What Do We Live For?

"Do you know why you were born?

Do you know what to do with your life?

If you cannot answer these

You can't stand it, no, no!"

You know it. The Anpanman lyric.

It’s a phrase my beloved writer, Setoguchi Ren’ya-sensei, quoted over and over. Even Griffith says something similar.

　I’ve written about my views on life and death a few times. If I had to summarize, it’s something like nonsectarian Buddhism. I try to stay conscious of awakening, and goodness, and I want to meet a better kind of death.

　Of course, I’m still too childish to reach that state.

　If I’ve spent all this time thinking about “death,” then I should think about “life,” too.

　Or maybe the order is backwards. Maybe you’re supposed to start from life.

　But it’s fine to take the long way around.

　In fact, it’s good because it’s a detour.

　I can face “life” with my own theory of death already in my pocket. Nothing was wasted. Not a single thing. That’s how it is.

　First, my core drives can be divided into two: hunger for knowledge, and hunger for recognition.

　Until I was eighteen, the first one did most of the driving. I had my mother. I had friends. They listened when I talked about books and anime I loved. We played games together. I was already “recognized,” in that simple sense.

　Instead, I was starving for knowledge. Starving for subculture.

　Maybe I just never grew out of childishness.

　There was no father to scold me, or to serve as a standard. He was absent from the start.

　So I lived by devouring whatever I wanted. Anime, games, books. Then a computer got added to the pile. And Okinawa, a barren land for otaku culture, added its own kind of hunger on top.

　I watched everything. I read everything.

　I opened my textbooks maybe a few times.

　I wasn’t interested in school’s evaluation even one millimeter.

　It felt good to use the knowledge I’d hoarded to recommend manga and games to friends. Autism-style communication. I can’t connect with people unless I’m forcing knowledge onto them.

　It’s the same feeling as Kana, Atama wo Yoku Shite Ageru. I’m the kind of person who can only show love or friendship by sharing a book that makes you cry, or a cult film you’ll never forget.

　On top of that, I’m the kind of trash who stays a child forever. I love Nichiasa tokusatsu, little-girl anime, robot anime. Subculture is the filter that lets me pretend to be human at all.

　But when my mother remarried and I left Okinawa, I ended up alone in Tokyo. Cold. No family. No friends.

　That’s when the hunger for recognition got stronger.

　A poor, unemployed minor isn’t something anyone looks twice at. I kept failing at part-time jobs, and my self-worth sank to the bottom. I wanted someone to “discover” me. So I started posting writing.

　Text-site writing. The kind I loved as a kid.

　Otaku-flavored strings of words floating over a background that barely makes sense. Nothing “correct” like a textbook. No grand narrative like a novel. Just everyday life at full scale, written by internet otaku, and introductions to minor works nobody talks about.

　I’d always believed that shady charm was the coolest thing in the world. So, naturally, I wrote like that too. Even the act of posting murky little entries onto a black notepad every day. That’s the residue.

　The response was huge.

　Every time I wrote about anime I loved, books I loved, bishoujo games I loved, older guys praised me and handed me work. Younger people told me it helped them, and supported me as readers.

　In other words, I was recognized.

　From there, I tried making a game called NeedyGirlOverDose. In my own mind, I was expressing a world where text-site underground culture and subculture sludge together. And thankfully, it went beyond that frame. It ended up loved all over the world.

　Now hundreds of thousands of people look at me. They enjoy my writing and my work.

　How lucky is that.

　And another piece of luck: my severe autism didn’t “improve” into an outward-facing, socially well-adjusted version of me. I wasn’t healed by it. I wasn’t satisfied.

　Even now, I still cut into my sleep to write. I still post monthly articles introducing books and music I’ve fallen for. It’s a real joy.

　Meaning: that hunger for knowledge never went away.

　If anything, making games gave me new angles to enjoy books and works. It’s fun. It’s unbearable how fun it is. And it feels good to shove what I’ve digested into my writing and creations, and then shove that onto everyone.

　My basic pleasure principle hasn’t changed since childhood.

　The joy of teaching my mom the cool names of Ultraman monsters I memorized from an encyclopedia, and getting praised for it. The thrill of explaining the Cthulhu Mythos to school friends.

　I’m still dragging those feelings around even as thirty comes into view.

　The scale and the audience keep getting bigger, sure. But the engine is the same.

　Thank god.

　If my autism had been milder, maybe I would’ve “woken up” to the goodness of ordinary communication. Maybe I would’ve looked away from subculture and toward a more mainstream life.

　But lately, my days are things like this: playing a masterpiece indie solo card game. Watching Godard’s films in order.

　And when I’ve properly chewed those experiences down inside myself, I’ll probably turn them into writing and sublimate them in some form.

　That’s what I’m living for.

　Knowledge and recognition. And using writing and creation as the most efficient way to satisfy them.

　So if Yanase Takashi asked me, "why you were born? what to do with your life?” I’d answer like this:

“I’m living to gorge myself on books, films, anime, and games I’m interested in, and then force their charms onto as many readers as possible.”

　Death is still vague to me.

　But life isn’t. The reason is clear.

　On top of that, there’s my search for awakening and goodness. There’s also the problem of having to widen the scale and range of what I do in order to keep satisfying these desires.

　But that’s fine too.

　I’ll keep living while taking countless detours. A freak who lives on taste and leisure is allowed to live that way.

　All that’s left is the contest of whether I can keep leaning sideways until I die.

　No. Even after I die.

　Even if I’m standing in front of God.