‘There is no truth. There is only perception.’ This statement has come to be one of my pet peeves these days. Upon completing my first (and now second) year of university, I started to get a firm hold of the idea that ‘truth’ is not always ‘out there’, but that instead it usually is more of a fleeting concept. Even in science man admits: there is no secret door we can open to discover the real truth, instead we try to uncover it bit by bit – with people who are, inherently, biased, with statistical methods we devised ourselves, and limited by our human imagination. In science, we don’t talk about true theories. We talk about theories that seem to approach the truth, when they are supported by sufficient empirical evidence. And even then, we can’t be sure. The truth of today may be the thrash of tomorrow, and what seemed impossible yesterday is what we call reality now.
That’s right. Truth is a fleeting concept. Especially in the world of entertainment, where it’s not a matter of life and death if there exist millions of opinions around one ‘truth’, if you will. Music wouldn’t be as enjoyable without the freedom for a personal interpretation. Neither would books, movies or… yeah you guessed it, anime.