Absolutely phenomenal film, one that resonated with my own mental health issues in a way that made me feel extremely seen.
spoilers and discussion of mental health
The visual metaphor of the Xs to represent Shoya's fear and distrust of others hit me so hard.
I went through an incident where a few people I thought I could trust, people I once considered to be my closest friends, had been saying very hurtful things about me behind my back. It set off a chain reaction of events that killed a longtime dream of mine I'd been working towards, and the lasting trauma still makes it hard to trust anyone to this day.
It was about a year after that incident that I saw this film for the first time, and I realized this is what I've felt. I see those Xs every time I second-guess whether someone is truly 'safe' to interact with, always worrying about this fear in the back of my head that anyone and everyone might secretly hate me behind my back like my so-called 'friends' did. Even when they seem friendly to my face, the X is still there when I feel like I never know if that's sincere or not. And of course the rational part of me knows it's wrong to fear everyone around me this way, surely most people are not like that, but fuck, it happened once and it could happen again.
And then you get into the way the Xs start to peel away when he makes one new friend, then more, but then he regresses and the Xs come back again, and then peel away, and then come back. And I just felt, yeah, all of this is me.