Those who watched Pluto in the first week filled social media with messages saying how much they cried during the show.
Pluto is not just a blunt tearjerker, but a carefully crafted story with a smart pacing.
Your personal way of analyzing the crumbs of introspection introduced earlier in the series may save you some tears if you are just wired to be prepared for the worst outcome.
Pluto is a show about hope, even if it's bittersweet, and that keeps the pessimists away from crying.
Pluto was released on Netflix around a month ago, and during the week after its release Twitter was filled with messages from people who stated that they teared up at certain parts of the anime. Now, there are some series that can be considered tear-jerkers — like Clannad, Your Lie In April, or ef. A Tale Of Memories, to name a few. And these tweets made some of the people who were interested in the show a little bit suspicious. What if the story couldn't offer anything except the bold and blunt attempts to wring sobs out of the viewers?
No deaths just for the sake of upping the body count
But it's not like that. Pluto is not created to make you bawl your eyes out. It's simply a story that deals with some heavy themes and doesn't opt for the blunt and inelegant twists just for the shock value. The build-up is gradual; the breadcrumbs leading to the impending doom are carefully speckled all over the story, the suspense grows organically.
You watch it with a sliver of hope, thinking that maybe Gesicht will be able to finally unravel the mystery and put an end to these atrocities, but then you look up and see that there are almost three hour-long episodes left for you to watch and you realize that no, that's not how it works.
Not a second was wasted
Pluto's main selling point is its pacing. It never feels rushed and never feels stalled, the events unfold with the right speed, all the little bits of information that were mentioned before come back into the spotlight just when they're needed. And in a way, this proper pacing makes you anticipate the twists that are coming. In a way, it prepares you for the worst, but when the worst happens, it's elevated by the little extra information that the characters are able to extract from the situation they ended up in that propels the whole process of solving the main mystery forward. It's a weird feeling: like a pessimist meeting the outcome they anticipated but with an additional bonus. A good one, for a change.
And watching Pluto from that pessimistic point of view, believing that everyone's doomed from the beginning and that salvation is highly improbable helps to dull the pain that the empathy transfers from the screen to our souls. Knowing that these deaths weren't in vain, they aided those who stayed alive in achieving the main goal fills you with a bit of happiness. A bittersweet, sure, but a happiness nonetheless — because you didn't expect anything remotely reassuring to come out of this plot. You were prepared for the worst, but you got something better. Still soul-wrenching, but not as much as the scenario you already built in your head when you just jumped into this series and started crafting its outline in your imagination.
This approach is probably what saved you from dehydration. It doesn't mean that you're a heartless piece of meat with no empathy. It just means that you are probably more pessimistic than the general audience.
And that's okay.
You're just a pessimist, and that's fine.
Summary:
Those who watched Pluto in the first week filled social media with messages saying how much they cried during the show.
Pluto is not just a blunt tearjerker, but a carefully crafted story with a smart pacing.
Your personal way of analyzing the crumbs of introspection introduced earlier in the series may save you some tears if you are just wired to be prepared for the worst outcome.
Pluto is a show about hope, even if it's bittersweet, and that keeps the pessimists away from crying.
Pluto was released on Netflix around a month ago, and during the week after its release Twitter was filled with messages from people who stated that they teared up at certain parts of the anime. Now, there are some series that can be considered tear-jerkers — like Clannad, Your Lie In April, or ef. A Tale Of Memories, to name a few. And these tweets made some of the people who were interested in the show a little bit suspicious. What if the story couldn't offer anything except the bold and blunt attempts to wring sobs out of the viewers?
No deaths just for the sake of upping the body count
But it's not like that. Pluto is not created to make you bawl your eyes out. It's simply a story that deals with some heavy themes and doesn't opt for the blunt and inelegant twists just for the shock value. The build-up is gradual; the breadcrumbs leading to the impending doom are carefully speckled all over the story, the suspense grows organically.
You watch it with a sliver of hope, thinking that maybe Gesicht will be able to finally unravel the mystery and put an end to these atrocities, but then you look up and see that there are almost three hour-long episodes left for you to watch and you realize that no, that's not how it works.
Not a second was wasted
Pluto's main selling point is its pacing. It never feels rushed and never feels stalled, the events unfold with the right speed, all the little bits of information that were mentioned before come back into the spotlight just when they're needed. And in a way, this proper pacing makes you anticipate the twists that are coming. In a way, it prepares you for the worst, but when the worst happens, it's elevated by the little extra information that the characters are able to extract from the situation they ended up in that propels the whole process of solving the main mystery forward. It's a weird feeling: like a pessimist meeting the outcome they anticipated but with an additional bonus. A good one, for a change.
And watching Pluto from that pessimistic point of view, believing that everyone's doomed from the beginning and that salvation is highly improbable helps to dull the pain that the empathy transfers from the screen to our souls. Knowing that these deaths weren't in vain, they aided those who stayed alive in achieving the main goal fills you with a bit of happiness. A bittersweet, sure, but a happiness nonetheless — because you didn't expect anything remotely reassuring to come out of this plot. You were prepared for the worst, but you got something better. Still soul-wrenching, but not as much as the scenario you already built in your head when you just jumped into this series and started crafting its outline in your imagination.
This approach is probably what saved you from dehydration. It doesn't mean that you're a heartless piece of meat with no empathy. It just means that you are probably more pessimistic than the general audience.
