On my 300th day of unemployment, I logged into a game made for losers.
Three months behind on rent, and my 28th rejection letter arriving on a stormy night, 22-year-old Feng Shiyu felt like the biggest failure of an adult in the world.
Then he opened Echoes of Innocence and met the Big Bad Wolf, sword in hand: "The road to achieving your dreams is full of thorns. You have to be the one who cuts them down!"
He helped Doraemon teach Nobita how to stand up for himself, heard Tutu say, "Everyone is a unique color in the rainbow," and joined Kung Fu Panda as he realized that "Today is a gift from heaven."
The childhood passion he had long forgotten returned along with one animated character after another, becoming the courage to turn his life around.
He teamed up with a top student suffering a breakdown over graduate school exams, a newcomer in the workplace being emotionally manipulated, a small-town youth whose startup had failed, and a woman who had worked for years but was just as lost.
When they joined forces with all the animated characters to fight the ultimate monster known as "self-doubt," Feng Shiyu finally understood:
We can't go back to childhood, but we can find the person we once were, the one who believed we could change the world.
Every adult was once a child. As long as you haven't forgotten, may we all find our truest selves again in this colorful world of hope.
It looks pretty good so far. It reminds me of a lot of cartoons I've watched before and the principles taught in them. It's been so many years since my childhood that the bullet hit me right between the eyebrows.