a bit of self-discovery was a surreal experience.

The fights were also cool as hell. Maybe not in the beginning, but over time the animation got way better and made the series look much more fun to watch. Seeing the grand tournament arc where all of the major dragon magic users were fighting for their guilds together was one of the coolest things I’ve seen in an anime series to date. It’s a series I often think about rewatching, but man who has the time for that, huh?

Angel Beats

Though it has been a while since my last viewing, Angel Beats used to be a regular rewatch for me. It was one of the first series that came across my social media feeds that looked almost entirely like shit-posting. That is, until I actually watched it and realized all of the clips that popped up were completely unedited. Well, except for some of the amvs I saw that were edited, but that’s beside the point.

At times it is silly and goofy, and has a lot of narrative elements that frankly don’t make much sense. However, where it became comforting is its more serious moments, where the characters who are stuck in a high school version of purgatory come to terms with how they got there in the first place. It is deeply sad, but also hopeful and appreciative of the small moments that make relationships with other people worth having in the first place.

Yu-Gi-Oh

What childhood of the early 2000s was complete without a bit of children’s card games? Probably a lot of them, but man was Yu-Gi-Oh fun to watch. Card games have become one of my integral hobbies, although ironically the TCG version of the namesake game became borderline unplayable in a competitive environment. However, the show is still a ton of fun to go back to.

There are, of course, multiple different series, a majority of which were apart of said childhood. Picking a favorite of them is hard, but 5Ds always felt like it was narratively the most interesting. It was also the closest to feeling like people were actually dying. They kinda just ditched the whole shadow realm bit and were like “yeah people are riding around at 200 miles an hour playing card games, and if you lose, you might just die.” It may be a bit weird to find all that comforting, but it is what they allowed on children’s television.

There are a lot of others I could share as far as comfort anime, but this covers bases for now. Shout out to Anime Feminist for sharing the original prompt and getting me thinking about what shows I find most comforting. What about you all, though? What anime get you through hard times? Let me know in the comments.

Thank you all so much for stopping by. For those who want to read a bit more, feel free to click back up top. Anyone who’s feeling generous or who would like to read some original poetry/short fiction from yours truly, look no further than directly below.