"Healing" or "Character" recs?

[foxinthestars]

So at my UU Fellowship, we have monthly themes for reflection, and I lead the Adult Forum about once a month and usually show videos. Lots of TED talks and such, but now and then I take the opportunity to make them watch anime, and there's a month coming up where I'm in the mood again.

The month's theme will probably be "Healing," but it could also be "Character", we haven't quite decided yet.

So, does anybody have any recommendations for episodes that could be viewed on a stand-alone basis and would fit one of those themes? I do have some candidates picked out, but I thought it would be fun to ask, maybe see if there are some good thinky and episodic series I'm missing out on (or something with a good first ep or standalone ep for the purpose). It doesn't even have to be anime, although it would need to be a half hour or less.


When I show anime, my go-to thinky-episodic series are Natsume Yuujinchou, Mushi-shi, and Kino no Tabi. Last time I showed them anime it was Natsume (the episode "Tree of Promise" for the theme of "Blessing"), so I thought maybe a different series this time --- although feel free to remind me of good Natsume eps! Anyway, my own current top candidates:

For Healing, Mushishi: "The Warbling Seashell."
For Character, Kino's Journey: "Land of Adults." (I'll have to warn the older folks about the blood, tho.)

Comments

[gramarye1971]

I haven't yet seen Mushishi, but the Kino's Journey one sounds good to me. And for Natsume, I think that for "Character," the other Natsume episode that comes to mind is "The Little Kitsune's Hat." The whole aspect of the orphaned kitsune wanting to go to Natsume and give him his name in exchange for Natsume's protection completely broke my heart when I first saw it, and Natsume's kind offer of friendship instead is a wonderful example of how to

Another episodic anime that might be interesting for these lessons is Non Non Biyori, a series about a group of girls in rural Japan who are four of the five pupils left in their town's tiny school. (The fifth pupil is the older brother of two of the girls.) For the "Healing" concept, there's an episode in the second season where the youngest girl, a kindergarten student named Renge, has been raising tadpole shrimp in the classroom, and comes in to school one day to find that the shrimp have all died. The way that her friends try to help her grieve for the shrimp is really quite touching, and the story does have a happy ending in that one of the older girls manages to rescue some eggs that the old shrimp had laid in the tank, so that when they hatch Renge can have some new shrimp to look after. It's a sweet series with a really good sense of what rural Japan is like, and worth looking into!

[foxinthestars]

Thank you! I've never seen Non Non Biyori, I'll have to check it out.

[gramarye1971]

There are two seasons to Non Non Biyori, but instead of being a continuation, the second season (Non Non Biyori Repeat) contains episodes that take place along the same timeline as the first season -- the first season covers the main Japanese school year, and the second season episodes can slot into place around those in the first season. It's rather cute that way. I'm pretty sure the whole thing is on Crunchyroll, and I know that Sentai has released it on Blu-ray.

(And I just noticed that I left the last sentence in the first paragraph hanging, argh. It should read "...Natsume's kind offer of friendship instead is a wonderful example of how to redirect that misguided impulse.")