Parallel universe
There is a theory called parallel universe, which means that 'a hypothetical self-contained reality co-existing with one's own.’
Parallel universe has been used as a theme in many types of amusements such as films, novelties and manga for a long time. Japanese TV animation is not the exception.
For instance, ‘orange’, which was televised in this summer, is the story that 5 high school students try to stop their friend's commit suicide because they have got the mails from themselves in the future.
They succeeded to stop his killing himself in the end of the story, but they believe that due to there are infinity alternative universe, the future that he killed himself so that they decided to send the mails to the past will be never deleted.
‘Boku dake ga inai machi’ (The town where only I am missing) was televised also in this summer. The main character has got the uncontrollable power called ‘revival’ that sending him back to only some minutes before bad things happened.
One day his own mother was killed and he became a suspect. He was nearly arrested but ‘revived’ the time and he backed the time when he was the elementary student. It was also before one of his classmates was killed and he noticed that there is the connection between these two cases of murder. He is trying to stop these murder cases and find the culprit through the time traveling.
There are more examples, but on top of that, my favourite TV animation on the theme of the parallel universe is ‘Yojyōhan Shinwa Taikei’ (The Tatami Galaxy / The anthology of myth of four-and-a-half-tatami room), which was televised in 2010, the original work is the novel written by Tomihiko Morimi.
Each episode starts with the same time when he entered the university.
He choses different choices (e.g. to join different circles, to socialise with different people, etc.) to make his campus life ’rose-coloured’ - he’s going to make hundreds of friends and to go out with many beautiful women.
However, the fact was that, he faces to totally opposite results end of the episode. He becomes unhappy and feels very miserable then says ‘It wasn’t supposed to be this way!’
Yet, he finally realises that there is no ‘perfect life’ and his life is not so miserable and unhappy as he believed.
There is a fortune-teller, as one of the characters, keeps saying same thing to him.
She says, 'stop spending days aimlessly, an opportunity is always dangling in front of you so please grab it with all your heart.’
He didn’t really understand what she meant but he realised that he has kept dreaming about perfect future so that he has been missing so many opportunities that could make him happy.
I liked the words from his ‘master’, Seitarō Higuchi.
He says, ‘You shouldn’t use the word ‘possibility’ without limitation. No body knows whether or not you could become a pilot or a superhero because there are may ‘possibilities'. However, the root of all evils is to have high hopes for ‘different yourself’ that you could possibly be. You should accept that you cannot become anyone else but yourself.’
Now I feel like I’m at a turning point in my life and it means that my decision will hugely affect my future.
Yet it doesn’t mean neither I can chose anything or I can control the future. I have many possibilities but these are only ‘possibilities’, not fact or myself.
I have been trying to find the way to make my life as perfect as possible, but finally noticed that it’s nonsense because my life is already very meaningful enough for me.
Someone told me that I’m very perfectionist. I agree. I need to be more relaxed and be happy with any moment rather than worried about the future too much.
I am at least keeping trying to make my life interesting though.
As ‘master’ Higuchi says, 'The ‘rose-coloured’ life cannot exist because the world is not rose-coloured, it’s mixed coloured’, I want to make my life more colourful.
