Dearest Rachel –
Okay, I promised to tell you about these series I’d been watching from time to time over the past few months – as well as why I don’t particularly like watching them, or any anime, as much as I used to when we did so together. And given that I’m up at such an absurd hour yet again (you’d think I could settle into my home time zone by now, but I guess not). First of all, though, I suppose I need to give a little bit of background, some of which you might recall, but may need a refresher on, since it’s been a while, and times have changed since then.
In keeping with our mutual tendencies toward hoarding (it may have been more visible and tangible with you, but to a certain extent, I was – and still am – no less guilty. The only reason I can conceal it so well is because my collections don’t have so much of a physical presence, but rather exist digitally on one hard drive or another), we used to collect both anime and Western television series from the internet. This was so we could have something to watch when (there wasn’t so much a question of “if,” as your favorite place in the world didn’t have much in the way of internet – or even telephone – connectivity for the longest time) we were somewhere where we couldn’t access the internet. It got to the point where we joked that we had enough stored up to keep one or the other of us entertained even if we were to be bedridden with a years-long illness without such access.
Of course, that proved to be unnecessary; you were taken so suddenly that there was no time to lie in bed, unable to do more than watch a screen for hours on end. As for myself, at this point, the internet is so ubiquitous that I hardly needed to assemble such a collection, apart from the fact that the older stuff fades into obscurity, and the more recent offerings (especially from Western producers) seem to have forgotten how to entertain, and are more devoted to delivering a message, one that I’m not keen on buying into. If I want to listen to a sermon, I have my church I can go to – and it offers more truth than anything Hollywood might be willing or even able to provide, thanks all the same.
Still, in those occasional moments in which uploads and downloads were so slow that I might have despaired of keeping up with my daily letters to you, I found myself dipping into a couple of titles throughout the course of my recent trip, and in the process, discovering why even a good series is hard for me to watch anymore.
Let me start with the one I actually managed to get through, a light and fluffy show called Danna ga Nani wo Itteiru ka Wakaranai Ken, or “I Don’t Understand What My Husband is Talking About.” It centers on a couple of late twenty-somethings (or maybe early thirty-somethings? It’s hard to tell, as it seems like the main character, the wife, just barely got herself married in time before her cultural expiry date, despite the two of them seeming to have known each other since college – sound familiar at all, by the way?). The husband is an otaku and borderline hikikomori, but brings a certain level of skill to keeping house (especially cooking, which is something of a point of embarrassment to her, as her father is a chef in whose footsteps she had no talent to follow in) that allows her to work as an office lady and be the breadwinner of the family. At the same time, he spends a lot of house time watching anime and reading manga (not to mention collecting figurines and the like), which she indulges him in, although she doesn’t get why it’s such a big deal for him, hence the title of the series. He does try to explain things to her, including certain tropes such as ‘moé,’ which she herself has in spades, insofar as she looks and behaves far younger than she truly is (again, sound familiar?), but for the most part, it appears to go over her head.
Despite this, they deal with this differences between themselves, and are quite the loving and affectionate couple. Rather than trying to force her to understand his otaku nature, he at one point suggests that she might understand better if she were to cultivate a hobby or two of her own, and works to arrange a time for her to spend doing something extracurricular that she might enjoy, and brings all of their friends to join them in this hobby as well. To support this (and to quell the insistence of his parents, who are none too keen on his househusband ways), he eventually gets a job, rather to his wife’s irritation, as it allows him to still work from home and pays better than her job ever did. But their harmony is really only broken momentarily at the end of the series, when they can’t decide on a name for their soon-to-arrive first child. Ultimately, her gynecologist (an old school friend who, unlike her, didn’t manage to find love ‘in time,’ and while their dealings are still perfectly friendly on both a personal and professional level, will occasionally display flashes of resentment about this fact) suggests a random process wherein every member of their friend and family circle (and despite being only a two-season series of a couple dozen three-minute episodes each, there’s quite a few) to contribute a name, and have the two of them draw one from a box to serve as the winner.
Without personal context, this is simply a short, light, sweet and funny series; something to munch on like visual popcorn while thinking internally “this is the way life and love ought to be.” And it’s that thought, combined with the occasional parallels to our own existence together, that makes this at best bittersweet to watch. We had this and more, honey, once upon a time. Indeed, one of the main differences between us and Kaoru and Hajime is that you actually understood most of the concepts in anime; some, better than I did, in fact, as a connoisseur of media in your own right. We were that much more on the same wavelength than these two (and while I was no househusband, we managed the same dynamic, albeit along the more traditional gender roles). We had this for so long – and then it was torn away all at once – and I can’t help but to wish for it back.
So yeah, even a light and comic series like this can sting.
As for the other series, I only got through one episode before realizing I wasn’t ready for it – and for all I know, I might never be. Anohana (Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai, or “We Still Don’t Know the Name of the Flower We Saw That Day”) is based around a group of childhood friends that drifted apart after the accidental death of one of their number. Now, with some of them about to finish high school (although a couple, including the ‘main’ character, have essentially dropped out), most of them can’t stand to be around each other, in part because of certain feelings of guilt about the circumstances that led up to the one girl’s death. However, they’re compelled to deal with these things, as she returns to them now, corporeally to the ‘main’ character, but she can be felt by the others as well, and they have to figure out a wish she had left unfulfilled before she can pass on to the next life – and for her to do so requires effort on all their parts, both individually and as the group they once were.
The good news is that I can’t necessarily compare my situation to that of these characters. Apart from the obvious fact that I would want so much more time with you, I don’t think there were any unresolved issues between you and I. To be sure, I can’t speak for the rest of the gang, but the events leading up to the end don’t involve them, so they shouldn’t bear the kind of guilt that these former friends do (whether legitimately or not; some of it seems to simply be from unexpressed feelings, after all, which, again, was never an issue for you or whoever you dealt with). While I rather envy Jinta for being able to have Menma’s ghost cling to him (although understandably, he isn’t particularly enthused about it, as he doesn’t understand why, and especially why him of all people), as I’ve said before, far be it from me to cling to you when there’s something so much better for you out there (pity that the author of this review doesn’t have that to hold onto).
But still, I hardly have to tell you that I really don’t want to subject myself to this, and especially not alone.
I’ve been advised that a setting like this, at an anime convention, would be the perfect place to watch more of this and not be alone, and I can’t argue the logic behind that. But I will say that the crowd, such as there might be in a screening room (these days, that’s hardly guaranteed, especially for a thirteen-year-old series such as this), will not have the personal context that I have that causes this to touch me in a certain way, just as “Danna-Nani” does in its way. Every viewer has their own experience, and will not – cannot – understand mine, as they don’t even know me, any more than I know them. It’s not shared the same way as a viewing among friends, because it is between strangers, with their own unique experiences brought to the viewing, rather than a mutual one to tint it in a similar way.
It’s funny to say that these series lose something in the translation, because it has nothing to do with being originally created and performed in Japanese. The lost translation is due to the fact that the lens I’m seeing these shows through is my own experience and wishes for the future, that only those who know me might understand (and even then, maybe not, pace Kaoru and Hajime). And that saps the enjoyment out of the experience, as I can’t explain it, any more than Hajime can to his otherwise loving wife.
But with that being said, honey, I hope you’ll understand if I express a wish for you to continue to keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. After all, I’m sure I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 