Regarding Yukinoshita Yukino

Preface

Welcome to my personal retrospective and character analysis of Yukinoshita Yukino, from the anime and light novel series Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru. This is an attempt at a comprehensive personal analysis of this character using my own understanding of psychology, literary analysis and personal emotions to construct a complete picture of her in my mind, and present that to the community. I am largely using my own psyche and experiences as a reference to construct a greater understanding of Yukino, so please keep that in mind when proceeding.

This paper is a means to express my observations while watching the anime and reading the novel from notes I have taken. Of course, this is not meant to be taken as definitive fact, rather one man’s interpretation and a platform for discussion. That said, I have not completed the light novels since the last two novels are incomplete in their translations as of writing this, meaning much of this analysis could be subject to change depending on the direction of the story, therefore this will only use the material covered in both anime seasons.

Quotes have been taken from the following sources for reference:

• Season One: FFF
• Season Two: Commie
• Light Novel: NanoDesu/Yen Press

Introduction

It was the beginning of the end for those lazy, hazy summer days at the end of August. Small reminders of the upcoming time that I would have to wave goodbye to the peaceful time I was enjoying and return to school permeated into my daily life. It was an uneventful summer of 2015, I was about to turn sixteen and the second year of high school approached. Not much has changed since then though, as I was still deeply invested in anime and it was how I spent my days of leisure in that summer. Dread clouded my perception of high school life after some complications arose the year prior due to failed attempts to integrate into a new school and romantic let downs, so I was not looking forward to returning. With this mindset, I was nearing the end of the seemingly short summer break and decided to watch one last anime before academic responsibilities took over, that series was Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteriru.

Never before this had an anime resonated with me on such a personal level, and in a way my own twisted perception of society as a teenager found solace in hearing the words of Hikigaya Hachiman. It was the perfect time to be introduced to this series in a way, I was in the target demographic of immature, cynical outcasts who related to Hachiman. Despite recognizing the faults of internalizing the deliberately biased words of Hachiman, it provided me a feeling of comfort to know that this person, fictional or not, understood my perspective. It was for this reason that I fell in love with this anime.

From the opening monologue, I sensed that I would be in for a real treat but never could have imagined the emotional rollercoaster I was in for. Hachiman established himself as a character I could project to, understand him beyond what was presented on-screen, and empathise with in ways I never understood before. To me, Oregairu is, even now, an anime that remains close to my heart because of its ability to craft seemingly human characters with so much emotional depth. I have a stronger grasp of the psyche of some of these characters and understand their emotions better than my friends in reality.

Then I met Yukinoshita Yukino, the unwavering dark-haired beauty that has since cemented herself as the first and only fictional character to truly steal my heart. Prior to this, I was infatuated with kuudere characters on a superficial level because I related to their personalities on the surface. However, after seeing Yukino develop as  character I found myself anticipating seeing her again when she was not on-screen. I was completely infatuated with her allure, and it was then that she became my waifu. Despite the ironic portrayal of otaku being infatuated with their love for fictional characters, I was unaware of that and simply felt an unrequited bond forming between me and this character on the screen. Her personality and growth as a character was incredibly inspiring and remarkably endearing so I couldn’t help myself from falling in love.

Even after rewatching the anime and getting into the light novels years later, I still feel a deep emotional connection to Yukino and what her character means to me. Because of that, I rewatched the anime once again with the intention of taking notes and with the goal to reason out a psychoanalysis of her character in order to understand her further than I had before. Hopefully this long-winded analysis proves to be as useful as it was for me, in exploring Yukinoshita Yukino.

Under the Snow

Names carry a tremendous weight to them. In the West, parents having children will often look to their religion for inspiration for naming their children. Me and brother were named after Catholic Saints due to my parents finding the meaning behind said names to resonate with them enough to name us after that. Names can carry the importance unlike any other title given to you, for they were given to you by a parent and hold meaning to them beyond the superficial sound it makes rolling off the tongue. Literature and film will commonly heighten the underlying meaning by assigning certain names to character to derive more depth and personality to those characters. Japanese naming conventions similarly utilize the importance of the meaning behind names, but in my opinion to a more nuanced degree due to the complexity of their writing system. Japanese names will use Kanji, or borrowed Chinese characters, all with a multitude of readings with varying meaning, as well as Hiragana and sometimes Katakana. However, Kanji contains such an extensive list of characters to choose and the ability to combine different Kanji to create a unique meaning to the child’s name. Likewise, “Some kanji have nanori, which are readings which occur only in names.” (3) Much like anime characters, Japanese people will have a name with another layer of depth beyond the sound their name makes. For example, the name “Ichirou” is a common boy’s name meaning “first son” which relates back to a traditional naming scheme of naming children after the sequential order of which they were born. (3) For this reason, anime characters will utilize the unique Japanese naming conventions to expand of character personality through their names. Examples include “Makoto” meaning “sincere, honest” and Shinji meaning “true ruler”, and knowing this allows the viewer another element to think about when examining a character. The meaning of a character name is rarely contrived, so exploring deeper into the Kanji allows for another layer of characterization to be uncovered.

I want to begin with understanding the Yukinoshita Yukino, a duplicative name which holds hidden meaning. In Japanese, the name 【雪ノ下雪乃】 is comprised “雪” is the kanji character meaning snow, while the second character being katakana “ノ” which is a possessive particle as well as “乃” which has the same reading, and finally “下” meaning underneath or beneath. Simply examining the family given name of Yukinoshita reveals the literal meaning of “under the snow” followed by the first name Yukino, roughly meaning “the snow.” In totality we can interpret the name of Yukinoshita Yukino, rather the slightly modified “Yuki no shita no yuki” as snow beneath the snow.

“Snow beneath the snow” implies multiple layers, and when examining Yukino as a character I want to explore this concept much further as a keystone to her personality. Stories will commonly explore such ideas of hiding behind a mask or a protective layer to shield one’s heart from being revealed. Not everyone can wear their heart on their sleeve, and nobody does in the anime and light novel series Yahari ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru, or Oregairu for short. Everyone has a facade and holds ulterior motives to their actions giving us in the fanbase plenty to examine. Here I will further explore the theme of layered personality of Yukinoshita Yukino and the snow motif as a basis for this character analysis.

The Past

Much of Yukino’s past is shrouded in mystery, rarely revealed to us in brief moments of vulnerability. It is in these moments when the layers around her heart lose their strength and show the true nature of what Yukino carries with her. One such moment I will bring up later, but surfaces as a result of discussing family, which she relates to the Yukinoshita family situation:

“But as soon as I called out to her, the clouds covered the sun and a shadow came over her face. Because of that, I couldn’t read the expression on Yukinoshita’s downturned face clearly. But the mere sight of her feeble, drooped shoulders told me she had let out a short sigh.”(Volume 2, pg 110)

Hachiman notes this change as he explains

“Her expression was no different from normal – cold and withering. The clouds had only covered the sun for a moment. I had no way of knowing the meaning of the sigh she had breathed in that split second.”

Observant as always, he is able to catch the fleeting show of raw emotions displayed by Yukino in a vulnerable period. This is most likely due to the fact that such a subject being brought up was unexpected, thus she was unable to prepare herself to hide her true feelings. Also, the Yukinoshita family dynamic is strained and a difficult subject for her to face. I will cover that extensively in detail later on, but for now as a reader of the novel and watching the anime, we only are aware of Yukino’s strange reaction that is quite unlike her usual self. The “Ice Queen” that is, one that has a personality as cold as ice and a heart frozen over. The reason is made evident as we delve deeper into Yukino’s past.

Tsurumi Rumi was the young girl that was helped during the summer camp arc in the first season of the anime, she is a girl who they notice to be standing away from her assigned group and is seemingly detached from the rest of the class. Rumi’s story mainly serves as a point of reference for understanding the mentality of each character and how they feel about themselves. This is evident because each character attempts to guide Rumi in a direction they see best fit basing their reasoning off lessons learned from their pasts to deter her from making the same mistakes they made, or prevent the hurt they felt growing up. Seeing a vulnerable child venturing down the path of a cynical loner like Hachiman is preventable early on and we get to see the true nature of the cast as they intervene.

The result of the conflict is resolved in episode eight of the first season, with Rumi reassociating with her classmates as they “reset” the bonds between the girls. But that isn’t that important, because what Hayama explains afterwards is critical. He confesses that as a child, he saw a similar situation with a girl being alienated by the class and bullied behind her back, and he expressed guilt for simply standing back and watching. That is why with Rumi he decided to make things right and get involved to help instead of living with regret once more. However, the girl Hayama failed to save was Yukino.

In episode three, Yukino reveals that she studied abroad but was alienated and bullied when she came back to Japan. Of course, she presents this in an arrogant fashion that somehow “all the girls at school grew desperate to eliminate me” (Ep 2, 8:38) because she was too cute. Of course this wouldn’t fool anyone but the intention was not that, rather it was to persuade people that she was utterly self-absorbed and nothing would phase her. Yukino was presenting a painful piece of her past in a way that would make her appear indifferent to it, but it only brought to light an uneasy concern within those around her. This act simply building up her persona of “The Ice Queen” due to her icy personality and unapproachable nature.

Episodes seven and eight we also get a brief introduction of the fragile relationship between Hayama and Yukino. Initially Yukino only appears uncomfortable around Hayama and his group of friends, but it is later revealed that Hayama’s father is the legal advisor for Yukino’s father who holds a political office, and they were classmates in elementary school. This implies their past complicated history. Yukino is emotionally distant from Hayama due to his failure to intervene when she was bullied in school, and Hayama lives with that guilt.

A Veil of Snow

“In the end they always get jealous and avoid her”– Yukinoshita Haruo

Hachiman refers to Yukino in a condescending manner due to her cold and unfriendly demeanor and his dislike in the how she treats him. In his pseudo-Death Note he writes:

“April 2013; 1. YukinoshitaYukino looked down on me the moments I met her. Looked at me as though I were a bug. Way too self-conscious. She’s the Ice Queen! Demon superhuman!! I’ll kill her!” (Ep 2, 15:04)

Despite the comical impression Hachiman initially forms of Yukino, this serves as a manner to examine her personality. The “Ice Queen” persona is her facade she built up, trying desperately to convince herself and those around her in the hopes that the lies will eventually become reality. In a way this allows others to grow to understand Yukino in the way she wishes to appear, as Hachiman notes that she is “…always beautiful, unable to lie, honest, always standing on her own two feet, without anyone or anything to support her.”(Ep 9, 21:37) However, this persona only served to give people a false image of the true Yukino, the vulnerable girl she wishes to keep hidden, but it doesn’t last long, “I chose to feel like I understood her.” (Ep 9, 21:48) notes Hachiman after realizing the truth unravel before him.

Even Yukinoshita Yukino lies, Hachiman misjudged her. He initially was under the impression that there was some truth in her Ice Queen persona, but he ended up overlooking the truth. Earlier in the episode, Yui explained that “Yukino wants to talk to someone and I can’t do it myself.” yet this was disregarded because Hachiman was too confident in his warped understanding thinking that Yukinoshita Yukino would never need the help of someone else. In a way, the distant personality helped her move past the troubles she faced, but at the same time discouraged people from trying to get close to her.

However, this doesn’t mean the persona will forever remain. In episode eleven, she confesses “Yuigahama-san, right now it is difficult for me but one day I’ll rely on you.” Yukino is expressing her desire to want to rely on someone, because after trying to carry the weight of responsibility herself for so many years she isn’t ready yet to trust people. The Ice Queen thinks that seeking help and relying on others is a sign of weakness, but Yukino is growing to understand that her warped way of thinking is misguided, yet is still unable to let go of her familiar way of thinking despite the known negative implications. However, the first step to recovery is recognizing the issue, and as Yukino realizes that she has been perceiving the world wrongly it spurs her growth as a person to begin.

Based off personal experience, trust issues stem from the warped self-responsibility or desire to not rely on others. Other people are inferior so relying on them is a sign of weakness, right? A superiority complex has roots in the fear of being inadequate, and in order to justify not being at the bottom you have to lie to yourself that you are better and everyone else is below you. But to me this is was a defensive measure. “If people don’t like me, I will dislike them right back because their opinion doesn’t matter anyways!” All this does is alienate yourself from your peers because you become so absorbed in a narrative where the world around you is wrong and your worldview is the only correct one. In a way, I feel like Yukino falls somewhere into this frame of mind. Her classmates in elementary school bullied her due to jealousy since she was off studying abroad and came from a wealthy background. So she convinced herself that those people weren’t worth her time and the only reason they spoke cruelly about her was because she was obviously superior. However, this only perpetuate the cycle with both sides equally pushing away from one another. This is why Yukino appears unapproachable, because she has been alienated by the school and from her own doing under the impression that she is too perfect.

Relationships

Hachiman

Hachiman is a self-proclaimed loner, and a hypocrite. After joining the Service Club, his charade of isolation, narcissism and self-assessed understanding of human relationships is tested and placed under inspection. He no longer is able to turn to his comforting ideal of being a longer because he is forced to interact with others as a result of the activities of the Service Club, whether or not he recognizes it as such. Clinging to these ideals long into the series proves as a test of his abilities and forces him to come to conclusions that might be unfavorable to him. Continuing to resolve conflict in his typical manner only results in unsavory feelings of resentment from his peers, even if they were successful in the end.

During the school trip with Tobe’s request, Hachiman’s conclusion is to take the fall in order to solve the conflict. Because of this, Yukino and Yui are upset at his way of handling things, and is evident through Yui stating “Spare a thought for how someone feels” and Yukino’s: “I hate the way you do things.” when reacting to Hachiman’s efforts with the Tobe request and the School Festival arcs respectively. The perspective of the girls show Hachiman essentially carrying the burden of responsibility and diverting the conflict towards himself instead of truly solving a problem, and as a result are upset to see him take the fall. Hachiman wants results regardless of the repercussions without explaining to others what he intends to do, weakening the sense of trust between the group. Likewise, Yukino is afraid of Hachiman’s destructive approach to approaching problems since he doesn’t seem to care about his perception in the eyes of the school, and ultimately the club. Yukino grows to fear the path Hachiman continues down, one that she was once familiar with and wants him to understand his flaws, but they are unable to truly understand one another. She holds a faint image of what Hachiman is in her mind and watches it diverge from the actions that the real Hachiman takes. To put it simply, YahariBento explains this as “… the author tries to explain how humans place expectations to other people by believing in the image of that person. The image that “the watcher” believes that what they understands is the truth because “the actor” presents her/his standpoint via remark, attitude and actions. So basically, both of them help one another to create this image. The final result is the watcher believes it, but will be betrayed by both of them later, when the watcher realizes that the image is not the truth…” (5). This essentially is bringing to question the trust between the club members and the disingenuous facade each person is constructing.

In episode twelve of season one, Yukino tells Hachiman that “You and I can’t be friends.” At the time, her reasoning is that she doesn’t feel like she knows him. My interpretation is that Yukino is not confident in truly understanding Hachiman, and fears her own inadequacy at the time. He has gone on to talk about how “She and I are completely different. That’s why all our conversations are refreshing.” and Yukino most likely understands that sentiment. However, she fears that she is inadequate to get close to him and complicate club activities while also “taking” Hachiman away from Yui, who also has feelings for him. She is also unable to properly understand if Hachiman is the person she thinks he is.

These feelings shape the inner conflict surrounding Yukino as we enter the second season of the anime. From the start of this new season, it is more visibly evident that Yukino is more self-conscious of the relationship between her and Hachiman, as well as how their relationship might be interpreted by onlookers. During the school trip, all the students are put into a new situation and it changes the lens at which they look at their relationships with one another. Being outside of a school setting transforms their perception of how they view their classmates, friends of teacher since it is not in the typical classroom setting. School trip, hot spring, and beach episodes in anime are particularly important due to this fact, providing a change of pace and altering the usual setting at which each of the characters grew to understand each other in. For example, seeing Hiratsuka-sensei in a casual setting might seem strange to the students who are so comfortable seeing her as simply their home room teacher.

So Yukino suggest suggests for her and Hachiman to return to the hotel separately during the school trip to avoid suspicion, and to not cue Yui in on the fact that they are meeting behind her back. Perhaps this is due to Yukino’s strong desire to maintain the mutual trust between her and Yui that she chooses to not provide any sense of confusion which will complicate their relationships. In a way she is unable to fully accept her selfish desire to be with Hachiman and recognizes it as such, but this brings to question her self-confidence and willingness to act. At the time I can assume it is because she has yet to fully commit to the idea of progressing their relationship and is not ready to confront the time when she will do something which will harm the group dynamic of the Service Club.

On a personal aside, I’d like to briefly relate this to my personal middle school class trip. We spent a week traveling to, visiting and returning from the nation’s capital. Initially this was a great change of pace to take a break from school, thinking about high school starting in the Fall, and just hang out with friends. However, this proved to be an interesting experience because even though this was a school organized event, everyone was outside of the classroom setting and allowed to essentially do what we wanted. It was the first time I shared a hotel room with two other guys, and we spent the time watching Family Feud, eating snacks from the vending machine, prank calling other rooms and talking late into the night. Being on an extended trip away from home as a teenager with a bunch of my peers allowed all of us to feel that sense of independence and strengthen our bonds as friends by sharing these new experiences with one another. Likewise, the teachers felt similarly and I was able to talk in a casual manner with some teachers I usually never talked to, discussing stuff like video games and movies like they were a distant uncle or aunt. That’s why I believe that the class trip in Oregairu was critical in introducing a new layer to the relationships of the characters since they were able to meet in with different pretenses. Previously it generally was under the pretenses of work for the Service Club, even if it was just an excuse.

“I’m sure she and I are similar on some level” (Ep 1, 13:19) observes Hachiman after assessing the type of person he perceives to be Yukinoshita Yukino upon their first meeting in the Service Club. However, the irony is that Yukino chooses to distance herself from Hachiman and instead favors Yui. For Hachiman, this seems strange since he believes they are of similar mindset, but she knows there is a clash of ideals between the two that cannot be overlooked. Yukino knows that she and Hachiman are fundamentally different in their view of their own self-image and goals. While Hachiman seems content with his life and treats his faults as strengths in a twisted way, and Yukino seems to recognize her faults and hates herself because of how she acts. She wants to change herself and the world for being wrong, while Hachiman believes that the world is the problem but chooses to blame it instead of attempting to confront his problems. His inability to understand the way Yukino feels creates a dissonance in their ability to understand one another, and is upset at Hachiman’s reluctance to confront his problems and accept change. More than anyone she feels like she understands the importance of changing oneself and wants Hachiman to understand that sentiment. Both unable to recognize this conflict, we are left to consider the quote “Knowing each other is one thing, but understanding is an altogether different matter” (Ep 3 6:13). With this in mind, Hachiman cannot recognize his own faults nor accurately view Yukino for who she really is, and Yukino is equally guilty at pretending to understand his mentality. Hachiman is clinging to the perception of Yukino he observed upon their first contact and is unable to evolve this image to change in accordance to the Yukino in front of him. He fails to understand her which only strains their relationship, evident through Yukino line of “And here I was sure you’d understand.” (Ep5 17:45) after overestimating Hachiman’s ability to understand her. This only serves as a set-up for him to misjudge her personality which he refuses to accept could happen. This is reinforced because he still tells himself such things as “Yukinoshita doesn’t lie” and ultimately the result is the finale of Zoku, in which he is forced to accept reality that “Yukinoshita is a strong girl. And so, I burdened her with the ideal image I had of her.” (Ep13 20:20).

Family Dynamic

“Family reasons, huh…” Yukinoshita said. “Every family has them.”

She had a deep look of melancholy on her face that I had never seen before. She looked just like Taishi, who had come to tell us of his troubles. By that, I mean she was on the verge of tears.

“Yukinoshita…”

But as soon as I called out to her, the clouds covered the sun and a shadow came over her face. Because of that, I couldn’t read the expression on Yukinoshita’s downturned face clearly. But the mere sight of her feeble, drooped shoulders told me she had let out a short sigh.” (Vol 2 pg 111).

Mother & Expectations

In a perfect world, we’d like to think we had control over dictating the outcome of our life. In some ways we can, though there will always be forces outside of our control that we cannot include in out calculations and pose problems. However, in the case of the Yukinoshita family, the children have little say in the course of their life. To frame this properly, we must consider the status and expectations place upon the children of a powerful and influential family with successful parents, such that the children are almost forced into inheriting the family tradition and need to somehow meet or surpass their parents success. This is seen quite often as a theme in fiction as well as reality that can often lead young people to massive amounts of stress. We will begin to get a more clear picture of the mentality of Yukinoshita Yukino, as well as Haruno but beginning to examine their life through the lens of Japanese cultural traditions, family expectations and the mother’s role in this.

Jim Taylor Ph.D explains how “Ability expectations are those in which children are expected to achieve a certain result because of their natural ability, “We expect you to get straight A’s because you’re so smart” or “We expect you to win because you’re the best athlete out there.” The problem with ability expectations is that children have no control over their ability.” (7) Returning focus to Yukino, we can see her continued success inside the classroom as a byproduct of the expectations she has continued to live up to because of her family name, and has accepted it as normal. “In the end they always get jealous and avoid her” is how Yukinoshita Haruno puts it, and it is accurate to say that Yukino’s continued success has proved to set her aside from her peers in both a positive and negative sense. The Yukinoshita name continues to be held at a high regard, but at the same time she is distancing herself from her classmates due to widening the gap to which she would be approachable as a peer.

The reason for the continued academic achievement of the Yukinoshita children is largely due to the mother’s influence. Traditionally in a Japanese family dynamic;

“…the mother sets the expectations for the child. She creates a relationship with her child through amae, the desire to be passively loved. The child is dependent on the mother and is cared for unconditionally. It is the mother’s responsibility to raise her child with love and security.

The “Kyoiku Mama,” or Japanese educational mom, is dedicated to supporting the education of her children.4 The mother makes sure the child receives a quality education. If the child succeeds in school, the family is also considered to have succeeded. The child’s mother helps with homework, teaches discipline, provides a supportive home environment for studying, and is involved at school.” (8)

Because of the importance of the mother’s role in their children’s academic upbringing, Yukino’s mother has very likely been a major player in shaping the ideal of academic and extracurricular success, grooming them to one day inherit the family name. However, we later learn the bias of the mother towards Haruno since she is the eldest and already successful, thus pushing the importance of Yukino’s accomplishments to the background since she is no longer the heir to the family.

Now to look into the portrayal of mother Yukinoshita in the series to see just how she holds a strong grip on her children. In episode eight of the first season, Haruno says that their mother wants to meet her, which changes the weight of the scene. This is the first time we get insight to what type of person the mother is, and is evident with how Yukino reacts to the summon. She changes to a more serious attitude, puts up the “Ice Queen” front and leaves. Afterwards we learn that Hachiman didn’t see her again for the rest of the summer. From this first introduction, we don’t even have to see the mother to start formulating an idea of what kind of person she it. Due to prior foreshadowing, such as Yukino’s downcast expression when family issues were brought up, we can now start to assume that her mother is potentially the source of those feelings.

Now, looking further into Zoku we finally get the first appearance of the mother whom is dragging Yukino down. She tells her “I want you to stay true to yourself and live freely, but I’m worried you’ll go down the wrong path.” (Ep12 21:03) but, contrasted with Yukino’s perception of her mother’s expectations:  “When mom decides something, she forces other people to follow.” We can see that there is a discrepancy in the viewpoints of these two parties. I interpret this as an illusion of choice, taking the side of Yukino. “The illusion of choice is a psychological mental model that states humans are happy if they believe that have control over their own actions and can exercise free will.  If free will is deprived, or seemingly deprived, from an individual, he or she will become resentful or rebellious, even if the choice forced upon him is identical to the one he would have selected of his own accord.” (9) Yukinoshita’s mother is controlling the lives of her children even if she might deny that presently. This is not as direct as we might think however, it is equally the result of the children not wanting to disappoint the authoritative figures of their parents. Yukino explains how “We all have our own personal image that’s dictated by others-” which is indicative of her perception of the control her mother has over her, further evident through her mother telling her that“I want you to stay true to yourself and live freely, but I’m worried you’ll go down the wrong path” in episode twelve of season two. Obviously, their mother cares about them, but perhaps it is for the selfish reasoning of wanting to uphold the family’s appearance as successful rather than simply wishing for her children to have a bright future. The latter is only a byproduct of the former so she can view this as a win-win despite not considering the wishes of her children. Now, taking Yukino’s statement at face value, we can conclude that while the mother does most likely have the best interests of her in mind, she is only viewing it from her own perspective and not that of what Yukino wants. Hachiman goes on to explain how “We all wish to remain true to ourselves, but who decides who we are as people?” In the case of Yukino and Haruno, they are shackled by the expectations of their mother and find it difficult to express themselves freely.

Haruno & Self-Actualization

“Siblings are the strangers that live closest to you.”

Yukinoshita Haruno is an enigmatic figure, playing both the figure of an instigator and an older sister leading to mixed results between the relationships of the cast. We first are introduced to Haruno during episode six of season one, when Hachiman and Yukino spend a day together at the mall under the pretenses of finding a gift for Yui. This event facilitated an environment in which the two would experience a close- than-usual interaction, influencing their willingness to confine in each other. However, the important variable at play here was the unexpected appearance of Haruno, which is the first time we learn of her in the series. This first impression of her character allows not only for us to start to formulate a conflicted distaste for involvement, but also to serve as an agent to cause Yukino to react in ways unfamiliar to what she has shown before, vulnerability. I will refrain from discussing the intricacies of Haruno’s psyche, rather, I will focus on the role she plays in the series.

Yukino’s relationship with Haruno is complex, but can be interpreted as Yukino being jealous of her older sister, and resents that she feels that way. Much of the dynamic within the Yukinoshita family stems from the importance of their perception to others, and the continued success at upholding the family name. Naturally being the oldest, Haruno grew up with the expectation of being the figurehead representing the Yukinoshita family, thus making Yukino constantly living in her shadow of success and wants to prove herself. She confesses, “as for anything regarding my family’s reputation is Haruno’s Job. As for me… I’m a replacement.” Feeling that she isn’t regarded as “important” as Haruno, she desperately tries to fight for the affection of her parents through the only means to get their attention, which is academic success.

Sibling rivalry is quite common, personally I can speak first hand of this. I have a younger brother whom is like my best friend. Despite this, I get the impression that we inadvertently try to one-up one another in sports and school. A healthy rivalry sparks competition between two parties creating the motivation to constantly improve upon oneself with the justification of outshining the other person. Ideally, this is all done with good intentions. In sports for example, my running club would train together through the week, each person urging each other onward, and during races we would all race and push each other to reach success which could not have achieved alone. Siblings act in a similar manner with a healthy relationship, like with me and my brother. However, this can also easily lead towards jealousy when one sibling perceives that another is receiving more attention or affection than them. “Sibling rivalry is more common in same-sex siblings since they share common desires and attributes and there is more room for competition. Sibling rivalry is more common in girls than in boys.” (6) explains Alexander K.D. Leung in his paper entitled “Sibling Rivalry.” In the case of the Yukinoshita siblings, we can see this rivalry evident, even if Haruno doesn’t engage in it directly. In fact, it is my understanding that Haruno’s ultimate goal is to lead Yukino out of her shadow and for her to find her own success.

“Yukino hasn’t changed a bit, always matching, always hand-me-downs” Haruno explains this when recognizing that Yukino is following her footsteps of going to the same university she attended. Yukino yearns for those feelings of familiar love, but they are not reciprocated to her, directly implied with her observation in episode thirteen of season two; “You two must be close. I’m envious of that.” Yukino, on some level, wishes for her mother to recognize her as an individual capable of success. However she has only been able to prove that by following the footsteps of her older sister, and as a result, not being true to herself. The paradox lies in the fact that Yukino cannot freely express herself without restricting her own life choices to those of her mother if she wishes to gain affection. Haruno understands this and wishes for Yukino to look at her perspective critically, learn from that, and move on to be her own person.

Haruno explains that the best way to spark development and unity is a desire to fight a common enemy. Using her statement as a basis for understanding her objective, I have concluded that Haruno’s goal was to act as a “villain” in order to motivate Yukino to grow as a person and test the concept of if their relationships are “genuine.” In much the same was as Hachiman approached conflicts in the past, she plays the role least desirable in order to achieve success directly. Hachiman even notices this and then asks “Did you purposely make-” leaving us to speculate what this means, though even he seems to be aware of her intentions. A redditor by the name of /u/johnbon7 explains Haruno’s actions as “deliberately antagonistic”(10) which I feel is an incredibly accurate description of her role in the series.

That said, I have grown to understand Haruno as the “instigator.” She is trying to incite the event in which would make it seem like she was that “villain” in order for Yukino can turn to her friends. Haruno’s plan would then either result in Yukino confining in her friends and strengthening their bonds, proving their “genuine” relationships, or going on to highlight their strained relationship if Yukino fails. Regardless of the outcome, Haruno seems to be testing the friendships of the group at the expense of taking the emotional toll on herself in much the same way Hachiman was prone to act. Either she is the agent of the mother or she wants the best for her sister, still unclear judging from an anime perspective. So, these actions are done with the intention of Yukino not following her footsteps. She is trying to insinuate change in Yukino by acting like the villain, so her sister finds her own path. During the concert at the end of season one, Yukino finally acts independently and remarks “This is the way I have always been. We’ve known each other for seventeen years. Maybe you never realized it.” evidently highlighting her growth over the course of the season. Yukino finally accepting herself and her standing in the family. Hachiman then says the compliment was unexpected, which Yukino responds by saying that she never hated her sister, but there was time when she wanted to be her. Haruno used to be her measure of success, a figure to look up to and to compete with. But eventually she was forced to accept that it’s impossible to become another person and she needed to stand on her own.

In Brown and Bosson’s dissection of narcissistic personalities, they found “that narcissists experience “both high and low self-esteem in alternation” (italics added, this issue). In support of this contention, Morf and Rhodewalt cite several studies that demonstrate associations between narcissism and fluctuations in state self-esteem” (12) This points to the fluctuation in people with narcissistic tendencies and could possibly serve to explain the evolution of Yukino’s personality. Her narcissism was just a cover to hide her true feelings, a veil of snow if you will, and when she began to realize her faults that layer melted away like the winter snow upon reaching spring. Unsurprisingly, the main agent of change is none other than Haruno, who’s name is written with “陽” meaning “the sun” (13) but is read as “Haru” meaning spring. Following the trend we have seen thus far in the series regarding names, Haruno is the foil for Yukino, the ray of sunlight to melt the snow in the start of spring. She was able to inflict a change in direction for Yukino’s feelings and ultimately instigating the majority of the character relevant changes after her introduction, who she plays a major role in.

Psychoanalysis

After examining the known forces influencing the psyche of Yukinoshita Yukino, we have begun to grasp a stronger understanding at the person she is. With this in mind, I’d like to return to a few moments during the series which could best be understood after understanding of Yukinoshita from the a psychoanalytic perspective.

To begin, we can generalize Yukino as being quite similar to Hachiman in action, but is more self-aware and critical. Meaning, while she does share some logical reasoning stemming from a point of her viewpoint towards society, it is not to the  narcissistic levels which Hachiman demonstrates. Psychologically speaking, narcissism originates from the basal human desire to seek approval and be regarded well by others. (11) Hachiman is a self-titled “loner” despite the visible contradiction of him having success in forming relationships with his classmates, yet he chooses to disregard those experiences in order to preserve his own ideal image of himself. It was quite interesting to discover a phenomena in which a narcissistic person will be likely to misread complex social situations due to psychological impairment. It is described as follows:

“…narcissistic myopia, a state similar to alcohol myopia. Alcohol myopia (Steele & Josephs, 1990) refers to a state in which only the most salient cues are processed due to decreased cognitive capacity. Because of decreased cognitive processing, contextual cues are neglected and complex deliberations are severely impaired. Given that complex processing demands are present in most social situations, it is not surprising that alcohol myopia has been shown to impair appropriate interpersonal judgment” (12)

With this in mind, Hachiman’s psyche begins to unravel and we begin to understand his unwillingness to let himself accept the true social discourse playing out in front of him. This is perhaps a reason why he is unable to unable to realize the evolution of Yukino, rather choosing not to accept it because he was too confident in his own assessment of her to begin with.

Later on in Zoku, Yukino confesses “All I ever did was act like I could do anything- like I understood everything” both serving as a means to explain her own shortcomings, but also wanting Hachiman to realize the faults he has despite the current success of his plans. Hiratsuka-sensei explains how Hachiman is good at calculating human emotions, but that is also his downfall. Case in point, with the Yukino and Yui situation, she told him this: “The last remaining answer- the one you can’t calculate- that’s human emotion” meaning that Yukino is not upset over what he is doing, rather what this makes them feel as a result. However, Hachiman finally begins to come to critically examine himself and the club throughout Zoku, and because of this we reach the conclusion to the Student Council Presidency arc.

The Student Council election, and festival serves as a means of concluding Yukino’s period of growth and testing her ability to understand herself. In the school festival arc, Yukino initially refuses to be chairwoman, but later accepts the position to help Sagami. Either this was because she regretted not taking the position originally, or because she was not confident in her ability to handle the responsibility of being an authoritative figure. Despite this, Yukino was seemingly serving as the person in charge of the committee rather than assuming role of assistant. I interpret this as her wanted to handle this herself as a way to prove that she can handle this responsibility alone. From what we’ve learned from her perception of success, living in the shadow of her sister’s reputation is creating conflict in her. On the one hand Yukino wants to prove her worth in succeeding in anything her sister Haruno could, but is then also conflicted that she is being manipulated by the authoritative rule of her mother unwillingly. Later in the episode Haruno shows up and this causes tension with Yukino because of the newly introduced pressure of being judged by the person she wants to prove herself to. Perhaps this pushes Yukino to refuses assistance after Sagami decides to screw everything up, in away to overburden herself and artificially give herself more responsibility. This unmoving stance of not wanting the help of others is a detriment to her only aiding her levels of stress, which ultimately cumulate in her having feigning a sickness to take a day off. Contrary to what Hachiman thinks, the fact that someone has always found a way to avoid relying on people, does not mean they should not get help when they need to. Yukino realizes the harm she is doing to herself and the superficial reasoning of proving herself to those around her.

Through my own experiences, I can empathise with the thought process in which Yukino feels the desire to unnecessarily burden herself with responsibilities. While not having gone to such lengths are her, I tend to get protective over my own projects and will often disregard the offers of assistance. I feel like this is more of my own distrust of other people in not being able to meet my own unreasonably high standards. Oftentimes I will have lofty goals to reach with ambitious projects and quality standards I expect only myself to follow and it will more often than not result in me getting agitated at the project or myself as it spirals out of control. Similarly to Yukino, I desire that control over the situation and fully assuming responsibility on the actions I take, but it’s not a viable option when the issue grows in scale. Sometimes the project is too difficult to tackle alone and trying to do so will on result in exhaustion and failure. Yukinoshita reached her limit on what she could assume responsibility of and ultimately had to abandon the duty she had taken on because of those reason. It was because of this that she started to understand that despite accepting the help of others, it was in no way accepting defeat. Relying on others only demonstrates the strength of your trust in them that they will assist you wholeheartedly, unless that’s a school group project. But in the case of Yui, Yukino had to realize that when she was overwhelmed she needed to come to understand that her friends were there to help her, but not used to that she was unable to consider that an option at the time. Eventually this understanding leads Hachiman to show concern for her, in his own way, by making Iroha student council president. Despite being displeased with the manner of which Hachiman burdens himself with the problems of others she was able to learn that one day there will be someone who will understand her, so long as she opened up her heart.

However, this change within Yukino also caused Haruno to respond with a rather cryptic warning, stating that it wasn’t trust growing in her but something more sinister. Haruno’s warning might have implied that she had realized the growing dependence and possibly even codependency that Yukino felt towards Hachiman. As explained by Wikipedia, “Codependency is a behavioral condition in a relationship where one person enables another person’s addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement.” Assuming that Haruno was being genuine with her warning, this would mean that she believes Yukino is enabling Hachiman in a way that would prevent him from realizing his problems and in turn, prevent his growth which would ultimately serve to help her. By not trusting Hachiman to help her and instead say nothing and make him worry, she is forcing his hand and the only way he can solve a problem is through his own extreme measures. Similarly, Yukino’s inability to genuinely trust Hachiman or Yui highlights the growing tension in the club, and with the mutual understanding of one another the trust is completely one-sided. Nobody can understand someone fully if they don’t display their emotions openly or express them to others. This is the precursor to what sparks Hachiman’s breakdown, in wanting something genuine.

Something Genuine

The height of the tension within the Service Club cumulates in one of the most iconic monologues of the series in Zoku. This is the first time we genuinely see Hachiman show emotionally vulnerability, allowing himself to also act as a representation of the feelings he has been holding back up until this point. Concerning the previously mentioned tension in the club, it was a result of the continued inability of the club members to allow themselves genuinely trust each other despite growing closer over the course of the series. Despite the common understanding within psychology that ninety-three percent of communication being non-verbal and only seven percent being verbal, the small percentage of that whole should not be disregarded, and was the flaw of the club members. They expected each other to read their emotions, Hachiman himself even prided himself in being able to read people but the continued stress of over analyzing simple emotions and miscalculations resulting in negative consequences led to his outburst. “There’s stuff others won’t get unless you say it loud. But sometimes, you can’t get through to people even if you spell it out.” (Ep 8 15:58) Even after asking someone how they feel, it’s difficult to take what they say at face value after previous doubting and critical examination due to that person not being fully open to discuss what was wrong. This is why Hachiman explains that “It’s not empty words I’m after. There was something I desired all along.” (Ep 8 17:12)

Hachiman is tired of all the nonsense that has come as a result of the stress that came with his constant concern with the intricate emotions of those around him. He is tired of being in the dark and miscalculating what people say either because he overthinks what they say, or because they aren’t able to say what they really want. When there comes a point in which he even beings to doubt his friends, he realizes that something needs to change. Hachiman simply wants to understand people in a way where there won’t be any unknown variables, those being his source of stress and eliminating them will be the only way to give him true peace of mind. He doesn’t want friendship or mutual understanding. This roundabout way in which the Service Club members have accepted as normalcy is only straining their relationships, not saying what is on your mind only serves as a way to deter help instead of reaching out. Yukino doesn’t say what she really feels, and seeing Yui confused makes him finally understand that this is not how it should be. He wants something where they can have relationships where they’re free, unburdened by the enigmatic display of emotions they present each other. He understands this is unreasonable, out of reach, yet he still wants “something genuine.” A world in which people would say what they mean and open their heart to the world so that there won’t be any more confusion.

Something genuine, “To preserve that place and time we spend there.” Hachiman is more empathetic than he has presented himself as and this is shown with his genuine concern for the future of preserving that the club means to him. All this parading around behind masks is what he despises about the “normies” in school yet he has let his own circle of friends down the same path and wishes to fix it. Since the buildup of tension in the club, they haven’t been able to sit down and drink tea together, which symbolized the time they would be able to recognize their bonds with one another. As Hachiman begins his monologue, his gaze lingers on the unused tea set and confesses “…There was something I desired all along.” (Ep 8 17:12) What he really wants is to return to the time when the three of them were able to drink tea after school, not seeing Yui so troubled when she unable to read the feelings of her best friend and Hachiman standing there feeling helpless.

After spilling his heart out, Yukino is still unable to fully comprehend the desire for something genuine. Perhaps she was unable to realize the true nature of Hachiman’s “request” believing that they were all friends. But it wasn’t until episode ten of Zoku in which she truly begins to understand what Hachiman desired all along. This is why after Hachiman thanks Yui and Yukino for fulfilling his request, they retort but saying it was not complete yet. They have accepted his request in a way he is not willing to understand, because between the two of them they have finally began to formulate what “genuine” means to them. Yui and Yukino desire something more than just friendship with Hachiman, and thus are unable to accept that their part in the request complete. After witnessing Hachiman’s desire to show vulnerability in spite of their perception of him breaking down, Yukino begins to accept her own desires, selfish or not. No more superficiality forming false friendships with each other, Yukino begins to want that genuine relationship too in her own way. In the end, Yukino finally realized her own final request as a result of this, she can’t lose to Yui. Prior to this she has only held back her feelings because she was not willing to sacrifice the bonds between her friends in order to be true to herself. However, the irony is that the bonds between her friends at the time were not genuine. Because of her hesitation and misreading of their relationships, her inability to express herself freely, ultimately was one of the pieces that led to the exposure of their false bonds. If the club’s friendships were genuine, Yui and Yukino would not have problem in confessing their love, but because of their lack of confidence in these bonds they did not want to strain them any further in order to be selfish.

“But you can’t call something genuine just because it makes you suffer”(Ep 8 10:28)- Hiratsuka-sensei

 

Conspiracizing

More Regarding Haruno’s Teasing

Now that I have unpacked the major points of discussing regarding Yukinoshita Yukino, I want to take some time to explore some decisive moments in the anime series. This is largely based off personal theories and might be proven to be false due to the possibility of the light novel exploring the nuances of said events in great detail later on the series. That said, this is mostly for fun, discussing some potential possible ways to interpret certain events.

As I have mentioned previously, Haruno was an enigmatic figure in the series that primarily served as a instigator with a concern for her sister. It is still mostly unclear whether or not she was genuinely wanting to help Yukino, or if she was there to sabotage the relationships of the group. This is largely shrouded in mystery due to the fact that we never really have gotten an explanation of her motivations and that a majority of the back story of the Yukinoshita siblings is still not available to use as a reference for psychoanalyzing them.

In Zoku, I observed that Haruno would often tease Yukino regarding the topics of love or a boyfriend. After seeing this as a running theme, I found it hard to concretely say if Haruno did in fact have good intentions. Being her older sister, I would assume Haruno would have a grasp of what kind of person Yukino was and knew how to avoid sensitive or embarrassing subjects. The result of this teasing had potentially adverse effects as Yukino was perhaps even more hesitant to proceed further with a relationship due to fears of harassment. This is seen when Yukinoshita reveals that “Back when we were kids, [my sister] would always mess with me at places like this.” when she and Hachiman are alone together at the amusement park, which is often seen as a cliché in romantic comedy type anime. Whether this was a means to stimulate the budding romance in the group, force Yukino out of her shell, or simply to harass her is quite unclear.

Personally, I find it difficult to express my emotions sometimes, and when someone would inquire about me having a crush I would instinctively deny everything. I think it’s quite common for people to avoid discussing such topics out of embarrassment because we either don’t want to be teased about it later on, or that the truth of our feelings would be made public. Though technically speaking, neither should be a problem. If we have confidence in the genuine relationship with the friends asking us there should not be a worry that they would maliciously harass us, or make it common knowledge about this disclosed information. Even if the person we are crushing on learns of out feelings, it really shouldn’t be an issue since it’s the truth. Because of this and knowledge of her goal to test the genuine bonds of the three, Haruno aligns more with “chaotic good” in that her involvement in the series is largely destructive towards character relations, but also acts as a way to be an overall instigator of change, regardless if those intentions are selfish or not.

Save Me

Hiratsuka-sensei explains to Hachiman that he is good at calculating human emotions, but in turn it proves to be his greatest flaw. With the Yukino and Yui situation, she told him this: “The last remaining answer- the one you can’t calculate- that’s human emotion.” This implies that Hachiman failed to take into account the emotions of those involved as a  byproduct of his actions. He was unable to see past his personal objective to fix the problem that the feelings of those involved were overlooked. You can’t calculate human emotions, our thoughts or the feeling of love. These are unexpected variables that one can never be certain as to how others will react without a greater understanding of them as people. This is why when Hachiman felt he had a firm grasp of the situations around him, it was only through his perspective with little regard for the emotional consequences, which was the fault he was constantly accused of. Yukino even vocalized this sentiment when she told him “I hate the way you do things.” in episode two of Zoku. Even Yui was uncharacteristically upset when she accusingly told Hachiman “spare a thought for how someone feels.” after the Ebina confession scene in the same episode. “…if you stick to your ways, you won’t be able to help someone when you most want to.” (Ep3 13:04)

With this in mind, we head into episode nine of Zoku at the amusement park. As Yukino and Hachiman approach the next ride, clearly for couples, she hesitates and heavily implies that she is nervous. Hachiman misreads her body language and assumes she was referring to the ride itself, not the social implications of going into a love tunnel amusement park ride because he has yet to accept that both Yui and Yukino have feelings for him. He is unable to understand these complex emotions and seems to want to disregard them, because of his predisposition that romantic comedies don’t exist in the real world along with his warped perception of love. It is then at the peak of the ride, finally realizing that she can handle her own feelings and vulnerability being exposed, Yukino confesses “Hey Hikigaya, help me someday.”

This is Yukino’s emotional climax and essentially the final step she had to take to finally move in a direction of change. She was able to accept that Hachiman will change his perception of her, and would understand the vulnerability of displaying her emotions to him. One day there will be someone who understands Yukinoshita, someone who can break through her shell. She wants Hachiman to be that person, the one to save her.

Later on the bench, it seems as if she is looking at a picture. For amusement parks, it is not uncommon for pictures to be taken on rides and be available for purchase when you get off, so it extremely like that is what Yukino has. Our suspicions are confirmed when she hides it quickly upon Hachiman’s return with drinks, and this is when she opens up to him. She begins by telling him “I was always the obedient unproblematic girl, but I also knew they called me stuck-up, unlikable and the like behind my back” confirming the idea that she would conform to the wishes of her family in order to remain unproblematic. Perhaps afraid of the consequences, then eventually accepting that behavior as normal until recently. What changes all this was her desire for something that neither Hachiman or her sister had. She wanted something that could only be attainable without trying to pretend to be someone else, something only attainable by Yukinoshita Yukino, she wanted to please herself. Going on the ride was her first step in moving towards her progress at displaying affection towards Hachiman in her own way, despite Hachiman being unable to realize this. Yukino realizes that she needs to stop comparing herself to others for her identity and needs to learn and become the person her heart truly desires.

In episodes ten, she carries this sentiment when dealing with the planning committee: “Making vague statements for actual communication and understanding, while never lifting a finger… It will never create anything, never improve anything, and never help anything. It’s nothing but a sham.” Yukino continues her habit of unveiling her person philosophy through her statements towards others. The previous episode allowed her to develop and with this understanding she applied it to the stalemate at the meeting. This is most likely unintentional, but it goes to reinforce that her way of thinking has been changed as she reveals it herself regardless.

The last variable is Hachiman, and if he is willing in accept the change that his peers have. Youth is about developing physically, academically and emotionally yet Hachiman clings to his ideals because he wants to disassociate with the idealization of youth, or “seishun”. He has always been an outsider and likes to still think of himself that way even if it’s false. He needs to undergo the same evolution as Yukino if he truly wishes for something genuine. In the last episode of Zoku, we see the seeds of change planting themselves in his mind. He thinks to himself “Yukinoshita Yukino is a strong girl. And so, I burdened her with the ideal image I had of her.” before the final title card falls with the message “Spring Always Comes to Life/Buried Underneath a Pile of Snow.” Hachiman was only finally able to internalize his shortcoming when it was already too late, and most likely will change his ideology. He himself wished to understand people, but in the end he failed to meet his friends half-way and remained stagnant. As a result he ended up hurting both Yukino and Yui with only himself to blame, and he understands this at long last. As for the title card, I like to think of this as illustrating the parallel trajectory of Yukino and Hachiman. For the longest time, Yukino hid her feelings under a veil of snow, the snow under the snow. Hachiman is similarly doing this, by refusing to accept change. However, though understanding of one’s faults and changing yourself for the better, the layers of snow can melt away and finally reveal the beautiful flowers of spring below. All that needs to happen is for you to allow your heart to thaw.

Afterward

Why Yukino Means a lot to Me

Thought the psychological analysis and use of personal anecdotes, I have felt that I personally have found some closure in understanding this character. Her development as a character through the two seasons was had a profound impact. Yukinoshita Yukino is such an important character for me, and even more so through the writing of this paper. Her evolution from the “Ice Queen” to a vulnerable girl really highlights how much people can change over time, and it resonated so much with me. I’m sure there are plenty of Oregairu fans out there that were initially drawn to the show because we projected our thoughts onto Hachiman. But for me I guess these were only the thoughts that I wanted for be my own. In a way, the persona of Hachiman lived inside me and only came about because of consistently being excluded from social situations and I was alienated by my peers. So the cynical thoughts served as a crutch for me to accept my situation as it was and continue onwards lying to myself. But thought witnessing the evolution of Yukino through the series, I started to connect with her more than I thought I would. It was in seeing her develop to accept herself despite the implications of others judgement was I able to learn the faults in myself. I needed to be true to myself, I needed to desire something that only I could and stop aligning with the malicious thoughts I had come to form because I was secretly depressed but failed to recognize that, instead hiding under a veil of snow to protect myself. I still find it difficult to genuinely come to accept the lessons I’ve learned and put them into practice, but at the very least I was able to recognize my own faults. Much like Hachiman, I am in a place where I recognize that I have been wrong, but am at the crossroads of continuing down the path of destruction or rehabilitation. Though, as cheesy as it sounds, I remind myself how Yukino was able to move past her narcissism and change in spite of the external factors holding her back. Even if I don’t change into an optimist, I have come to understand that change can happen, even to the “Ice Queen.”

But regarding Yukino in a more lighthearted lens, she is my self-proclaimed waifu. It’s probably obvious simply due to the serious dedication of writing a lengthy dissection of her character and this series. To reiterate what I had touched on in the Introduction of this paper, I was originally a kuudere guy. I was particularly infatuated with Yuki Nagato from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and she was the first character that could be considered my waifu, but it was mostly due to the fact that I found her aesthetically appealing. At the time I wasn’t seriously into the idea of waifuism nor was I deep enough into otaku media that I actually was able to understand the love between a fictional character. For that matter, I never really understood love. But then as I watched Oregairu I started to feel the feelings of attraction blossoming inside me, I desired to see this character more and she charmed me in a way I thought impossible. I was initially starstruck at the beautiful dark-haired maiden who spoke harshly to the main character and was instantly infatuated in a way I thought impossible. But it wasn’t until the completion of both seasons when I realized I was in over my head. The logical part of my brain argues that waifuism is dumb, but I can’t help the strong feelings of admiration and affection I feel towards Yukino. This is why I believe in the power of writers to create such human characters that blur the line between fiction and reality. Through all my hardships and lonely nights, I was able to keep my head in the right place because of the reminder that I cared for someone and love still existed in this world, even if the person was two-dimensional. No, love existed in spite of the cruelty of this world and transcended dimensions. Destructive, mostly likely, but I cannot deny the fact that learning to love Yukino has helped me in times of distress and has overall served as a force to keep me accepting that love isn’t all for naught instead of succumbing to the cynical worldview that has crossed my mind many times alone.

Retrospective & Regrets

I impressed myself that I have come this far! Seriously, this is easily the longest paper I have written and has been a considerable amount of work to produce this, which is why I am afraid of sharing it. I have my doubts that this will even be relevant and I never planned it to be. This is, in the end, a surface level biased analysis of a character whom I claim to be my waifu. Honestly, there most likely isn’t anything in this paper that is worth anything as most of it is potentially just reiterating known information. But despite my lack of confidence, I was able to reach a point where I was moderately satisfied with this paper. In the end, I feel that some of my personal analysis fall short. A lot of what I write relies heavily on my own personal references as a basis for understanding some of the nuance in the character action of Yukino so it’s hard to imagine a stranger being able to fully understand that. Similarly, I’m no expert in human emotions and will admit that I have difficulty understanding people. I’m terrible at reading emotions and it took me a while even with this anime series to distill the important information and structure it just so that I would get a proper understanding of the characters. Characters like Haruno were extremely troubling for me, as I felt like I was taking shots in the dark as to what she possibly was planning on doing. In reality, I have one real friend and find it difficult to form bonds with people because of my lack of understanding and failure to learn these crucial interpersonal skills as a result of my childhood.

This was a huge undertaking for me, not only because I wanted to fully explain this character but also because I really wanted to do justice to the character of Yukinoshita Yukino. Even now, nearing well over 12,000 words I still feel that this sufficiently capture the essence of who Yukino is. It is this dilemma that kept me from even starting this paper. The constant self-doubting, the lack of self-confidence and my overly self-critical nature that can never accept the quality of my own work. I didn’t want to do a disservice to a character I care so much for so I ended up blowing this project out of proportion in the beginning. To give some back story, I initially rewatched Oregariu in April 2018, during which I took notes with the intention of writing a comprehensive analysis of my favorite character. It was because of the previously stated reasons, of which setting my standards too high, that I ended up being discouraged to even starting this project after I noticed I had over ten pages of notes alone. So I put the notes in a folder deep into my hard drive and decided that I could just give up. However, the urge to write never died down and I found the motivation to write this paper. For both myself and the community. Even if this was all nonsensical rambling using a bare minimum grasp of psychology, I wanted to create this. I had come to far to turn around and here I am, nearly complete and the weight finally off my chest. I guess it is paradoxical to ever want to cover a topic with one-hundred percent accuracy, because my own critical nature will never let what I have as “enough.” I still hold a shred of self-doubt within my that knows that I probably missed something in the light novels that I haven’t finished, or some nuanced moment of characterization in the anime that could dispel anything I presented in this paper and I guess I will have to live with that.

Lastly, I want to point anyone towards the excellent blog YahariBento: https://yaharibento.wordpress.com/ They write my personal favorite analysis of Oregairu, reaching levels of understanding I can only aspire to reach. I references one of their posts in my own paper, but have also used their blogs as reference to help grow my personal understanding of the series, serving as my favorite supplement to the anime and light novel.

Anyways, thank you so much for making it this far, I really hope this analysis has come to help you understand Oregairu or Yukinoshita Yukino further, or simply served as an interesting read taking into account one man’s take on the series. If I missed anything or simply wish to contribute to a peaceful discussion, please feel free to share your thoughts and potentially correct anything I might have missed in this paper. Once again, thank you for reading, have a nice day.

References

1. 雪. (n.d.). Retrieved February 13, 2019, from https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/雪#Kanji

 

2. Cook, V. (n.d.). Reduplicative Words. Retrieved February 13, 2019, from http://www.viviancook.uk/Words/reduplicatives.htm

 

3. Campbell, M. (n.d.). Japanese Names. Retrieved February 13, 2019, from https://www.behindthename.com/glossary/view/japanese_names

 

4. Yukino Yukinoshita. (n.d.). Retrieved February 13, 2019, from https://oregairu.fandom.com/wiki/Yukino_Yukinoshita

 

5. Y. (2015, August 25). Oregairu Analysis – Why are Yukinoshita Yukino (雪ノ下 雪乃) & Yuigahama Yui (由比ヶ浜 結衣) So Angry at Hikigaya Hachiman (比企谷 八幡) (During The School Trip)? [Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru. Season 1 Ep 10-12 & Zoku Season 2 Ep 1-2]. Retrieved February 13, 2019, from https://yaharibento.wordpress.com/2017/08/25/oregairu-analysis-yukinoshita-yukino-yuigahama-yui-angry-hikigaya-hachiman-school-trip/

 

6.  Leung, A. K., & Robson, W. L. M. (1991). Sibling rivalry. Clinical Pediatrics, 30(5), 314-317.

 

7. Taylor, J., Ph.D. (2010, November 4). Parenting: Expectations of Success: Benefit or Burden. Retrieved February 14, 2019, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-prime/201011/parenting-expectations-success-benefit-or-burden

 

8. Bennet, L. (n.d.). Expectations for Japanese Children. Retrieved February 14, 2019, from http://www.socialstudies.org/sites/default/files/publications/yl/1003/100306.html

 

9. Kennon, J. (2010, December 17). Mental Model: The Illusion of Choice. Retrieved February 14, 2019, from https://www.joshuakennon.com/mental-model-the-illusion-of-choice/

 

10. /u/johnbon7 (2015, June 23). Haruno’s character ,motivations and analysis. Retrieved February 14, 2019, from https://old.reddit.com/r/OreGairuSNAFU/comments/3aurdt/harunos_character_motivations_and_analysis/#ampf=undefined

 

11. Baumeister, R. F., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Narcissism as addiction to esteem. Psychological Inquiry, 12(4), 206-210.

 

12. Brown, R. P., & Bosson, J. K. (2001). Narcissus meets Sisyphus: Self-love, self-loathing, and the never-ending pursuit of self-worth. Psychological Inquiry, 12(4), 210-213.

 

13.https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%99%BD#Kanji

 

14.https://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/23670/what-does-it-mean-by-hikigaya-hachiman-s-desired-genuine-thing?rq=1

 

15.https://old.reddit.com/r/OreGairuSNAFU/comments/aecshb/when_haruno_refers_that_yukino_doesnt_really/

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Regarding “Tate Yuusha no Nariagari” and power fantasy isekai

During the early fall when “Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken” started airing I got a bit obsessed with isekai again. I suppose one could consider my first introduction to this style of storytelling with Sword Art Online, that is if we consider it a true isekai but that’s besides the point. Isekai is a weird subgenre since it has experienced a huge surge in popularity in recent years, and as a result we have an oversaturated genre with not just anime but manga and light novels. That said, the oversaturation can be seen to have benefited the subgenre by forcing authors to be more creative with their isekai stories resulting in a lot of gimmicks. It has become a bit of a meme now to see a weird gimmicky isekai story about an average Japanese guy getting hit by a truck and getting reincarnated in a traditional RPG-esque world with the same tired tropes after that. Sometimes we have them getting reincarnated as a non-human race, starting over as a child, or as a villain adding more “originality” to their own take on isekai. Despite this once the gimmick has lost its novelty factor the story will often devolve into a power fantasy featuring an overpowered main character and an endless stream of new girls for his ever-growing harem. It’s obvious to understand the baseline appeal of isekai storytelling just at a glance, but sometimes we get something different that approaches the subgenre in a refreshing way that makes us look at the tired tropes and reconsider our declaration that the subgenre is objectively awful.

The opening scenes of “Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari” starts off with a powerful first arc and delivers exactly what it wants the viewers to expect moving forward. The story begins awfully standard with a seemingly average young Japanese guy named Naofumi Iwatani getting summoned to another world after reading a weird novel in the public library. It is then revealed that he is one of four legendary heroes that has been summoned to a world in danger of “The Wave” and he is a “Shield Hero.” However during the first confrontation with King Melromarc we already see the predisposed feelings the people of this country feel towards Iwatani when he is ignored and not taken as seriously as the other heroes. This is because he was chosen as a shield hero, a decidedly inferior class due to the lack of offensive abilities in combat and as we later learn, apparent lack of knowledge about fantasy worlds because apparently Iwatani hasn’t played enough MMO’s. He is set up to fail from the beginning, because even if he becomes strong like his fellow heroes the public opinion of him wouldn’t accept that he an equal. Then everything goes dark.

Tate Yuusha no Nariagari has something I have been looking in an isekai anime since it was exactly what I wanted to see tackled in this type of story- what happens if the summoned character despises their situation? One could argue that Sword Art Online attempts this, but only in the Aincrad arc it seemed, and even then the characters seem to still make the best out of their life in the game and experience happiness. However with Tate Yuusha, Iwatani gets the opposite treatment than what we’ve grown to expect. The Sword, Spear and Bow heroes are regarded as powerful warriors, get the girls and shine in the spotlight when they achieve brave feats in battle. Iwatani was already discriminated against from the beginning and never managed to get on equal footing to his peers. This is why he is manipulated and tricked. This isn’t you typical escapist fantasy world that we are used to seeing, this is a story of redemption.

Naofumi Iwatani an otaku, in the novel he is often relating what he experiences to that of a manga or anime so it is safe to assume he is familiar with isekai. In the beginning when the summoned heroes are given party members he is left alone, and being a defensive hero there is literally nothing that he could do alone. Then a suspiciously beautiful girl offers to join him and give him a hand. As a novel reader, this was particularly difficult to watch since I already knew his fate, and the anime adaptation did a fantastic job at giving enough tale-tell signs of what was in store for Shield Hero. In short, Iwatani was manipulated because he fell for the same tropes he was used to reading about. Malty was never trying to be his companion and was only using Iwatani’s desire to be an isekai protagonist to her advantage. In his mind, Iwatani is relieved that he finally has a companion to help him level up, and there’s a hope that he could start a relationship with the girl who clung to him and offered to help the weakest hero. He was not seeing the truth for what it actually was, only what he wanted to see. He desperately wanted to get stronger and live out a power fantasy that he didn’t really stop to consider the implications of spending a vast majority of his initial resources on a party member he only just met.

To address the elephant in the room, there’s the rape allegations and the portrayal of Malty which apparently is a source of controversy. I saw this coming a mile away as a novel reader, this story isn’t shy to tackle dark themes and extremely sensitive topics about society. I believe this whole “controversy” is being looked at from the wrong perspective and not being addressed critically. To elaborate, the isekai subgenre traditionally has been a male biased in terms of narrative and depiction of characters with a few exceptions. That means that male readers are the large majority of the fanbase, so obviously a story portraying women as villainous manipulators clearly shows that this series is an extreme MGTOW propaganda story right? If you want to make sweeping generalizations yes, but here’s exactly why that is wrong. Tate Yuusha is, in my opinion, more akin to a critical think piece about critically exploring the common isekai tropes that we have grown tired of. It reinterprets them from a cynical perspective and subjects the main character to the opposite of what we expected from this subgenre. To start, Naofumi Iwatani is a university student, stingy with money, and a huge otaku. Truth be told, that is likely a 1:1 representation of the target audience and it fits me to a tee. Because of this, we can see a lot of ourselves in the role of Iwatani, being a loser and fantasizing about the joys of adventuring in a fantasy world without worries, but unfortunately he got much worse. Our first characterization we get of Iwatani in the anime is in the opening scene where he bumps into some girls outside a store and they ignore him, which is sadly not an uncommon reaction to expect. Iwatani is a bit of an oddball and an otaku and is most likely not experiences with women. Not to go too far down the /r9k/ train of thought here, it’d be not wrong to assume Iwatani doesn’t have a healthy view of the opposite sex, like other frustrated youth of his age. It’s not that uncommon for both sexes I’d imagine, especially in the modern society we live in today so much of the audience might understand his perspective. Iwatani is already biased in his thought towards women before going to the fantasy world, and there when everyone turns on him and he is manipulated by a women he reacts reasonably to how his personal philosophy interprets the situation. He allows Malty to take advantage of him for being naive, and then as a result he suffers the consequences. It’s not against the rules to make a manipulative female character a villain, she is using the tools at her disposal to her advantage.

Let’s face it, isekai doesn’t automatically make you a harem god just because you are special, you are still the same otaku loser you were back in Japan. In a sense, Iwatani was wrong but his naivety was his downfall. This is no justification towards his perspective, rather I want to highlight that the moment he decides that he can start over fresh in a new world, maybe meet “the one” and have a better life, he is just reminded of the way he used to think. However, at the end of the day, manipulative people are out there that just want to use others to further their own ambitions and it doesn’t matter how you feel about it to them. Iwatani was just a victim because he was expecting something that was never promised. This series interprets the themes of a typical isekai through a cynical lens which highlights the inherent problems and results of believing in the escapist fantasy.

I’ve heard Tate Yuusha no Nariagari described as a “revenge isekai” and I suppose it could be categorized as one, but I feel like it is more a redemption story. Iwatani avoids execution because he is a hero, but is treated like human filth because he was exploited. This is why he is pushed to the edge and is a pseudo-anti-hero. He was pushed to the point of forcing himself to resort to violence and dirty tactics to win. The game was rigged from the start for him, but being ostracized by the world only pushed him to the mindset of not caring anymore about how he won, because it wasn’t even fair to begin with. This is why the last scene of the first volume of the light novel was so emotionally resonant, those who read it know what I am talking about. Iwatani isn’t a bad person, but being subjected to unjust treatment shapes his world view. A lot of people might be able to relate to this, a wrongful accusation when you feel like the whole world is against you, so you hate the world back. But then from the darkness, a hand extends and tells you that you are (not) alone.

Growing up and losing everything

I think it goes without saying that the narrative of Shinsekai Yori is dark, one that is not afraid to express itself with violence and themes which are sometimes a difficult pill to swallow. When I was nearing the end of this anime, I wasn’t all that impressed since what was actually presented to me was artistically beautiful, yet felt empty. There was a certain amount of meditation that needed to be done to really start to sort out my thoughts about what I could extract from this show. Ultimately upon reflecting on Saki’s journey to adulthood, I reminded myself of the quote from episode 18 that made everything fall into place for me- “Back in the days of our youth, the world seemed grand and full of dangers. But once we had grown older and acquired out Canti, we felt that nothing would be able to scare us anymore.” This show was just a fantastical depiction of a coming of age tale, but leaned more towards that of tragedy and grief.

Saki lost all of her friends, her parents, and the person she used to be. The tangible losses could be counted, but we can’t measure the impact of her spiritual journey that shaped her outlook on the world. Using the aforementioned quote as a reference, Saki has come to learn of the darkness in her world, that which her childhood self never could have imagined. We can look at this from two perspectives; that of “ignorance is bliss” or interpret her gained knowledge as acceptance of reality. I often ask myself the question of “would I be better off not knowing ____, would I be happier?” It’s not possibly to accurately answer this question since I’d either look back on my life before understanding with rose-tinted goggles, or weigh the improvement my life has had as a result of said knowledge. However, when the fundamental truth we learn is one that is difficult to accept, sometimes we wish to not know because it ultimately changes what we think of reality. Ignorance will momentarily keep you blissfully unaware of the world outside your vision, but once the veil comes off the truth will be there. I think it can be thought of along the lines of whether you want to pull the bandage off, or if you want your parents to do it for you. For Saki, she is forced to confront the reality of her world, and watching her friends become consumed with darkness and leave her behind. This results in her tragedy, which was an extreme loss of innocence.

“A “loss of innocence” is a common theme in fiction, pop culture, and realism. It is often seen as an integral part of coming of age. It is usually thought of as an experience or period in a person’s life that leads to a greater awareness of evil, pain and/or suffering in the world around them.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocence#Loss_of_innocence). Looking at how Shinsekai Yori explores Saki’s loss of innocence, it is quite apparent due to the prolonged exploration of her adolescence and watching her approach adulthood. Returning to the idea of “ignorance is bliss”, Saki was led on by curiosity in her youth because there was a sense that there was something important she was unaware of. Did she really have a sister, why was she gone and why did she have no recollection of this major event? But alas curiosity will eventually kill the cat, except in this case the cats will kill you for the same offense. The unfortunate thing is that curiosity gets the best of us humans, and is one of the primitive extincts we have. A taste of the truth is enough to get us interested even without knowing if we want to know the rest and what the consequences are. But I think Maria explains this best, “I think there are probably many things in this world we are better off not knowing… Sometimes the truth is the cruelest of all” (Maria, EP11). Even if this “truth” is not objective, our interpretation of it will shape our perspective and we see how Saki feels about this: “…But once we had grown older and acquired out Canti, we felt that nothing would be able to scare us anymore.” This is why I think Shinsekai Yori is quite depressing upon retrospect, just examining the coming of age story with Saki.

To be able to compare the child who first entered the Cantus users academy to her adult version gives quite the perspective. Saki lost nearly everything, on one occasion she expresses her concern for Satoru by explaining that if he dies, she will be the only person from her old school friend group still alive. Not only that, her parents were killed in a Queerrat invasion of their city and she had no home to return to. This could possibly be why she was saddened by the fate of the Fiend she defeats in the end, because that was the child of her friends Maria and Mamoru. Its death severed the only connection she had to her old friends. That child who was raised as a Queerrat and was unaware of their own humanity, yet was forced to be eliminated because of the danger they posed to society as a whole despite being unaware of the danger they posted to their own kind. Shinsekai Yori was a tragedy despite the misdirection with an optimistic ending, elements of darkness still loomed in the shadows. Satoru and Saki married and were expecting a child, but then we see Satoru raising young Tainted Cats alongside her wife that only serve to provide unsettling imagery that expresses that nothing in this world has changed. Ultimately, Saki did not change the world nor improve it and her note in episode 25 explains “Can we really change? You, the reader of this text a thousand years from now, should know the answer. I hope the answer is yes.” The society was not a utopia, but it was a world that only served the purpose of preserving the human race. In the end, it was successful at its job despite the moral implications of the expulsion of deviants and was only really challenged by extremist outside force. Perhaps Saki and Satoru viewed this system as wrong, but ended up conforming to it as an adult because it was the only choice. Or perhaps we should examine Saki’s wish in a more philosophical sense, one bringing into question humanity’s righteousness considering the atrocities they subjected the Queerrats to, which was just a genocide.

Humanity was the only villain in Shinsekai Yori. Humans fighting amongst themselves, challenging their own rules and their internal struggle to accept reality. The Queerrats served, in a metaphorical sense and somewhat literal, the discrimination of humans amongst themselves in society and the denial of rights to those they perceive as lesser than those in power. However, the adolescence of Saki depicted in Shinsekai Yori and her forced understanding of the dark reality she lives in, with an ultimate acceptance of it. “An object of fear changes to one of hope…” captures this, in that what she once grew to fear changes to and understanding and ultimately hopes that the future generations can come to understand and change.

Rambling about the point of art and finding meaning in anime or something

I think I missed the point of Bunny Girl Senpai and that doesn’t bother me, I still didn’t like it. Continually watching this show weekly with a friend online, I only really had motivation to return to it because we were in it together despite our feelings towards the show. Every week however, I felt like something was not there that a vocal majority of the community seemed to be understanding. My ignorance to “the point” this particular anime was trying to make, or the appeal of it passed me by. Perhaps this is largely to do with my incessant problem with the seasonal watching culture, or perhaps it was due to the inherent problems with this show as it stands. What if I am the problem? I did enter the show with a negative predisposition that it was not as good as its contemporaries, which it was wrongfully being compared towards, or maybe it’s just that I couldn’t seem to like the characters. I was aware of the comparisons towards Oregairu and Monogatari, some of my favorite and most beloved series so I had unreasonably high hopes for this new show to somehow launch itself to the heights of the unreachable greatness that I hoped it could. Now let’s take a step back, expectations will always be let down when held too high, that much is obvious. However, I was mostly curious about exploring the idea of “missing the point” of an anime, and what that entails. I’m going to follow-up this claim with some scattered thoughts.

Let’s assume all things have meaning, and thus anime has meaning. This claim is much to broad however, meaning is completely arbitrary and subjective, to and extent. In literature class we were always taught about the vague differences between the true meaning and false readings of what the author intended, or at least what the consensus of people agreed that intention was. I was taught to think of this concept like a flashlight shining in the darkness, where anything in the light was considered correct while the further you moved away from the center of the beam, the further you strayed from the truth. On the one hand, it seems wrong to try to be able to distinguish a correct interpretation from an incorrect interpretation from an abstract piece of work. But on the other hand, there is such thing as assigning meaning where none belongs. But is it really so wrong, to be wrong?

In academia, the only really limitation to understanding art is the instructor and the worry about reaching a false conclusion on a paper. Outside that realm of the classroom is a different story though, where we reach a point where the consequences for misinterpretation only will warrant being ostracized on a forum or something. To bring this back towards anime, let’s say one watched Evangelion and understood it differently and took less meaning out of it that I had, and because of it they understood Shinji as no more than a weak-willed protagonist. In my perspective it would appear to me that they did indeed miss the point of the story, but their meaning is just as important to them as it is to me because meaning is tied to one’s personal experiences.

My personal example with a situation similar to this is when I read Densha Otoko. It depicted the rapid change of one otaku as he attempted to win the heart of a regular woman, though the help of 2ch. Personally, I absolutely could not stand this story and found the message to be advocating the need to change to find a significant other. It is within my personal belief that changing yourself for someone else is only lying to yourself and the other person because that isn’t who you really are, and changing for them will only result in you leading a false life. This is because I have a personal experience in which I tried to lie to myself and deny my own personality quirks in order to get closer to people I really didn’t belong with, because of a girl. Thus, my predisposed feelings towards this type of situation made me interpret the story as one advocating disingenuous change and looking down on otaku culture because of the success the main character had because of it. Nothing can change my mind that I thought the message of the manga was good even if my interpretation was indeed biased.

Now to shift the focus to look at Lucky Star, it doesn’t come across as a modern commentary on the social roles in contemporary Japan or anything, it’s anything but that. It was a cute moeblob show following a group of friends in the truest form of the genre “slice of life” that I have seen. There are the lives of these girls depicted in no glorification, just showing them as is and providing characterization through these mundane events. Because of this it feels like a very natural progressions of learning about these characters, their relationships and the era they inhabit. There isn’t anything more to derive from this show besides what is presented and that’s why I believe it’s brilliant in what it is. Lucky Star doesn’t have an artistic purpose, there is nothing you can miss from it, but still it is not universally accepted as a masterpiece.

These were just long-winded examples to explain this; we each have a point of view. This means that our point of view is composed of all the experiences, morals and emotions that make us unique. This allows us to have a different perspective on the art we consume because we all see everything a bit differently even if the meaning is made clear. With Lucky Star, I know that not everyone likes how boring it comes across because nothing happens, and I love it immensely for the same exact reason. Neither perspective is objectively right because the meaning we each find in the experience of watching Lucky Star is intrinsically tied to the type of person we are not and is telling of the type of anime we like. I wrote before when talking about cultivating a favorites list: “Learning what is important in media for you personally is the most important thing because once you begin to understand what you like and why you like it is the first step to cultivating your identity as an otaku.”

I think the meaning to be found in art is a result of who you are as a person and it should not be another way. The emotions of a person should allow them to bring themselves closer to the art they experience because of the connection they will for with it. This means that my deeply personal connection towards Welcome to the NHK might not be even remotely close to the next persons because we are completely different people, and that’s what makes art great. The meaning we derive from watching anime is no different, and so is the level of enjoyment. Some people are more attracted towards high-impact action shows with bombastic comedy and bright colors, whereas others might be more comfortable watching a comfortable slice of life show with cute girls and a subdued color palette. Who we are determines our opinions and out personal beliefs dictate our stance on morals that direct our interpretation on art. I completely missed the point of Bunny Girl Senpai and I still can sleep at night, because I don’t need to like this show, nor understand why I should. Something about that anime just didn’t resonate with me on the level it might have for you and that doesn’t matter if either of us have conflicting opinions. In short, we are different people and everything is subjective… nothing profound to conclude with here.

Thinking about denpa while watching Boogiepop Phantom

Working through Boogiepop Phantom was not my favorite anime viewing experience, but possibly one of the most unusual due to the overall aesthetic presentation of the show. The story was obtuse, especially so for those like me who were not familiar with the source material prior to watching the anime which acted as a sequel to the novel. Despite this, I could not help but be drawn in the intense style emanating from this anime that reminded me of a particular themes I discovered one day browsing 4chan.

I used to be a frequent visitor of the board /jp/ mainly for the Comiket music threads and Train threads, mostly lurking and occasionally looking into the threads other users would create that would often inform me of something I was not aware of at the time. One day I stumbled across a “Denpa Music Thread” which intrigued me because I like to listen to all kinds of obscure Japanese music so I started looking into this style which I was not familiar with. However, besides the somewhat hypnotic trance that one would slip into when listening to denpa music, I was surprised to learn of Denpa-kei, or the denpa style which extended beyond music. I learned more about this in a now deleted video by the Youtuber “KenjiTheEnji” who made an information video about Denpa-kei. Because of this one video and the introduction to a fascinating Japanese subculture, the aesthetic influences of a show like Boogiepop Phantom became more apparent and much more interesting with it in the back of my mind.

“Denpa (電波) literally means Radio waves (or any other kind of radiation coming from electronic devices). Therefore (as a slang) a “Denpa” (or Denpa-kei 電波系) person is someone who looks like he’s constantly receiving and transmitting radio waves; usually weird and delusional individuals who don’t try to connect with people around them and act in erratic and incomprehensible ways. They could be seen as incoherent, creepy, or insane people.” (http://denpa.omaera.org/culture.html). With this in mind, I could not help but continuously remind myself of the denpa-kei influences in the character writing of Boogiepop Phantom. I believe one of the prime examples for characters in the series who exemplify this style is Tomo and Suganuma.

Right off the bat, episode one displays an unexplained energy beam going off into the night sky that causes electronics to go haywire. This is later implied to be some sort of catalyst to the series of events that follow and some explanation as to why weird events are occurring in the city. Meanwhile, this episode focuses on a girl named Tomo to paranoia and essentially succumbing dissociating with reality. It appeared as if she had become increasingly distant with one of her best friends due to the other girl maturing at a quicker rate while Tomo was left behind. So Tomo felt left behind after what appeared to be her only friend leaving her behind so she started to lose her connection with her peers and eventually society around her. She grows more detached, drifting between events and starts to grow incredibly paranoid. We can see her wiping her hands obsessively to the point of skin irritation, and disinfecting door handles before touching them. I’d imagine this is a result of her extreme mental state wanting to keep herself away from the society she feels so distant from. Nonetheless, I found this strikingly similar to the denpa-kei style I read about prior. Tomo is losing touch with reality and the people around her and this is only exemplified with the visual cues of her literally chasing a spark of electricity along the cables in the city which would be a visual motif referenced often in the show.

However, what really sell the denpa-kei influences is the aesthetic style and sound design, which I will discuss a bit later after touching on the other character I found most interesting.

Episode four made for a genuinely uncomfortable experience. This was most thematically similar to a movie like Perfect Blue, except from the perspective of the disillusioned stalker and not the prey. Suganuma is the main guy focused on in this episode, he is a generally average high school student but a bit of a loner. However he is under constant pressure from his father to receive good grades so he could get into a good university. Despite this, the pressure he internalized is largely artificially inflated from what his father actually expects. His father states a few times how he expressed that his son didn’t need to go to a top school, but at least a state university and most likely just wants the best for his son. Suganuma instead feels overwhelmed with the expectation to be successful and doubts his ability to succeed so he starts to seek refuge in the world of galge, not uncommon to many other youth in Japan. These circumstances are some of the reason why young Japanese men turn to the lifestyle of a hikikomori, because of the societal and familial pressure to not fail that they just crack under the weight of expectations. As is the case with Suganuma, who starts to spend most of his time either at work or playing a galge (lit. “Girl Game”, often referred to as a Bishoujo Game, a type of visual novel targeting a male audience). Because of his desire to completely forget about his life’s problems, he starts to become obsessed with the heroine of one of his games and then stuff starts to get weird. Reality starts to grow indistinguishable from reality as he starts to project the image of the games heroine on his younger coworker, and this is when I started to feel extremely uncomfortable. The depiction of Suganuma’s extremely delusional worldview and extreme infatuation with this girl in reality (or the game?) grow to unhealthy levels and he starts tripping out.

He mentions the “My Fair Lady” story where he explains it as a story of a professor making a regular girl into a beautiful maiden, so essentially here he is taking over this girl’s personal will just to push his desires onto his coworker. It becomes more extreme, escalating from simple favors to gain the girl’s trust to sexual harassment and forcing himself on her. There is a quote where Suganuma remarks that “You’ll always be right in the palm of my hand” which reminds me of that one shot in Perfect Blue where the presumed stalker pretends to hold Mima in his hand by way of perspective.

This idolization of people is quite unhealthy all things considered, because there will reach a point where the person existing in your head that you’ve infatuated yourself with is not actually the one that exists in reality. And this is what happens to Suganuma, he goes so far down the path of insanity that he loses touch with the fact that his coworker is an individual, a human being with her own free-will and his actions were completely unhealthy. Not to mention he was under the influence of some weird drug the entire time which most likely perpetuated his delusions and served as a crutch, since he was shown to have become incredibly dependent on them when he ran out.

Boogiepop Phantom really excels in it’s style if nothing else. The music is mainly composed of usual electronic sounds that don’t quite sound right. As if they are sampling a collection of various sounds emitted from electronics and formed into a melody. This adds a striking denpa style, as if the sounds we hear are the chaos of real life forming a coherent melody. It feels like the sound director wanted to capture a feeling of getting into the mind of one of these disconnected characters and make the music and effects feel electronic, but not overly produced, as if to make it seem like they would be sounds that would be emitted through various radio waves and were being received by a denpa-kei person in their delusions to sound like music. The results are fascinating if nothing else, experiment with crushed and noise influenced sound effects to make the sounds design feel like you were on a hallucinatory trip, and imagining the noises around you were parts of an avant-garde symphony.

The directing is quite interesting as well. There was a distinct style that the show will capture that makes it feel like we are disconnected with the events on-screen, as if we were not in the room with the characters but were spying on them in a sense. I distinctly remember a shot in the first episode where Tomo is being cornered in the Infirmary and the camera is positioned in such a way that it is viewing the scene from an open window outside the building. Mixed with the short cuts mashed together to make this feel less coherent and more akin to loosely strung together related events. To me these loosely connected scenes reminded me of watching something like a slideshow of family video, with a minor overarching theme to barely string it all together.

There is also a distinctive feeling of oppressive darkness, grainy picture quality and the washed out colors of this anime that give and overwhelming feeling of a dream that we are only observing, but for the characters, it’s a nightmare. I found the stylistic color palette to be one of the strengths of the show’s aesthetic because it felt like an amateur produced found-footage film. The overwhelming dark scenes felt more mysterious in atmosphere because the shadows were like a void of darkness, and we had such a limited view of what actually was happening.

It was minimalistic, only showing what needed to and maintained a dreamlike feeling in the air. I was actually reminded of a video I watched in a psychology lecture about being in the mind of someone with schizophrenia in how the disconnected nature of the show felt. I’m not quite sure if this was the intent, but I as a viewer felt isolated from the presentation on-screen, giving off an uncanny visual verisimilitude in which I processed the events on screen as real, but not quite connecting them to the usual “reality” of anime. Again, there was this dreamlike or hallucinogenic state the style emitted making this anime let us get into the world of Boogiepop and reflect the feeling of denpa-kei. This overall feeling really got me into the mindset of Denpa because nothing felt real, and that was the point. These character were losing touch with reality.

So Boogiepop Phantom was a weird show man. It used denpa-kei to exemplify the delusions of the characters and add a distinctive aesthetic feeling that not many anime I’ve seen attempt, in the same vein of something like Serial Experiments Lain I’d say if I were to compare the styles. However, despite the fascinating aesthetic strengths of the show and directing style, I could not help but feel like the reliance of prior knowledge from the novels took away from most of the enjoyment I could have gotten out of this anime. As a standalone work, this show was a unique exploration of the human psyche and was a critique of modern society in some ways all presented with an incredibly satisfying oppressive atmosphere. But on the other hand there were too many scenes where I was left lost trying to keep up with the extreme lack of explanations towards many of the backstory. This made the story feel more confusing that it should have been that left me craving for more of the visual spectacle rather than the dialogue that would most like not mean much to me as it might to a novel reader. Overall, I felt as if the denpa stylistic influences that I observed in this show were worth mentioning since it’s a unique movement in Japanese art that isn’t well-known outside of small circles in the community. I highly recommend looking more into this if it interests you.

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Further Reading:

Denpa introduction: http://denpa.omaera.org/culture.html

Interview with novel author: http://www.gomanga.com/news/features_boogiepop_001.php

Read before watching Boogiepop: http://animeboards.com/showthread.php?t=60133

Thematic Analysis of Boogiepop: https://web.archive.org/web/20160430032540/http://kilesa.tk/2005/08/11/stanton/

Toru Honda, the leading thinker for fellow otaku: https://web.archive.org/web/20050624023834/http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200506040207.html

Analytical Essay Regarding Denpa: https://goo.gl/JTCGFT

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A Stain Which Cannot Be Erased

So I just finished watching the 2018 adaptation of Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg and I have a storm raging inside me. I will be recounting a bit of my past with the original book and then go on to explain how I feel about the movie adaptation. Also, this post is unpolished since I feel a revision will take away from the raw emotions I felt upon completing the movie.

Battle of Castle Anorak – https://www.scientistscomic.com/readyplayerone

I was twelve or thirteen when I came across a book in the public library, it was called Ready Player One and I had no idea what was in store for me. Late nights illuminated by a single desk lamp, hours spent pouring over the words written on the pages that opened a world that I had not acknowledged before- video games. Chalked full of references to movies and games my dad deemed as classics, it was an incredible experience to discover this world I had not known of before. Not only introducing me to fascinating 80’s pop culture, this book led me down a path to discover video games and become the person I am today. Needless to say, and quite cliché to say, this book changed my life. I kept a notebook of all the references made in the book and went back to study them when I wasn’t reading, it found video games, and I fell in love with the perfect book for me. Despite the faults that I have found rereading it a half dozen times, I unconditionally love this book for what it is and how it has molded my life. Hell, my username “Parz” and “Parzival” are a direct reference to Ready Player One. The only thing I felt that was missing was one of two things; a game just like the Oasis so I could lose myself, or movie adaptation of the book. Be careful what you wish for.

 

I initially was somewhat hopeful for this movie adaptation because I wanted to be, I wanted my dream of seeing my favorite book on the big screen but at the same time I didn’t want to be severely disappointed. So going into the trailer I was not expecting much but at the same time I was optimistic that I could be surprised. I hated the trailer. It was just a teaser showing off a car chase but I knew that it was not canonical. With that I decided to skip wasting money to go to the theaters and wait for the home digital release. It was a good thing too, because what I saw should not exist.

 

The movie opens pretty much how I expected it to, with a paraphrased and shortened version of Wade’s introduction speech, but then we hit the unrelenting problems. James Haliday purposely made the Egg Hunt mysterious, yet not overly serious and the video captured that, however I felt it was too straightforward in the movie. It was like reading the quest information in an MMO, that told you exactly what to do. And it did not contain any of the numerous pop culture references from the book. These references aren’t just an excuse to hit at the audiences nostalgia, this is supposed to be out first time meeting Haliday and seeing these eccentricities and him surrounded by his favorite media is supposed to characterize him.

 

Now my problem with Wade’s character in the movie. In the book he was introduced as a slightly overweight guy with bad acne, dressed pretty bad and was a high school student. He was a student on Ludus, the planet where all high schools were located and was the only planet he had access to for the longest time. He was a kid with dreams, the underdog that we all wanted to imagine ourselves as. Yet he was poor and had no cash to buy any gear let alone vehicles. However we see him in the movie trying to reach the first key in a Delorean, which he technically doesn’t get until much later on in the story. To add to this, Wade should not have an omni-directional treadmill in his van hideout and he should have spoken his pass phrase to unlock his Oasis account, but that was not included in the movie but are rather small complains. Back in reality he seems like a regular dude who just happens to live in a shitty environment, not the loser he is made out to be. And The Stacks were not at all what I pictured in mind from reading the book. The Stacks in my head were more barren, lifeless and nobody around. In Wade’s game he coded for the Atari 2600 (A Gunter rite of passage as he describes), he described how you were supposed to collect meal credits and avoid meth addicts- implying it was a shitty place to live and was dangerous. Not a place where people hung out like it seemed to be in the movie. This is why he wants to get the hell out of dodge, and he is vocal about it in the book and is also a major motivator for him escaping to the Oasis every day. In the movie Wade says his dream is to get a mansion and fill it with cool shit, but in the book he says he wants to get a spaceship with cool stuff and food and leave earth behind because he doesn’t want to stick around since there is high crime, exhausted natural resources, and frankly nothing left for him there. This is why in the book he spent his prize money purchasing a small apartment in the city, because as I explained earlier was one of his goals since he hated The Stacks. Yet he remains in the same place in the movie. This sets up Wade not as the underdog with motivation, rather a hero from the start who we all expect to win.

 

What about the rest of the High Five, which the movie seems to never explain the origin of the group’s nickname. Aech is pretty similar to the book, but I didn’t like the limited importance of his hideout in the game called “The Basement” which was an important meeting place and safe haven for the other members when shit hit the fan. This was also where Aech and Parzival hung out and deepen their relationship over video games like any good friendship should. The Basement was also where Ir0k was present since he was a scumbag Aech hated, but kept around to be the butt of most jokes when it was convenient. However Ir0k was presented as just a scumbag who didn’t personally know Parzival or Aech from The Basement, rather just an incredibly useful dog that was used by Sorrento to move the plot forward. Daito and Shoto, yes, Shoto, not Sho. Daito and Shoto are the names of traditional Japanese short and longsword where both characters got their usernames but was overlooked as minor importance in the movie. Not only this, but also they downplayed that Daito and Shoto should have been living in Japan, were recovering hikikomori and were not publicly known as friends. They called themselves brothers but were actually friends from a hikikomori recovery program they both attended. Furthermore, Daito actually dies in the book, thrown out of his apartment window by Sixers, and Shoto goes on to avenge his death in the final battle. Of course the movie didn’t even mention this. Art3mis is a similar story or brushing over important details and changing her character. What bothered me most was how her relationship with Parzival was never fully explained, which was a whole arc in the book in which both become infatuated with one another but ultimately leads Art3mis to cut connections to Parzival since she realized their relationship was making them lose sight of the goal to find the Egg. They also should not even have met in person until after the contest at the Morrow mansion, but of course this needed to be added so early on, which angered me immensely. They ruined an emotionally impactful scene and the set-up to the delivery of the main theme of the story for no good reason. Also, she just happened to have a huge base of operations running a resistance movement in the same area as Wade- ok. Furthermore, all High Five members coincidentally happened to live in the same city? Of course that wasn’t the case in the book since Aech was traveling the country, Daito and Shoto lived in Japan, and Art3mis was somewhere in Canada. No excuse for that.

 

Now about the first key. It came out of nowhere that there was a road race and somehow everyone knew about it. Canonically the book had the first key on planet Ludus and you had to defeat a Lich King in a game of Joust before obtaining the Copper Key. Here it’s completely different for simplicity’s sake, which is expected but did not have to change so drastically from the original. Looking past that major flaw, we find out that the challenge isn’t straightforward so Wade’s avatar, Parzival, goes to the Haliday archives. This is one of my biggest problems with the movie and it’s poor handling of characterization. Originally in the book, Haliday creates a digital version of his personal diary dubbed “Anorak’s Almanac” after his avatar’s username, which contains a comprehensive guide to his life. This meant all Egg Hunters (Gunters) would have to acquire this on their own and research the pop culture references themselves in order to piece together an image of the man who ran the Oasis. Wade in particular called his version of the Almanac his “Grail Diary” in which he meticulously took note of everything he believed to be important for the hunt. He describes having spent days playing all of Haliday’s favorite games, watching every movie and TV show, listening to all the albums and reading every book to gain a greater understanding of who this individual was. Haliday was an idol to Wade, not just a guy who created a contest for him to win and I feel the movie does an awful job at presenting that.

 

So after figuring out how to beat the Copper Key’s challenge, Parzival received the key and… that’s it. He gets the next riddle and is ready to look for the Jade Key. No Dungeon of Daggorath? Not even the Wargames simulation? The movie did away with the second crucial part of the Egg Hunt- Gates. After beating the challenge to find the key, players are supposed to use the riddle located on or around the key to find a “Gate” which would lead them to a new challenge that is required to find the riddle for the next key. Logically speaking, this was a calculated decision to save time to fit the content of the movie into a reasonable runtime, but did so by cutting some great content like the Blade Runner scene, beating Black Tiger, simulating the amazing Monty Python and the Holy Grail and beating Haliday’s high score in Tempest. But I digress. At least they added a simulation of a movie (Flicksync) in the movie, right? Well yes but it was The Shining which, according to my own notes and the official wiki, did not even appear in the book. I guess it’s a good time to discuss this part, but Kira, Haliday and Ogden Morrow go way back. They met during a D&D session in their high school, Kira being an exchange student, and allowed the three of them to get to know each other. Kira was also the one who gave Haliday the nickname “Anorak” which was a slang term for a geek, which he displayed proudly and carried it with him for the rest of his life. He also had a huge crush on her but never acted on it, unlike in the movie which he got close to. Og himself was also a weird character in the movie since he only really appeared for convenience sake and never given character. In the book he hosts a party on the Distracted Globe where his is given characterization through his nerdy appearance, music choices and sense of style when it comes to a good party. This is actually the real reason Parzival and Art3mis even go to the Globe in the first place, not because it was a place to Egg Hunt.

 

Very similar stories with the Jade Key and Crystal Key, all of which felt incredibly rushed and lost the sense of mystery and puzzle solving captured in the book. With the Jade Key for example, Daito and Shoto happen to find the key off screen? Of course none of the iconic book scenes appear like the Rush’s 2112 puzzle, which I found ironic since Aech wore a t-shirt with the album cover to 2112 and there was a poster of the album cover in young Haliday’s room in the movie. However, I do like that they at least added the iconic Adventure easter egg, but that’s common knowledge at this point to it was mostly expected to see it’s inclusion in the movie.

 

To take a step back here, there’s a whole section of the story in which Wade infiltrates IOI to bring down the impenetrable shield around Castle Anorak that was completely changed. He was supposed to change his identity, go undercover as an indentured servant and hack IOI from the inside. However the movie decided to make Samantha the girl with a plan, for reasons I cannot justify. Wade is the hero at this point, so why not let him carry out this plan? This happened to be one of my favorite arcs in the book since there was a shift to an espionage feel, Wade was more daring after “breaking up” with Art3mis in the Oasis and felt like he had to take a risk. He felt no danger and was willing to take drastic measures for the sake of the Oasis, which has since become his escape from reality and his feelings once again. But the movie make this almost into a rescue mission and Samantha the person to break into IOI almost unintentionally. What really bothered me though is that Samantha kept her Art3mis avatar despite being logged into an IOI account, and had access to all her equipment despite that.

Now for the last battle, the battle at Castle Anorak on Planet Doom… wait, wrong planet. I meant Planet Chthonia. (That was changed as well). I desperately missed the spectacle it would have been to see Ultraman versus Mechagodzilla, but that wasn’t there for whatever reason. There was an RX-78-2 suit and the Iron Giant which was welcome but I was starved for the army of mecha’s that battled in the book. As for the Catalyst explosion, it must be mentioned that in the book Parzival gets the extra life quarter from getting a perfect score of Pacman on planet Archaide, which felt left out since Pacman is such an iconic game from the era. Instead he gets it from the curator at the archive building for free really, which didn’t feel as deserved like in the book. This extra life was something never heard of in the Oasis, so getting it had to be nearly impossible and Parzival did it, meaning his troubles were worth it in the end.

 

Now, the presentation of the ultimate theme of Ready Player One; “Reality can be tough, but it’s the only place you can get a decent meal” which happened to be a quote from the Almanac, presented in the book. Haliday meant that even though he hated reality for the longest time, it offered some things that could not be supplemented by escaping into the Oasis. This was the final lesson Wade had to learn, but was left without much impact in the movie since he had already learned that before arriving to The End. He already met his love interest and his best friends IRL so he already knew what reality was important. I found it amusing that despite changing the entire flow of the story up until this point, the writers had the nerve to try and deliver an important critique of modern technology in our lives, in which the book succeeded in. Yes, this is a story of a guy becoming the best there ever was, defeating the bad guy, getting the girl and becoming a literal god of the (virtual) world, but it was also a social critique. Ernest Cline didn’t want a story about glorifying escapism without consequences, he wanted to show how games can be great, but not to lose touch with the real world. Because after all, Hot Pockets taste best there

 

I knew the writer(s) were going to change stuff based on the trailer, but this was a defacement of the original work. Something that should not exist under the same name as the original book, a disgrace to the name of the staff working on it. I despised every minute of this movie because I knew how much the original meant to me, this was not just ruining a nerdy book, it was ruining the most important piece of fiction I have come in contact with. This was person, and I will never get past this adaptation. Much like how Berserk fans hate the 2016 adaptation, I am disappointed this sad excuse for an adaptation exists. It felt so soulless, without passion for the 80’s pop culture from the book, and like the writer(s) of this script only skimmed over the book’s summary, and that’s giving them too much credit. It’s one thing if you “adapt” a book to the screen why modifying the presentation of story and possibly interpreting in a different way, but this was too much change for less quality. Full of cheap and awkward lines, major plot holes for movie-only viewers, and too many modern references that screamed “Advertising!” (Minecraft, Halo, Deadpool, Overwatch etc.) this was not just a personal grudge against a movie, this is just a poorly created movie.

 

Nerd rage aside, this really movie hurt me. It’s not just disappointing, I dare say this left a mark on my life that cannot be erased. For such an important piece of fiction I declare as “life changing” to be ruined so badly in a movie adaptation years in the making… I will never get those years of wait back, not the two hours and change I spent watching it. At least the original source material exists, but this movie will always exist as something that will never forgive so long as it exists in the same reality as me.

 

 

The Weight of Time

Life is not a video game where we can reload from a previous save for a chance to retry an event. That is the harsh reality of it, once a decision is made we must live with the consequences. However, fiction allows thinkers to explore the possible implications of allowing people to bend time at their will, looping the same period of time over and over until they succeed or figure out how to end it. In a reality where time is non-continuous and a person has seemingly infinite chances at trying something, what happens and what are the consequences. Can people really change the true fate of the universe, and how does knowing this fate influence the psychological state of the person in the loop? Today I will be exploring four series, ranging from anime series to light novels, that attempt to explore time loops and changing fate.

Time travel and time loops in anime cannot be discussed without acknowledging the modern classic of Steins;Gate. During a certain arc of the series, Okabe Rintarou is faced with the truth of knowing that his childhood friend Mayuri will die. However, he has the power to go back in time in an attempt to save the life of his dear friend. But of course if it was that easy there would be no emotional weight to the situation, because now he must avoid the repercussions of the Butterfly Effect and challenge fate. To address the Butterfly Effect first, this is defined as “the phenomenon whereby a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere.” Simply that each choice made will have effects elsewhere because all choices are connected. Similar to the wings of a butterfly, flapping them will no directly have any noticeable changes to the world, but that wing might indirectly result in a storm elsewhere. So in Steins;Gate, Okabe begins to realize that regardless of what choice he makes or how he tries to prevent the death of his friend, it will end the same way unless he does something drastic. This means jumping to a new world line by diverging from the current one by more than 1%, essentially moving to a new timeline so different from the current that Mayuri will no die.

Ignorance is bliss, right? When stuck in a time loop the character in question must deal with the burden of knowing the truth, and sometimes the truth of fate can be worse than not knowing. It’s can be expressed with the question; “Would you rather know the day you die or how you die.” Either being equally destructive because they will result in paranoia. The person choosing to know the day they die will live with a deadline on their life knowing when time is up, and the person choosing to know how they die will live in constant fear of whatever they will eventually be killed by. Ignorance is possibly the worst best option in this case, the truth of knowing your demise will lessen the amount of hope for your future, and in a time loop, the ultimate fate which cannot be changed may have results worse than death.

Time loops can be infinite, and the emotional strain is beyond comprehension. The first volume of the light novel series The Empty Box and the Zeroth Maria explores how people might react if they were aware of a never ending time loop. Protagonist Hoshino Kazuki gets trapped in the Rejecting Classroom, and him alone is aware of the loop until he meets Maria Otonashi. During this time we get to see the intense mental deterioration of Kazuki as he experiences the same day for tens of thousands of days. We often complain about the mundane everyday life and how boring it can be, but imagine the same day for hundreds of years? The loop will take a psychological toll on the people aware of it existing, and once you notice the loop you can’t convince yourself it isn’t the case because those moments of deja vu will overtake you.

Of course there aren’t any real scientific findings proving the psychological strain of time loops out there, but that allows writers to explore the extent at which this may affect the characters in their stories. Let’s look at the series Re:Zero, infamous for subjecting the main character Subaru to countless time loops of suffering, but it wasn’t always like that. From the beginning everything seems great, a new lease on life, a completely fresh start in a new world with the inability to die? Sounds like the best escape from the past a person like Subaru could hope for. But of course that was too good to be true. Tappei Nagatsuki decided to explore the psychological strain one might experience when stuck in a situation where they might have to die countless times just to proceed. Realistically speaking, nobody can confirm the pain of death so we can only speculate, but it obviously doesn’t feel good. Such is the case with Subaru in which sometimes he himself has to die, and other times he must witness the death of his closest friends countless times which takes a toll on him throughout the series. Dying yourself will cause mental pain, but witnessing the death of your closest friends over and over will cause emotional scarring. Similar to Okabe in Steins;Gate, there is no way seeing your friend die gets easier since they mean just as much to you on the first loop as on the hundredth, sometimes they mean more then. Hence the suffering.

Finally I want to talk about the time loop in Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica, particularly concerning the character of Homura Akemi. With Subaru’s time loops we see a deteriorating mental state, and while not exactly to the same extent with Homura we definitely do see a change of character. Okabe in Steins;Gate felt this as well, the sense of urgency. Knowing you messed up and you need to try again and again, as many times at it takes.

The urgency of knowing you must change fate, you have the opportunity and not achieving this results in that sense of urgency I mentioned. The loop can end, the powers can fade or your will will collapse from countless failures. This isn’t a game anymore, this is a matter of saving the universe for Homura, so failure is not an option. During the episode where the loop is finally revealed, we get to see the drastic shift of persona’s Homura undertakes in order to succeed. Going from a naive and weak-willed girl to a standoffish and aloof just for the sake of success. She wants to prevent Madoka from making the contract at any means even if means alienating herself from the girl she was trying to protect in the first case, this is to what extremes she goes. Whether or not fate can change or the repercussions of that matter are second for her, idealistic but shows how much she cares for her friend.

“The universe has a beginning, but no end. – Infinity. Stars, too, have their own beginnings, but their own power results in their destruction. – Finite. It is those who possess wisdom who are the greatest fools. History has shown us this. You could say that this is the final warning from God to those who resist.” Okabe Rintarou (Steins;Gate)

Sometimes it is better of to not know because fate is a cruel thing. It is a brilliant force that brings us happiness, but cruel when it brings despair. For those that believe in it, the power of it can drive them mad and if they have the chance to convince themselves that fate can be changed. Meddling with time should not be undertaken by those with the faint of heart, consequences are real and putting your sanity on the line to help others is the ultimate sacrifice. In the end I deeply enjoy these psychological explorations of how time can affect people who go against fate. The ability to redo a moment in their life to make things turn out the best for them seems like a blessing, but there will be consequences for changing the past. It’s a pointless warning I’m giving here, not to meddle with time that is, but I guess it might serve as a warning to the future of humanity if time travel becomes possible. Wisdom is a scary thing, but living in the darkness is often worse. Choose your poison.

Recontextualizing “Edgy”

“Akame ga Kill! is a very edgy show with that knows no bounds when it comes to displaying the appalling crimes and cruelty that exists within the series” (MAL Review Link)

If a person dislikes a particular “dark” anime, the biggest criticism towards it most likely is going to accuse the show of being “too edgy” and not taking itself seriously/too seriously. “Something or someone trying too hard to be cool, almost to a point where it’s cringe worthy.” is the top definition given to describe the word “edgy” on Urban Dictionary. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary tells a different story however, the most relevant defines “edgy” as “having a bold, provocative, or unconventional quality” and using an edgy film to express it’s usage in a sentence. The modern use of edgy seems to have appeared only recently around 2005 and really used commonly around 2010 to describe entertainment. Now that this buzzword has been created and is a part of all our vocabulary, I want to look a bit further into the usage of the word as well as the validity of using edge factor to criticize a show.

Before looking up a definition for the word “edgy” my personal usage of the word mostly related to describing the use of fringe opinions of actions. What I mean by that is things that are “edgy” are generally working against the popular opinion, whether intentional or not, and will not be agreed upon by the majority of the population. It is important to make the distinction of what the person’s intentions are because in an age of ironic humor you can’t really be sure whether the person genuinely feels that way or is just trying to trigger the most people. For people with genuine opinions or thoughts that diverge from the norm yet get their voice denounce for being “edgy” just seems backwards and rejects individualism in favor of “morally/politically correct” ideas.

Now how does this apply to anime? The first though that comes to mind when thinking about a “edgy anime” is Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru, in particular the main character Hikigaya Hachiman. Not the conventional choice but I consider Hachiman one of the biggest “edgelords” in anime, just take a look at his “I hate nice girls” speech. Now let me elaborate more about what I mean by calling Hachiman a certified “edgelord” for the sake of proving that this label is not a form of criticism, rather a descriptor. As I touched on in previous blogs, perception is reality so what we see and how we see it shapes our worldview and nobody sees the world the same way. For the character of Hachiman, he isn’t trying to say the most controversial thoughts all the time, he is simply observing the world the way he has grown to understand it. Years of prolonged loneliness from being an outsider and failed relationships pushed him further away from the average person so now he reached a point of wanting to dissociate from them. This can either be a defense mechanism along the lines “I don’t want to be a part of your guy’s group anyways! Baka!” or just him being extremely jaded. Hachiman is not trying to capture of facade of a pseudo-philosophical teenager with a lack of social skills, he is a product of what he observes the world to really be after a set of certain circumstances pushed him in that direction. Hachiman is “edgy” but for some fans what he says is completely relatable, so the “edginess” of something is completely relative.

If you try to defend a “dark” show you’re bound to come across a contrarian who’s opinions about that show lie express how a particular show was bad simply because it felt edgy. As expressed in my previous point regarding Hikigaya Hachiman, the edginess factor a show has is completely relative and can be only judged based on a person’s belief system and amount for which they liked the show. For example, if you were completely invested in the plot of Tokyo Ghoul then the ending to the anime was an emotional payoff you wanted to see and though it was awesome. Personally I’m reading the Akame ga Kill manga and find it a fun read for the incredible artwork and crazy fights.The idea of edginess only appears when someone finds something happening in the entertainment piece to be unbelievable or “trying too hard.” Yet another phrase that is thrown around often along with the “forced <insert genre here>”  meme. There is no such thing as events happening naturally in a story since they were all planned and forced into the plot by the author, it’s more valid to say that the buildup and pacing surrounding the event in question was poor rather than criticizing the that the show was “trying too hard.” Yes, anime can often go overboard and try to increase shock factor as high as possible but if it is given proper setup there is nothing wrong with that. That is more of an issue with the author attempting to overstep their bounds to try to evoke an emotional response and can be jarring. Complaining about something being taken too serious is considered edgy, alright. But then claiming that the dark situation is not handled serious enough is edgy too? There must be a distinction of whether or not the scene at hand is handled tastefully rather than edgy or not.

I find nothing wrong with the practice of being genuinely edgy because everyone deserves to express their emotions the way they can, it’s another issue if whether or not that makes everyone happy. There will never be actions that satisfy everyone so if you see something and think it is stupid, remember to refrain from using the word “edgy” to describe is. Edgy media is somewhat of a guilty pleasure for me, and no matter how seriously a show takes itself or hard it tries to be violent I will probably still think it is cool if it makes sense in context.

Music as a Tool

Note: I’m not an expert on music theory of terminology

These days, I doubt many people leave their house without their phone and a set of earbuds. This is an essential part of our routine alongside tying our shows and putting on a jacket in the winter. Walk down the street and you’d be hard-pressed to go a few blocks not seeing someone with earbuds in their ears jamming out to their favorite song. The modern convenience of taking music with us has been around since the Walkman in the 80’s and 90’s and possibly even earlier, my dad always tells me that he loved that device because the fact that you could bring your cassettes with you on the go was an innovation that would shape the world. Unlike radio’s, these portable music players let you listen to what you wanted where you wanted and not have to worry about the inevitable comment from your friend saying “bro, can you change the station I hate that song” or walk down the street blasting Super Driver and getting weird looks.

In the midst of the portable music phase, we often gravitate towards listening to music that sucks us in the intricate instrumentals, lyrical genius or a catchy pop tune that we can easily consume. However, this kind of music is quite different that what is used in cinema and anime scores since those tunes are not usually designed for the average listener to jam to on the way to the train station. These are the heavily atmospheric and background pieces found in the Original Soundtracks (OST) for their respective series.

(Please note the difference between a soundtrack and a score; a score contains tracks composed uniquely for the show or movie while a soundtrack might contain preexisting songs in pop culture or from another artist.)

Heavily atmospheric tracks and background music is the key to mapping a scene in motion picture and animation, as is silence. Sound in entertainment is one of the most important aspects of the experience and can sway the emotions of the audience if applied correctly. The common example for this point is the 1979 Ridley Scott film, Alien. In terms of sound design, it does an amazing job at heightening the tension with the harsh and repetitive sounds which makes the audience scoot to the edge of their seats. Music and sound design is the key to grabbing the audience’s attention and emphasize the emotions the director wants them to feel. What I will be focusing on in this discussion is the importance of music in anime as well as the way music can be used as a crucial tool in the experience of the show.

One of my recent favorite animated movies of all time in Koe no Katachi, the new directorial work from Naoko Yamada working at Kyoto Animation. This movie has received immense praise, and rightfully so considering the touching story, excellent direction and stunning animation. I will talk about this movie another time but for now, I want to focus on one of my favorite aspects of the production- the OST. This score has been given much praise for the wonderful use of atmosphere and sound design, but I want to discuss how it is important for the overall narrative. The tracks are simple in their own right, short and subtle and that’s what is important here. Koe no Katachi is a movie about those who communicate, and this OST communicates a lot in unconventional ways. Large stretches of animation contain no dialogue, with a heavier focus on the character’s body language and expression. These tracks are added in to amplify the emotions of the characters, often structured with a soft intro and a climax towards the end of the track that is aligned with the emotional climax of the scene. One of the ironic tracks is “lit” which is used a few times during the run time but most notably at the most emotional scene at the end of the movie. The way the steady buildup of the track is structured is then timed with the actions on-screen creating a huge rush of emotions that the audience feels as a result of that track being used. Without it, the scene would have not have had nearly as big of an impact on us as when it has the song. I’m sure all who have scene knows exactly what I’m talking about, and we all shed a manly tear.

Now I want to switch gears a bit and discuss a different approach to sound design in anime with a focus on the OST of Made in Abyss. Every anime fan that was conscious during 2017 most likely heard everyone talking about the brilliance of this show with beautiful animation, background art and music. The latter is what my primary focus will be considering how wonderful the OST is by itself, but can it add more depth to the overall production?

One of the strengths Made in Abyss has that allows it to stand above the rest in it’s genre is the amazing world building. Over the course of one episode we find out the basic premise of the Abyss and we’re filled with the same wonder the characters have, to find out the truths of the Abyss. With the introducing of the premise and seeing the map in the ED made me excited to find out the mysteries that lurked miles below the surface in the Abyss.

A major contributor to how the atmosphere was mapped in Made in Abyss is the music itself, composed by Australian composer Kevin Penkin. The beautiful melodies that meshed so well with the soft colored backgrounds and overall mysterious vibe created a sense of discovery and curiosity. The more upbeat songs played with the idea of the overall optimism of the young explorers while the downcast ones created the sense of dread they had as they proceeded further down into the Abyss. These string and percussion tracks contained within the OST creates a somewhat adventurous feeling lined with curiosity and awe at what lies ahead but still manages to maintain the darker elements that can be applied to those types of scenes that required it. One of my favorite songs from this show is Hanezeve Caradhina, one of the most iconic songs that really captures the essence of atmosphere created in this wonderful show and is a reoccurring insert song first introduced in episode 1.

After completing the series, I tracked down the OST to listen to on the high seas, but found that it was available legally on Spotify, same goes from the Koe no Katachi OST so I highly recommend to listen to those scores on the legal platform since they’re so readily available.

All in all, don’t take the music for granted when watching an anime or live action movie, the composer worked with the director to create a piece that would compliment the emotions they were trying to make the audience feel. Consider the importance of including that particular song there, and appreciate it when a scene comes together in a beautiful symphony of animation and emotions that makes you remember “damn, I love anime.”

Thanks for reading, have a great day!

Little Witch Academia: Aspirations and Dreams

“I want to be the very best” is a phrase that is occasionally seen in your run-of-the-mill shounen or action series that provides a very generalized and dynamic goal for the character to be working towards. While I wouldn’t attribute this to lazy writing, it does not offer much substance to get a firm understanding of who this character beside the obvious strong willpower and persistence.

Characters are fleshed out when their dreams or future goals are given more emotional weight or motivations that allow for the audience to get a greater understanding of what kind of person that character really is. Personalized motivations for wanting to reach a certain goal is something that deepens characterization.

In Hunter x Hunter, Gon wants to be the strongest hunter, not for glory or the ability to claim to be the strongest in all the land, but because his journey to the top will lead him down the path and potentially help him find his father who left many years prior. Gon encounters many obstacles along the way but was able to persist because he had a clear goal in mind. Now enter Little Witch Academia, a show about girls training to better their skills of witchcraft at a boarding school. Akko, the protagonist, aspires to be a witch with a distinct passion and style like Shiny Chariot. While in many ways different, the goals of the characters of Akko and Gon share many parallels and can be used to understand the importance of a personalized dream for a character in anime.

It is established in Little Witch Academia that Akko, our female lead, aspires to be like her idol Shiny Chariot. However, much like in Hunter x Hunter, the idol the protagonist is working to catch has left but a legacy for them to view. Akko has a firm resolve, and well, she is very stubborn in her dream that leads her to become frustrated when she isn’t progressing as quickly as she would like in her craft. Her dream to become just like her idol is something that children often strive towards. Akko, much like a young child, looks up to this person and wants to be just like them. However, her magic skills are lacking severely and leads to constant frustration with herself. This makes her feel inadequate when compared to the perceived greatness that her idol Shiny Chariot can accomplish. This is obviously a poor comparison because Akko is a novice in every sense of the word while Chariot is a veteran, but she cannot comprehend this at that time.

 

 

In episode’s 11 and 12, Akko is faced with the question of what is more important: her future or past. In a cave a being asks her if she is willing to sacrifice her memories for the guarantee that she will have everything she wanted in the future. She realizes that “The tears and frustration and laughter, they’re all part of me!”

 

 

She would have no dream without a past, and not past without a dream. Both equally important and she must fulfill her aspirations through her own means because her life “doesn’t belong to anyone else!” It was here when Akko grows to understand that while her dream may be important to her, she doesn’t have to strive to be her idol, rather she needs to find a purpose for greatness. Professor Ursula warns Akko: “Don’t compare yourself to others. Do what only you can do.”

 

 

So, what is important about dreams and personalizing a dream to fit a character. Little Witch Academia explains how dreams and goals should be loft, yet within one’s own abilities. You should strive to be the best that you can be, not compare yourselves to other or else you will fall into a series of dissatisfaction or superiority. The message of these two episodes was quite cliché but the presentation was what made it more impactful. Akko’s growth in these episodes leads her to find motivation to push herself and find success as seen in episode 13’s festival. What’s important is a pure passion and motivation to push forward.

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