A Personal Reflection on The Action Button Review of Boku No Natsuyasumi
Genuinely the action button review of boku no natsuyasumi has unlocked something i have been trying to in my brain in regards to my whole outlook on how i create and reflect on life. I just finished it this morning and it has give me some kind of bewildering clarity that has allowed me to be more vulnerable with myself then i think i have ever been able. All because what tim rogers shared in that 6 hour review about a video game i will probably never play.
I cried for over 40 minutes of the last hour and a half or so of the video. I think ive never been so moved by something in my life. which is a lil weird to say about a review video but as someone who struggles to engage fully with much of the media and literature around me for multiple abstract reasons... it just felt so eye opening. I didnt felt seen in the ways i have felt reading some of the works of nagata kubi or mariko kikuchi, but it truely had me thinking and reflecting on my own life and that of another in ways i thought not possible, or atleast not truely attainable. The parts of himself he was sharing with us spoke to a part me that i struggle to communicate with in an earth shattering way.
It had me reflect on the person ive wished myself to be for so long, the person i wish i wasnt, the things i want to do, my childhood, my goals. It made me first think of how much i have been admiring his work, how microscopic it all is, early in the video i thought he must have just been one of those people that journal in minute detail, just to be thrown into the reality that he doesnt really have a choice in the matter of how much detail he holds on too. Its a bit selfish to say that point broke down a bit of a wall around my own inability to maintain that kind of information, allowed me to give myself grace in regards to the depths or lack there of i have known myself and the pasts buildt together with many of those around me. It made me feel lucky that i had a choice in what i do manage to hold onto. specifically i try to maintain what i can recall of certain thoughts i had as a child in school as deeply as i can so that i can use that to maintain a sense of the personhood and mental capacity of the children i work with. Since i find many adults forget all to easily how whole and how complexy children can understand the situations around them without you realising.
When he shared how his embarrassing memories would make him feel, it made me wish i could share this post i read here on tumblr probably over a year ago about the concept of religious grace being something you can apply without any religion really. im sure he has his own copeing mechanisms but it has been extremely helpful working through some of the anxiety induced delayed shame of my own embarrassing memories. Although my memories fade more in details over time then his do, these memories have definitely made me feel and think in similar ways to how he described he felt in the video.
The topic of grief is a central theme in the video, and grief is something i have not fully come into understanding within my own life as of yet. I dont think i have properly greaved for the lives and parts of people they leave behind in the way he has described, in part because of my tangible disconnect from some of my deepest thoughts, but also because i have been lucky enough not to many people within a close proximity of myself. The most major death in my family has been my grandfather on my mother's side, and i think most of my grief is similar to the grief i felt when tim said that his uncle who sounded cool as hell had passed away from covid and we would never be able to gain the part of tim's uncle that he would have shared with us. Which sounds kinda weird, but i was kinda in the head space of thinking about the parts of people we carry withus that are never apart of our lives, but can still effect us and change us through the words that they shared. Maybe thats why i burst into tears for the first time at that part. I think uncounously it hit a similar cord in my brain when i think about how unfamiliar and distant i was with my grandfather even though i honestly find much in retrospect that i could have connected with him on, and how that cant be changed.
Tim walked through his own missed connections, and talked about process which he dealt with the grief of his friend who had taken her own life. The little pieces of these people and so many others that he had to hold onto, the pieces of himself that he had no way to know of or control, the pieces that the family in boku no yatsunatsume shared with eachother and the players of the game. The pieces of people in my own life, the pieces of myself. All swirled around in my mind as the video closed. Im not sure if i have fully formed thoughts on the mater, but i cried all the same during his discussion mixed with my own internal interpretation and forming take aways.
Id probably have to watch the whole video again to actually have more complete thoughts on the themes of the game itself because of how much space the pieces of tim he shared with us have picked at my own interal walls. Right after watching i sent a message to my partner describing the game as "a microscopically truthful endeavor to capture the vibes of a summer well spent with those around you". Microscopic truthfullness is one of the things i find most endearing in works of media, i was tought about the concept by my father who although i do not have a great relationship with, i do appreciate what he was able share with me when not being a total dickbag. He said most of the best works of art imploys this level of emotional truthfullness, getting down to what you may have really felt in such a way that it cannot be denied as capturing a moment within the human condition. I have for many months considered this one of the best things about tims content, that he himself is so microscopically truthful in his depictions and explorations of games and the stories he tells of his life.
The truthful part of himself he shared within that six hour video essay has torn away at the parts of my own brain that wish to make creative works of many kinds, and allowed me to fully reflect on some of whats in my way. I have not been able to be truely microscopically truthful within myself, some of those reasons are very abstract to me personally, but one struggle that feels like such a road block in my progress is that i fear rereading any of my own writting. I have had issues with reading and writting since i was younge, i think its undiagnosed mild dyslexia and undiagnosed nerodivergence with neglectfuly done unschooling attempted by my parents until i was in 4th grade. My vocabulary was still higher then average, but i very clearly remember the day i actually retained the spelling of the word "the" and "are". There, their, and they're still triped me up whils i was old enough to be using this website and i dont entirely know how to sound out words properly so i make alot of mistakes reading outloud, or when i think too hard about the spelling of names that dont sound the way they look, and i do very badly when words are spelled out in songs. All of these combined with a bitch of a 5th grade english teacher, who i dont know if she understood what my deal was or not, shamed me about many things i did wrong. The major thing that stood out in my mind was when she told me to stop writting in cursive because my hand writting was so eligible, which would be fine if not for her tone and dismissiveness of the fact i was teaching myself how to write like that from scratch based of the cursive chart she had on the wall!!! I was proud and making an effort!!!
Even through all these issues i was still able to be in the top percentage of the grade when 6th grade rolled around because i had finally caught up in my ability to read, even if i wasnt actually retaining much of the information i could read what was on the pages. None of this mattered in the long run because by the time i was in high school and college it became evident that i could not read through my papers to do corrections, and thus even now i am writting this with the best formating i can on the first pass.
I mention all this trama because something about this video, and the pieces of microscopically truthful moments shared by the game devs of bokunatsu and tim have truthfully allowed me to maks emotional progress on this issue. I need to make an improvement here or it will continue to hinder any planning i want to do, any thoughts i dont want to run away from me. Im tired of living my life fearful of myself, my thoughts, and memories. The pieces tim shared of himself and share of those he carries with him unlocked some part of my brain and i just need someone else to know or ill continue to be locked in some ruminating cycle of my own making that i need not hold myself in. In writting this i hope i can take more steps into the light of writting, drawing, paintjng and creating truth for myself and others.
If you made it this far thank you for reading, i hope this part of myself i shared today helps you find kindness to give to yourself and others.
Watching Action Button Reviews for the first time and it feels like Sam Rockwell, dressed as 1970-Rolling-Stone-Interview-era John Lennon, is doing an impersonation of Will Arnett in order to tell me the history of video games.
That’s not a complaint, mind—just an observation.
