2023-07-21

[“Comrades, do you still remember our ideals?” 2023 Animation Graduation Project [Steel Bones] 5th XunGuang Little Universe Award - Bilibili] https://b23.tv/dNIa0qI

Deeply impressed.

The author is clearly a practical idealist.

Why do I say that? Let’s analyze the title on Bilibili.

Several elements in the title: Comrade, graduation project, the animation’s own title, and the award.

What feeling does it give you? The feeling I got when I saw this title is that it first uses these symbols to pre-sketch your expectations for the content.

Idealistic; Progressive; Romantic; With a hint of pessimism; Because it’s a graduation project, likely a bit immature; Award-winning, bearing the endorsement of cultural authority.

Then the length of ten minutes is neither too long nor too short—you won’t think it’s too long to watch, and it’s not so short that it lacks any information.

So you’ll probably watch it, and you’ll watch it all the way through.

This is exactly what a practical idealist does: they understand the current situation, know the good and the bad, understand the pain and trauma; and precisely because they understand, they can view it as a tool and then utilize it.

I’m amazed that the author has gone beyond knowing what and why, without stopping at academic, ivory-tower cultural criticism, without retaining that characteristic aloofness and purism. Instead, they have gone a step further, reaching out in a tangible way to more passersby who don’t know the story, exerting influence, trying to awaken the idealism in people’s hearts and build a better world.

What will happen in the end? I don’t know. We don’t know what the future holds, but we choose diversity, choose difference, choose pain, choose failure. We acknowledge the filth of the present, admit it, rather than ignoring it.

The Bodhi tree may wither, the mirror stand may gather dust; perhaps we cannot reach the realm of “originally nothing,” but we do not choose to wipe it diligently either. Instead, we strive to live, to carve out a brand new world.

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