Not like your father’s syndromes. Just a quick word of warning: I’ve realized that my post output is probably going to drop off by quite a bit over the next few months, as I am taking a stupefying 24 hours of classes this semester out of a desire to graduate and to also take the best class offered at my school… that, or I am… crazy. Its one of those.
Anyway, despite that, I have been blitzing through Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo over the past few days. In the space of two days, I covered sixteen episodes… but then, something funny happened. By the close of the third day, I’d only seen seventeen. And I’m still at seventeen here on the fourth day. What happened?
Well, Final Disc Syndrome happened, that’s what.
I have a tendency to charge my way through shows and then… stop. I’ll usually be in the fifteen to twenty range of episodes seen, and then I just slow down, and then my viewing just stops. Its part of why my ‘On Hold’ queue on MAL is ridiculous. I’ve done it with El Cazador de la Bruja (stalled at 22 of 26), Blue Seed (20 of 26), Nabari no Ou (21 of 26), Lovely Complex (19 of 24), Peacemaker Kurogane (16 of 24)… hell, it even happens with manga; I still have yet to read the final volume of CardCaptor Sakura. What gives?
I think that I do this because, subconsciously, I don’t want things to end. Sometimes, its because I’m mad at what’s happened in the story, as ridiculous as that seems – this is what might be happening with Gankutsuou, as I’m supremely irritated that they killed my favorite character – I stalled on Simoun for a while because that happened. I’m apparently not above being quite petty. But I do think the former is the most likely culprit in most of these – I am enjoying myself, so I don’t want things to end and to have to say good-bye to the characters.
Admittedly, that sounds kind of ridiculous – after all, if I’m not watching it, then I’m not enjoying it, am I? The characters are essentially gone, since I’m not summoning them via the ‘play’ button. And, yet, in a strange way, it does make sense.
Consider the man who kills his girlfriend because he doesn’t want things to be over. Truly, doing such a thing would render the relationship over without a doubt – after all, she’s dead! How can you date a dead person? You just killed the relationship you were seeking to preserve! But killing a person to preserve one’s relationship with them makes sense when you attempt to look at it from their warped perspective – it serves to freeze it in time. Its akin to how a person who dies young will always be young. If you kill that person you love, then you will always love them, and they will always be your significant other. They can’t alter it, they no longer have that power to.
So… did I just compare killing a significant other to ceasing to watch a show?
…
Uh… yeah. Hmm. Hope that doesn’t reflect too poorly on me…
Here’s hoping I can manage to overcome this and finish off Gankutsuou.
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