I saw both the American and Japanese version of this movie. One was at night and tears dropped down before I even noticed. That was rare for me because I thought long before I had been immune to this kind of things.
I couldn’t help thinking what if Hachi were a person? Someone has loved you so much, showed you off to all the persons you have ever met, and spoiled you no matter what. You lived as if you were on the top of the world. You walked him to work to the station and you picked him up at the station every day. The happiness of you two was rather an envy to others. But who cares?! As long as he was there, you didn’t need to care about others! And then suddenly one day, you waked up, walked him to station and said goodbye to him as usual. In the evening you waited for him in the station. Long though you waited, he didn’t show up. How would you feel standing alone in the empty station? The last train had arrived but not him. You went home though actually without him nowhere could be called home, with a heart immersed in the coldest water. But you still comforted yourself something should have caught him up.
The second day, you walked to the station as usual and he didn’t show up. The third day, the fourth day……finally you don't remember how many days you have been waiting. In the same time you were kicked out the house that once belonged to you two. They told you he had left you and he won’t come back. You tried to protect the things you had together, and you found out that he had spoiled you so much that you weren’t able to do anything without him!
Waiting alone in the midnight station, no shelter, no food, you couldn’t help crying and blamed him for making you so useless. How you wished that it was just a horrible nightmare. Tomorrow you will wake up and see his always smiling face. But deep in heart you know it is all gone.
Now you are left with two choices.
1, you can continue self-cheating, waiting for someone you know who won’t show up and living pathetically in other peoples’ eyes, some may even shed some cheap tears for you. One day you die pathetically and leave a pathetical story to be told by strangers. Hachi chose this way but there’s nothing to be blamed for it was just a dog, it couldn’t think too much.
2, or you choose another way. Wipe out all the tears, leave the station and start over by yourself. It would be really hard, but you will get over it. Thank god human is embraced with the ability of oblivion. The memory will fade away through the time. It still hurts when think of him, but it will be all right. That is how life goes through, that is how people grow up.
For me of course I will choose the second one.
And for me, love is a serious word that you need to think over it before you say it. It should be a serious conduction, a promise to live up with. If possible don’t make someone you ever love fall down from heaven to hell.
Unfortunately I see less and less seriousness when people talking about love thus fewer and fewer people believes in it. For me I still believe in it, but I am also realistic enough to know that I may not have the luck to encounter with it. But either way is ok for me.
