Iwa ni Hana

Honey and Clover (Seasons I and II)

Rating: 5/5

1) Honey and Clover is a coming-of-age comedy that drives a huge nail through the heart of anyone who has been through the stages of leaving home, attending university, making like-minded friends, falling in love with the wrong person, graduating from university and finding the first job. Sounds perfectly mundane, doesn't it? However, if there is one phase in life that unfailingly makes an interesting story, it has to be the phase between the ages of 18 and 24. It is the phase where "the butterfly effect" is most apparent - where small changes accrue to large changes over time. Thus, one year goes by, then another year, then another. Physically the change is not as apparent as, say, between the ages 0-6, but mentally one is actually making leaps and bounds in crossing the shadow line between youth and adulthood.

2) I especially like the statue called 'The Tower of Youth' which Takemoto made as some sort of final school project - it is built so high that there seems to be no end to it. You have to see it to feel that - 'Ah, yes, that is certainly what Youth would look like indeed were it given a physical form.'

3) I like the pacing of the story. There is a real sense of how the seasons change and time just silently slides by, minute by minute, month by month, year by year. The screenplay is excellent - there is always a moment of sadness in the midst of merriment, which reminds me so much of a question my Japanese cinema prof once posed to us: Why do beautiful things inevitably bring so much sadness?

4) Another thing that makes the show a pleasure to watch is its ability to use very simple symbols to illustrate a far from simple point in such an off-handed way as to be almost unnoticeable. The Ferris wheel in the first series is one such example: One day, our five friends go to a theme park. On reaching the Ferris wheel, they realize that they could not all go on the same carriage, as each carriage could only carry four people. So they have to split. But how? That episode, though seemingly insignificant in itself, is a premonition of things to come. In the journey of life, there are only so many people you can take with you on board. Sometimes you choose your shipmates; sometimes your shipmates choose you. And whoever's boat you end up boarding, there are inevitably regrets in not being able to board someone else's boat. And of course, when the time is up, we all have to get off.

5) There is an episode that focuses on the relationship between the Morita brothers, Shinobu and Kaoru, and the legacy of their father. One day, when Shinobu and Kaoru were still kids, their father unveiled to them his latest crackpot invention, a little robot bug that automatically moved towards a source of light in the dark. He named the robot bug after his two sons. Later, when he was betrayed by a business partner who was also his best friend, he said to them that it was his job to hate his best friend for what happened, not theirs; their job was to move on - forward towards the light. Of course, you may have gathered from the above description of Father Morita that he could not possibly be hating his best friend in his heart, and indeed he did not. But here is the series' skillful employment of symbols to express something of universal importance again. The human world is shrouded in darkness, and that darkness comes in two shades: the devouring darkness of the past which acts as a sort of gravity that forever pulls us backwards, and the darkness of the future of which we could see nothing. It is not enough to merely make your way through the world in your leisurely pace, still less to stand still - one must make a dash forward to keep pace with the escape velocity in order not to wallow in past mistakes and regrets. To do that, we could only chase after the only beam of light we see without asking whereto it may lead, because as long as you are going forward, you will be alright.

6) Which is the same point Takemoto makes when he recalls his bike trip to the northern tip of Japan. Everybody tells him how great it is for him to go all the way north and back on his bike, but he thinks there is nothing special about it at all. He just peddles his bike - left, right, left, right - no rocket science involved. And so long as he is peddling, he knows he will be alright.

7) There is a sort of inborn nobility in each of the characters - and I define nobility not in terms of outward appearance of grandeur or pretense of high-mindedness, but a certain disposition of temperament that renders the individual a true giver. They are all great givers, and great givers are rare.

8) Is there meaning in unrequited love? Such is the question Takemoto asks himself in the final scene as he, having graduated from university, departs from Tokyo. And his answer - as he eats the sandwiches prepared by Hagu, who has put a four-leafed clover in each layer wishing him happiness - is: There is. The four-leafed clover is another one of those seemingly deceptive symbols. It stands for happiness, but it is not the sort of happiness we typically associate with roses. Legend has it that the first leaf is for hope, the second leaf is for faith, the third leaf is for love, and the fourth leaf is for luck. With all these four things, what you have is happiness. Do roses give you all these things in one go?

9) In the first series, there is a scene during Christmas where Yamada asks herself, why is her love for Mayama not as fun as the women's magazines and the happy faces of couples who pass her by in the street would have her believe? Why must her love alone be a form of suffering when everybody else is having such fun? There is another scene where Mayama piggybacks her home because she is drunk, and in her drunkenness she confesses her love for him. There is a sort of unspeakable beauty in the latter scene. What she has from Mayama, too, is not a rose, but a four-leafed clover.

10) There is a scene where, on their way to the bathhouse, Takemoto asks Mayama why he is still living in his dingy quarters when with his salary he should be able to afford better housing, and Mayama replies, 'Because I read somewhere when I was a kid that the same chance comes to the same person three times in the course of his life. So I thought, I will probably need some money to take that chance, and I want to be ready when that chance comes.'

11) There is a scene where Nomiya tells Yamada that he loves her as her train departs, in what is perhaps the most dead serious moment in his life. Then almost immediately after, he spots a younger chap from his office, Yamazaki, spying on him and obviously melting in tears in a farcical manner. How like real life that is, where we go from one moment of heightened drama where we seem to be acting out the plotline of movies, to the next moment where we confront a casual bystander who plays the audience and whose tears make us strangely embarassed of the Kodak moment that just passed.

I have yet to come across a negative review of this show - this may just convince you how good this is.

'The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi (涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱)' by Tanigawa Nagaru (谷川流)/ Ishihara Tatsuya (石原立也)

I would not be surprised if I were told one day that the world is comprised of units of interconnected 'data' that could be manipulated at will. I would not be surprised either if I were told that the being who could create 'data' out of nothing would be who is hithero known to us as 'God'. What's more, I probably would not be surprised to know that 'God' were one of us, and that 'God' did not know that she was God.

Such is the setup on the cosmological level of The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱, a hit anime series based on a series of light novels written by Tanigawa Nagaru (谷川流).

Cleverly disguised as a high school comedy, the show is actually a witty thought experiment carried out pursuant to a few more hypotheses:

i) God is high school girl bored by our drab world;
ii) God wants to be friends with aliens, espers and times travelers and have fun with them;
iii) An alien, an esper and a time traveler do become her best friends;
iv) God does not know anything of the true identities of her best friends;
v) Her best friends are determined that she should remain ignorant of her awesome powers.

In short, you have the story of a God whose omnipotence is crippled by that fact that she is not omniscient; a God who seeks to rebel against human conventions but willy-nilly accepts the status quo at the end, and in accepting the status quo earns unbeknownst to her the friendship of far-from-conventional individuals which she has always specifically willed for. It's one of these chicken-and-egg things where you cannot tell where does the truth ends and the lie begins. The caveat is that the moment she 'wakes', her friends (and the world, for that matter) would probably no longer be. There are many things I like about this series, but there a few things which I have not heard raised in blogosphere so far: How much of gaining what we desire in life depends on our abilitiy to renounce it and resign to the exact opposite? How much of what we have in life depends on us not knowing that we have it? And that the moment it comes to our knowledge, it is lost forever? ('Igonorance is like a delicate exotic fruit, touch it and the bloom is gone' - to quote a certain famous play.)

[EDIT: I just learned an astonishing fact that Tanigawa Nagaru 谷川流 graduated from the law school of Kwansei Gakuin University 関西学院大学! Well, so much for people going to law school and end up turning away from legal practice...]

'Millennium Actress (千年女優)' by Kon Satoshi (今敏)

I rewatched Director Kon Satoshi's 今敏 Millennium Actress 千年女優 over the new year. If you have not seen it, many a review on the internet would do a better job of introducing this animated film to you. As usual, I will just go about commenting on it in my desultory way:

First of all, the idea that anticipation of or longing for something is better than its realization or fullfillment is wonderfully captured in the following dialogue between the Man with the Key 鍵の君 and Chiyoko (the heroine):

「満月。」
「満月は明日だな。でも僕はこの時のつきが一番好きだ。満月なら、次の日からかけってしまう。１４日の月には、まだ明日がある、明日という希望が。」
('The full moon.'
'The full moon comes tomorrow. But I like the moon at this time best. The full moon begins the wane from the next day, but there is a tomorrow to the moon on the fourteenth. The hope that is tomorrow.)

This is the idea that runs throughout the whole animated film, and I am sure that idea has a long pedigree in traditional Japanese aesthetics. Before I return to this point, I would like to mention in passing the ubiquitous crane in the film:

i) It is on the blue screen of Chiyoko's living room.

ii) It is also on the other wall in the same living room.

iii) There is is again in an old photo of Chiyoko as a baby.

iv) And in a photo of her as a child.

v) In a scene from one of Chiyoko's 'films'.

vi) And again -

vii) And again -

The crane, as we know, is Japan's national bird. It is also a fitting symbol in the context of the plot in that:

i) In fables, it is said that a crane has the lifespan of a thousand years, which refers to the 'millennium' 千年 part of the title.

ii) It is a symbol of fidelity as cranes are said to have only one mate in their lives.

iii) It is a popular symbol of peace in the post-war period.

Anyway, so what is Chiyoko's soul journey about? The Chiyoko in real life chases after a man whose name she does not know and whose face she has gradually come to forget as she ages. The only thing she knows about him is that he is a painter wanted by the secret police. In their all-too-brief time together, he gives her a key to a suitcase which is said to hold something that is most important. She asks him to wait till tomorrow (ie. the full moon) to tell her what that thing is. But of course, before they get a chance to meet again, he already has to run off because the police has managed to traced his whereabouts. Chiyoko never sees him again. But in the course of her life, she comes to understand that that 'important thing' is.

The Chiyoko in films is likewise always chasing after a man. I would like to call that man her animus. He is like a spearhead that stirs her to activitiy - a spirit that gives her direction and passion in her art. Whoever the Man with the Key may have been, over the years he has become more of a soul-image rather than a real person in Chiyoko's psyche. Her art blossoms because of that soul-image. As for that 'important thing' - I believe it isn't love per se, but the idea that it is better to long for something than possessing what you long for. As Chiyoko says at the end of the film:

だって、あたし、あの人を追いかけるのがあたしは好きなんだもん。
After all, it is the chasing after him that I really love.

Kudos to Director Kon for expressing this aesthetic concept (extremely dear to me) through such an engaging and magnificently directed animated film.

'Le portrait de petit Cossette コゼットの肖像' by Shinbo Akiyuki (新房昭之)

[Massive spoilers ahead.]

1) There are, of course multiple ways to read this allegoric story, which is just what a good story should be like - it is a word to the wise and a tale to the simple. As a tale to the simple, it is the story of an introverted young college student, Kurahashi, falling in love with the dead spirit of Cossette, who was killed by Kurahashi in his past life and now resides in a Venetian glass that has come into Kurahashi's possession. Nobody sees her except him - and for all we know she may well be a product of his imagination. To add a twist to the story, Kurahashi in his past life murdered Cossette, who was the model of many of his paintings as well as his fiancee (though she could not have been more than twelve or thirteen at the time). You see - she was a young beauty, and he could not bear the thought of her ever growing up into a woman. My preferred approach to such a plot would be the Jungian approach, for the psychology of Kurahashi is a fascinating case of paedophilia and a man whose personal growth is, so to speak, arrested by his anima. My points are set out as follows:

a) Cossette is Kurahashi's anima. An anima, according to Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz's definition, is "a personification of all feminine psychological tendencies in a man's psyche, such as vague feelings and moods, prophetic hunches, receptiveness to the irrational, capacity for personal love, feeling for nature, and -- last but not least -- his relation to the unconscious. It is no mere chance that in olden times priestesses (like the Greek Sibyl) were used to fathom the divine will and to make connection with the gods." Well, Cossette is all that.

b) Kurahashi's coma is closely related to the traditional Shamanic descent, which every apprentice of Shamanism must undergo in order to become a shaman. Cossette is his guide in the Unconscious, in which he creates art by having Cossette as his model. It is in that 'other world' (ie. his coma) that he undergoes a breakthrough as an artist.

c) That 'other world' collapses the moment he realizes that the Cossette he sees is some eternal embodiment of Beauty in art - and not Cossette the actual girl who had lived many centuries ago. The 'false' Cossette, of couse, retorts by saying that she is more real than the real Cossette - a formidable statement indeed. It is not rare among those who are sensitive to beauty at all that artifice could have a 'more real' presence in the mind than reality itself.

d) As his anima, Cossette is the personification of Eros and Pathos - she facilitates his capacity for love and suffering. Indeed she goes out of her way to make him suffer, for having killed her in his past life for growing up. The ugly monsters she conjures up to expressly inflict harm on him are not just ugly monsters out of nowhere, but the Dark Anima - in other words, the other half of her whose existence is denied by him because he has his eyes fixed on some unattainable vision of beauty. And what one denies in one's psyche inevitably takes its revenge on one by turning into a demon in one's mind - the more one suppresses it, the more powerful it becomes.

e) So why Cossette's tender young age? Methinks this setup is more than just a marketing trick to lure the 'Lolita fashion' crowd. Kurahashi has all the characteristics of an immature young man. She cannot grow up because he does not want to grow up.

f) But here is the Catch-22, when he does grow up (ie. come to terms with the fact that she is not real), she is no longer to be found. In a way, artists, regardless of their actual age, must remain 'young', or at least retain 'the eyes of a child,' to create art. This may account for their immature outlook or conduct in life, which tends to invite troubles that any sensible adult would be able to avoid. In old age, they may compensate for their lack of fiery spirit with their mastery of the techniques of their craft, but it is that fiery spirit of youth that is the forge from which art is created. Hence the Catch-22.

2) I must say, whoever responsible for the soundtrack of this outstanding anime must have been an Orpehus who has gone down into the Underworld and come back to the human world.

3) The voice actress of Cossette, Inoue Marina 井上麻里奈, has officially become my favourite voice actress. The theme song she sings is also a jewel among anime theme songs. And that scream of hers at the end of the third episode is purely classic in the history of Japanese anime voice acting.