Joy/Jobu tupaki is who I am rn and Evelyn is who I’m afraid of becoming.
Joy/Jobu tupaki perfectly encapsulates that specific existential crisis you have when you know your adolescence is ending and you know you have to start being an adult soon, but you still feel like a child that’s been thrown into open waters with no clue how to swim, drowning in the sea of expectations you set for yourself and your family holds you to. You still have no frickin clue where the hell you’re headed as you have little to no plans for your future and it is all too overwhelming to think about. Not to mention how her experience as a 2nd gen asian american child in an immigrant family has already got her feeling like she’s inferior; her inability to speak her parents’ language, her “americanized” and more progressive western views clashing with her mother’s traditional eastern views, her being gay, and overall the pressure of trying to be the “perfect” daughter for her parents because they deserve someone better than who she is, someone who is failing/has failed every aspect of her life (or at least feels like it). In essence, the future is shrouded in thick fog that you feel completely and utterly lost in.
Then there’s Evelyn, a character who has already lived a long life and is weighted down not by the possibilities of the future, but the regrets and mistakes of the past she continues to hold. She is quite literally the worst version of Evelyn to exist and that every decision she made has been the “wrong” one, and hearing that…it’s terrifying to have confirmed that every single choice you made in the past was the worst possible decision and literally doing anything else would’ve made your life better. All that time, lost forever and feeling like you’ve wasted your entire life, that it’s too late to change and nothing matters anymore because it feels like there’s no more life left to live.
Both feel like they were late to everything in their lives; too late to choose a path towards their future, too late to change anything about their lives, too late to find their own happiness. It made them feel stuck in their own heads, blinded to the present(s) they were already living.
And yet, it was Evelyn, the one who has already lived so much of her life, who learned that it’s still worth having hope and being kind, not just towards others but to herself. She’s already lived a lot of her adulthood, yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that she is still living, she is still here and can still make a change in her present. She’s the one who learned that life is still worth living when you have people to love and the future possibilities of finding people to love. I’m so glad that it was Evelyn who learned this because it’s common to fear that you’ll regret the life you lived, yet despite Evelyn being literally confirmed she is the worst version of herself, she still finds the hope and power that she can make her life better no matter her age.
The future is still scary, the past can still be a haunting memory, but what’s important to remember is that you still have a present. You still have people and things to love rn and you can still do so much more. Live for your family, your friends, your partners. Live for the anime you have yet to finish, the games you still have to play. Live for yourself, for the notion that you’ll be okay because there’s always time to make things okay and for things to turn out alright.
There is no such thing as being “too late” to anything, and I am so so thankful that this movie came out when it did when I’m at such a pivotal point of my adolescence because it felt like this movie patted my head and told me it’ll be okay, and honestly it’s just what I needed.
jacobvanloon
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
andulkaphoto
izzy806
jbbartram-illu
