Blue Box, Crushes, and Rejection

New Antonio lore just dropped

Over the last five years I’ve taken concentrated steps to evolve my taste in anime beyond the narrow field of dark, action-heavy shows that hook many teen boys and often don’t let them go, even as they age out of the target demo. Nowadays, if an anime looks handsomely made, has an intriguing premise, or preferably both, then it’s worth my attention no matter the genre. The Dragon Ball Z-loving tween Antonio could never imagine that his favorite anime of all time would one day be a show that follows a teenage girl along a three-year journey in her high school’s concert band, but here we are. It’s that widening of my personal aperture that led me to watch something like the romance/sports anime Blue Box when it premiered last fall.

Blue Box follows high school freshman Taiki Inomata, a middling player on the badminton team who’s nursing a massive crush on the school’s star basketball player, a second year named Chinatsu Kano. When we meet the two of them, they’re friendly with each other thanks to the conversations they have as the first two athletes in the practice gym every morning, but they’re not exactly friends. A problem arises for Chinatsu early in the first episode: her family has to move abroad, but she wants to remain at the same school and take the basketball team to Nationals. Unbeknownst to both her and Taiki, their moms are old friends, so they arrange for Chinatsu to live with Taiki’s family to finish out her education. If that premise sounds contrived to you, welcome to anime.

Once you get past the sweaty nature of the setup though, there’s much to enjoy about Blue Box. It’s a visually sumptuous show in its best moments, with some really striking lighting, wonderfully soft colors, and well-articulated character animation. Taiki, Chinatsu, and the burgeoning cast of supporting players introduced throughout the first season aren’t the deepest characters in the world, but they’re likable and watchable, and the show handles their emotions with seriousness and maturity. All of this is accomplished without indulging in over-the-top cliches as well. These feel like real, normal kids having feelings that are big, but grounded. And though the story is always a romance first, the sports aspect is there to have a braiding of two different forms of striving, the personal and the almost-professional. It's what brings these characters together and allows them to have a deeper understanding of one another.

Chinatsu, you have the craziest shooting form I’ve ever seen. Why are you flicking both wrists? How did you not get that coached out of you years ago?

But what I like most about the show is the way it fundamentally understands the sensation of having a crush. Blue Box expertly grants you front row access to all of the anxiety and stomach-flipping uncertainty of not knowing how someone feels about you, of thinking you said the wrong thing, of saying nothing when you should’ve said anything at all. So much of media frames crushes as a fun thing. Growing up, I remember reading countless issues of Seventeen and CosmoGirl that excitedly talked about them, giving frothy tips on how to find out if the vibes were mutual. I watched storyline after storyline on TV about admiring the object of your desire from afar, and dishing with your best friend about it in hushed, hopeful tones. Finally, here’s a show that admits that the experience is mostly agony.

That’s what it’s been like all of my life, at least: pure anguish. When I was a kid, I would often not tell a soul about my crushes, and it’s a shyness that has only slightly softened into adulthood. In my brain, to reveal a crush is to be known, and to be known is to be possibly judged and disapproved of. So I kept my crushes under wraps, around my neck and close to my chest. But it was less like a locket and more like an albatross. For as long as I can remember, I’ve associated having a crush with being miserable. In fact, my mental health is always at its worst when there is someone I’m romantically interested in. It’s all pining and silent pain and soul-deep self-hatred. I think the alleged fun of a crush is predicated upon the expectation that it could end successfully, but all it has ever meant for me is rejection — first the fear of it, and then the actual reality.

Rejection has been my longest follower. It’s with me everywhere I go. My despised Facebook comedy in high school and college, my old blog that you can still hear cricket sounds emanating from if you’re quiet enough, my Bluesky posts that average .25 likes, this newsletter where each essay is a bigger engagement failure than the last — the universe is incessantly telling me “No thank you” in one form or another. I’m beginning to suspect I’m not even a real person, just an assemblage of flops coming together like a colony of ants. But my biggest source of rejection is with women. I’m talented at many things, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a higher success rate at anything than I have at being unliked. By now, I know the look well, that pitying Oh you’re sweet, but… one. When I blink, I see it etched on the inside of my eyelids. I have premonitions of it before it even happens.

What’s wild is on paper I don’t think I fit the type of person whose last girlfriend was in the 4th grade (I got dumped the same day), whose last kiss was in 2009, and whose sexual history is [publicist’s note: I’ve redacted the rest of this sentence for Antonio’s sake]. You’ll just have to take my word for it, but I’m very kind, smart, and funny; and I make good money for my age. On top of that, I do get along splendidly with women on a platonic level. If I were to die today, my tombstone would read: “Antonio Whitehead: Friend of Women.” In a male Green Book, my name would be marked as safe travels for any future gals headed my way. Women love me, but they just don’t like me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful for the fulfilling friendships I’ve had and currently have with the ladies in my life; it’s just a little bewildering to be enjoyed by so many women and yet never enjoyed too much.

Five days after this was the insurrection at the Capitol. Coincidence???

Have you ever noticed how Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson rarely ever has a love interest in his films, and when he does it’s almost nauseating because he has zero chemistry with them? Despite being a handsome and charismatic guy, he just exudes no sexual energy. He’s a smooth, hulking eunuch. That’s me, I guess, except I also don’t have the luxury of being a 6’4” millionaire who eats truckloads of cod every day.

Every infatuation I have feels worse than the one before it, but my last one — which happened to coincide pretty closely with the airing of Blue Box late last year into early this year — nearly ended me. I was depressed from the moment it began to germinate, and this was a particularly unrealistic situation, which only fueled my spiraling. I made myself physically sick — I couldn’t sleep, the mental illness-induced nervous tics I have reached an all-time high, my brain always felt heavy and clouded. There were times where I couldn’t even look in the mirror, because my face became a crime scene full of evidence of why this person could never and would never be attracted to me. I hated my life and I hated my body. My self-loathing got so severe that I created a password-protected note on my phone where I would hurl invectives at myself. And these are just the things I’m willing to publicly admit in a place where my former coworker who stalks me can see. Eventually, my only recourse was to tell my crush how I felt and be done with the suffering.

Do I even have to tell you how that turned out?

From the long view, it’s almost comical. I am Charlie Brown and the idea of anybody being interested in me is the football. But the serious, unvarnished truth is sometimes I feel so undesired I want to scream until blood curdles in the back of my throat. I want to claw at my face, the flesh coming off in ribbons. Other times I wish every woman on the planet would just line up and tell me one-by-one exactly what is wrong with me, so I can finally know. Then at the very end, a doctor would hand me a manila envelope that, when opened, reveals a white paper that just says “DIAGNOSIS: CLINICALLY UGLY” in big, red letters. These thoughts often consume me. My solutions range from the unproductive (“I should get back on the apps to experience the ritual humiliation of rejection on an exponential scale”) to the productive, but…drastic (“I should buy a gun and point it upwards in my mouth”).

A rendering of how I look, by an unknown Japanese artist

At this point, you might be thinking, “Women can sense this mindset and that doesn’t help you.” Grow up. I bet you think the Earth is round too. (I’m kidding, but how funny would it have been if I spent paragraphs talking about being unloved and then I revealed the reason is that I’m a flat-earther?) Conversely, you may want to hug me and say “it’s not your fault,” like whatever movie that happens in. But am I not the owner of the personality that scores of individuals have recoiled at? Have I not been given the keys to this vessel that has been so roundly shot down?

For the past handful of months, it’s felt like the universe has been tossing me things over the transom designed to maximize my insanity. The first was David Hogg’s appearance on Bill Maher’s show back in May, where he spoke about Democrats needing to reconnect with young men and stop being so judgmental. I haven’t figured out what the Correct Leftist Opinion on Hogg is yet, but I do know that this specific moment was the product of a person whose frontal lobe could use some finishing touches. Most people chided his sentiment in constructive ways. However, I also saw many posts like this one:

Sift past the Resistance Lib posting in the replies and you’ll find a handful of remarks that follow the same pattern as this one, which states: “…I've generally found that a guy who is reasonably clean, tries to listen, has a good sense of humor…and just generally isn't an asshole reflexively is always gonna be in demand.” Around the same time, I was listening to an episode of Nicole Byer’s very fun podcast Why Won’t You Date Me?, where she and guest Drew Afualo talk about male loneliness. Around the 40 minute mark, Drew says this: “…it’s so indicative of this bullshit ass male loneliness epidemic…all of them are propagating their own loneliness by being awful. It’s crazy how if you just stopped being terrible, it would work.”

When you’re sitting on the other side of these discussions, a depressing pattern starts to emerge. You won’t catch me arguing against the fact that there are many troglodytes out there who need that kind of harsh reality check, but everything eventually gets flattened down to this troubling dichotomy: If you’re a Good Man then you shouldn’t have any issues attracting people, and if you are not attracting people then naturally you must be a Bad Man. But the gap in that logic makes room for a maddening paradox. What does it mean to do everything “right,” to be the correct type of male that the internet is always hectoring you to be, and still have no luck? It’s not about entitlement — I don’t think I should be rewarded with love for simply being well-behaved. It’s just that the way these parameters get framed leaves me with no choice but to hate myself, to think there’s some secret third thing that’s faulty in my code.

(While we’re on the subject of recent events meant to drive me insane: Don’t even get me started on Materialists, a movie I liked but one that made me so miserable about my race, height, and a myriad of other things I have absolutely no control over. The amount of times I’ve thought “should I kill myself?” since seeing that film…there has to be some sort of connection.)

For the record, I have absolutely zero interest in acknowledging or diagnosing any supposed Male Loneliness Epidemic. It’s 2025 — everybody’s lonely! This is not exactly some gendered crisis. But I do wonder if there’s a deficiency in how we receive it when loneliness manifests in men. When Clairo sings about being touched-starved, it’s moving and poetic. Me writing about it in this moment feels like it’s going to be greeted as a personal failure and nobody else’s business. We shout “sex work is real work” from the rooftops, but even my most progressive friends would look down on me a tiny bit if I sought out an escort. It’s contradictions all the way down. Just ask yourself how many times you’ve rolled your eyes already while reading this post. I really do get it, I promise. Men are the ones granted power and privilege in society, so it’s hard to feel sympathy for any individual plight when there are so many more important, broad problems in the world. It’s the same thing I say to white people who express dismay about being dunked on or dismissed: it’s not fair, but sometimes you just have to take your lumps.

Allow me to attempt to be useful, instead of just whining for 3,000 words. I don’t have an answer on how to avoid rejection, but as an expert on being rejected, I do have some tips for handling it correctly:

1. Remember that you are not the only person doing something difficult.
For as hard as it is to be vulnerable and open yourself up to rejection, unless the other person is a sadist, it will also not be fun for them to have to reject you. It’s especially important to be conscious of this if you are a heterosexual male, which means you’re dealing with someone who has the added fear of wondering whether you’re going to murder them for turning you down. Try to be mindful of that and present your feelings in a way that gives off a vibe that under no circumstances will any murder be happening. I recommend a method that doesn’t require an immediate response on the spot. It may seem impersonal at first, but if somebody likes you anyway, that won’t matter. And if the feelings aren’t reciprocated, well that’s where the next tip comes in…

2. Be upset on your own time.
When I was rejected by the crush I talked about earlier, I was a little miffed by just how long it took them to respond. But did I scold them for that when they finally did get back to me? Did I tell them how devastated I was that they didn’t feel the same way about me? Of course not! I was as genial and cheery as can be. No hard feelings, I’m totally fine with continuing to be friends, etc. Any negative emotions about being rebuffed, whether it be anger or sadness, that’s for the group chat. That’s for your therapist. That’s for a newsletter seven months later. To have someone reject you and then make them console you about it? Well, I can’t think of anything more unseemly than that.

3. Resist the urge to extrapolate.
If somebody turns you down, there’s really nothing more to it than a single person not liking you. If you’re like me and you continue to get turned down, it may seem like a pattern, but they’re isolated incidents that only appear related. (You might be an awful person and that’s why it keeps happening to you, but for the sake of my argument, let’s assume you’re not.) It’s easy to see rejection as a case study on the kind of person you are and the kind of person who isn’t interested in you. Perhaps you’ll find yourself wondering what things would be like if everything was exactly the same about you except you were white, to use a completely random example that just popped into my head right now and definitely hasn’t terrorized me for years. But all that does is foment rage within you and create an obsession with the unfairness that’s driving the world. Even if it’s a little bit true, that will only make you susceptible to the open arms of Incel City. You don’t want to go down that path. This is a tip for myself as much as it is for you. In the words of the great American poet Doug Hoobastank, “I’m not a perfect person.” I have to remind myself of this rule every single day! I broke it several times earlier in this post! You might have the most trouble with this one too. But in the words of the great British poet Christopher Coldplay, “Nobody said it was easy.”

4. Find a way to be proud of yourself.
Soon enough, when you’re done being crushed, some space will open up for finding the silver lining. Bask in it as much as you can. It takes courage to express yourself without knowing how it’ll be received, and consideration to not be a little piss baby when things don’t go your way.

Because I follow all of these rules, I’d like to believe that the women who reject me find the experience rather pleasant. 10 out of 10, would reject again. As a man, society encourages and even rewards you for giving in to your most base instincts, which makes the principles I just laid out feel counterintuitive. Shortly after my big rejection earlier this year, I faced a separate mini rejection, and the combination of the two in quick succession made me want to become The Joker. So trust me when I say that I know what it’s like to want to toss aside decorum and completely melt down. But if you believe in a better, kinder world you owe it to yourself and others to consider taking my advice. I do believe in that world, which is why I tried to write a ground-level look at feeling invisible to women that isn’t rooted in misogyny like these usually are. Did I succeed? We’ll let the amount of comments telling me to end my own life decide that.

Anyway, watch Blue Box. Cute show!