#mariabasa

I am in my mid-thirties and left the Army after sixteen years in February 2019. So from age 18 to *cough mumble* I was a soldier. I won’t go into gnarly detail, but I have lost many friends, more to suicide than to combat operations which is seriously fucked. I have PTSD, insomnia, physical disability, etc. as a result from my service.

War is complex. I joined because I wanted to make the world a safer, better place for all people I never wanted to hurt people but reconciled myself with the fact that I may have to hurt “bad people.” Here is the thing about “bad people.” They are people. They have families, friends, lives, goals, aspirations, dreams. They get hungry and sleepy and sad and happy. To them, I’m also the bad guy. You think, “Hey, it’s easy to figure out who the bad guys are.”

It isn’t. And most of them aren’t bad. They aren’t evil. Their “justice” is different from mine. They are on an opposite side from me but they might not even understand why.

In my experience, there are very few truly “bad guys.” Most of the hardcore Taliban: super bad. Most of their foot soldiers? Not so much. But where it becomes shady is that in my experience, some of the “bad guys” were on my side. A president who lied to the American people and sent us to die in a war we had no business fucking starting. Big businesses that profited from that war and the deaths of my comrades. There are just as many bad guys on both sides, and sometimes the bad guys are supposed to be the ones you trust.

Symphogear lets me experience that and process it without triggering me. It allows me to have a world where I get a happy ending because in war, there is no happy ending, there is no “winner,” there is just one side that loses a little less.

Symphogear lets me retreat to a place that I can be safe.Where I can be idealistic, where I can hope for the best, where I am not crushed by reality. Where I can count on people to do the right thing in the end. It allows me to hope, which I so rarely dare do in the real world. It gives me the opportunity to reach my hand out to my enemy, to try to understand them. And I cannot tell you what that means to me.

And one of the reasons I am drawn to Symphogear is because of Tsubasa. She starts out having trauma, and it changes her in a way that is readily recognizable to me. When you experience shit like that, it is normal to “turn off” the human part of yourself. You don’t ALLOW yourself to feel because that can get you killed. So you turn off your emotions, you focus on your duty, and you do whatever you can to survive. I went through that exact same thing.

You turn yourself into a tool, a weapon, a thing so that you can do your duty. You dehumanize yourself to survive. It becomes your “normal.” It’s a defense mechanism, and sometimes the only thing you can do to protect yourself.

And then Tsubasa is redeemed because she realizes that there is no point to what she does if she is willing to sacrifice her humanity. That’s literally the same realization I came to. What’s the point of fighting if you become no different from that which you claim to stand against? Our humanity is literally the most precious thing any of us have, our capacity for love and compassion and empathy.

One thing I have come to appreciate about anime is that the writers seem to ask themselves the question, “What’s the worst thing that can happen to this character? Let’s do that.” They did it to Tsubasa in XV. They broke her completely. They took away everything she valued, everything she held dear, everything that made her initial recovery possible.

Ta da! That happens in real life. You have setbacks. You have new trauma. Bad things happen. You lose what you value. You lose sight of your “justice.”

Watching her hit bottom, I was like “Girl, I know.” But unlike my battle buddies that I watched hit bottom, I got to see her recover. No matter how far she descended, she came back from it, she survived. 

Survival is a triumph. Survival is a win. Because so many don’t survive. They succumb to their experiences, succumb to their trauma, succumb to the loss. They never find their way back.

I am lucky. I am lucky every day that I did. And watching a character mirror my experiences, the experiences of my battle buddies, gives me hope. It gives me consolation. It gives me reassurance. It tells me that it is okay for me to hope and wish and fight for my survival. Because even if she is fictional, even if it isn’t real, it tells me that I can do it too.

It’s why so many people relate to Chris. Who I would argue endured just as much trauma if not more than Tsubasa. She saw her parents killed, she was sold into sexual slavery as a CHILD, endured that for seven years? Only to be rescued and acquired by Fine who further abused her in a romantic/sexual/BDSM(ish?) relationship.

It is sad, but so many people can relate to that: to feeling broken, damaged, isolated, alone, unloved. They suffer from self-esteem issues, from loneliness, from feeling like they will never have a safe space, of being scared of even wanting it because they’ll only be disappointed and hurt again.

I do not relate to Chris. I’ve been sexually assaulted, but... her trauma, her experiences, her recovery, does not resonate with me. It isn’t mine, but I understand that it is other people’s, and it is valid.

I am not Tsubasa. I don’t identify with any of the main characters. I’m a smartass like Kanade. I am easy-going like Kirika. I am reserved like Shirabe. I am maternal like Maria. I am supportive like Miku. I am determined like Elfnein. I like to eat like Hibiki. I am principled like Tsubasa, but at best, I’m probably a background character.

But even if I don’t identify with Tsubasa, I can empathize with her. Because I know that feeling. I know what it’s like to make all the right decisions, do all the right things, to fight with everything that I am and that I have, and for bad things to still happen. Because that is life. It isn’t fair. You can hold tight to your ideals, do everything you are supposed to, and you are not promised a happy ending.

I know that sounds fatalistic, but it’s not because the point is YOU STILL TRY. Even if your only reward is more shit, you pick yourself up, hold onto your justice, and keep trying to do the right thing. Not because it guarantees that nothing bad will happen. Not because you’re ensured a reward, but because it is the right thing to do.

And Tsubasa does that. She has everything taken away from her including her autonomy and self-determination, but in the end, she still stands back up and tries again. She takes the hands of her comrades and does not give up.

And that is all I want for myself. I want to stay true to myself no matter what happens. I want to be able to keep living. And seeing her do that makes me feel like I can too. 

I’ve been at home for... 65 days now, leaving only maybe once a week for groceries. My PTSD has flared like a motherfucker. I started doing weekly video-sessions with a therapist, I made a pillow fort on my bed where I work from home to make me feel safe. I wear the Symphogear hoodie one of my partners got me for my birthday.

But what has helped me the most is watching and re-watching the entire Symphogear series over and over again because it makes me feel safe. it gives me hope. It reminds me that I will come through this again. It does not just give me hope, it gives me the courage to hope.

The writers of Symphogear did not just heap pointless trauma and violence and loss on Tsubasa just to abuse her. If it was just a bunch of horrible things dumped on her to make her suffer, I’d hate it too. But it wasn’t. The gave her a journey. They gave her redemption. And that journey and opportunity for redemption gives me hope. And sometimes when we are at our worst, hope is the only thing we have.

I know this post was super long and dramatic, but it bothers me that people want to take away the part of the show that I most closely relate to, the part that helps me, the part of the show that IS ME. 

I guess my point is, just because it isn’t your journey or your trauma or your story, does not mean it isn’t someone else’s. Like I said, Chris’s journey/trauma/story is not mine, but I can see why it is other people’s, and why so many people cling to her.

So uh... yeah, that’s it. I’m done. At least for now. Stay tuned for our next episode where I ramble at length about Azur Lane and how I totally did not expect a show about women who are literally warships to so accurately portray and explore the complexities of war. And how parts of that show feel like they were lifted directly from my brain because I’ve struggled with the exact same thing as an aircraft carrier. And how conflicted I feel being attracted to a light cruiser.