It’s 2003. I’m sitting in my friend’s dark, quiet living room late one night having just watched Katsuhiro Otomo’s Memories for the first time. I don’t remember how much of it my 12-year-old brain grasped, but I’m guessing not much. What I do remember is that my friend had something else to show me that night, and this thing I definitely didn’t understand.

It had a strange name.

“FLCL?”, I thought. “How do you even pronounce that?”

It was bizarre, inexplicable and intensely unfamiliar. Six episodes of varying assaults on the senses. But at the end of it all, after watching all six episodes in one sitting, it stuck with me. The weird, quirky characters, the eye-opening visuals and mostly importantly, the music.

The music!

I was by no means an expert on anime in my youth but even I could tell that an entire series scored with rock music wasn’t the norm. This wasn’t just any rock music, either: it was mellifluous, nostalgic and cacophonous in equal measure. A perfect match for the wild swings in mood shown on-screen. Eventually, I would have to know more.

2006. I’m starting my sophomore year in high school and, after catching one of Adult Swim’s hundreds of FLCL reruns, I’ve decided to finally track down some of the music from the show. After some cursory research I begin turning to Limewire to find myself a little piece of this band called The Pillows (don’t @ me we were all doing it back then). “Ride on Shooting Star”, “Little Busters” and “Bran new Lovesong” are the soundtrack to my second year of high school. I begin making the memories that will forever be summoned in the nostalgia those songs produce, and lay a meaningful foundation for things to come.

2013. I’ve just graduated from college with zero prospects for a job in my field. I’m living week-to-week thirty minutes outside Tallahassee, FL in a run-down house on a dirt road, and working a dead-end job at an appliance store. Years stumbling through college in a highly co-dependent and emotionally toxic relationship have left me crippled by anxiety and clinically depressed. To top it all off, my girlfriend of three years has just broken up with me over the phone shortly after moving away. The dreaded post-college slump has hit me hard.

Days after the breakup, I’m making the 300-mile drive to my hometown of Tampa in my beat-up Pontiac, seeking some small measure of escape from whatever the hell my life has turned into. Blaring from the speakers is a band that has pulled me through most of college, most of my youth, and truthfully, most of my life: The Pillows. As “Hybrid Rainbow” plays, I sob uncontrollably. Heaving, racking cries that feel like my spirit leaving my body.

It’s the first true catharsis I’ve felt in years.

2015. I’m in a better place, living comfortably in my hometown with a steady, well-paying job and a loving circle of friends. Since the year previous I’ve started watching a mind-boggling amount of anime, and through it am re-discovering and further exploring the anime I loved as a kid. As part of this process, I start listening to The Pillows more than I ever did. I download every album they’ve recorded since their FLCL days and listen to them all in succession, discovering a band that has evolved and changed while keeping their fundamental spirit intact.

I connect with them and their music on a completely new level, realizing as I listen to more and more Japanese music that they are indeed a diamond in the rough. Realizing they are not only my favorite Japanese band, but my favorite band, period. Experiencing everything they’d done since that night in my friend’s living room over a decade ago only solidifies this further.

July 12th, 2018. I’m walking through New York City’s Flatiron district in the early evening. It’s hot, but not unbearably so (I’m from Florida, after all) and the street is bustling with rush hour traffic. At the Gramercy Theater, the line to get in is already halfway around the block for the 7pm show. I circle the block and meet up with an old friend at the end of the line, immediately beginning to reflect on our individual history with tonight’s band, other people around us in line chiming in with theirs as well. The atmosphere is jovial and excited as the line starts moving. My body’s already tired from a day spent on my feet, but I don’t feel it.

I’m about to see The Pillows.

15 years of waiting is about to be satisfied.