Thursday 14 April 2005

Pic of the day: "When I looked it up at the library, it said husbands and wives do good things in bed!" Ideally that would be enough for a 12 year old to know, but not if you suddenly find yourself married.

Rizelmine

I am making an exception and writing about this anime today even though I am not going to have seen it until the weekend, because it kinda fits with the theme of two days ago about girls who grow up too fast.

Rizelmine is a comedy/schoolkids anime. It is based on the premise that as part of a secret government project, a 12 year girl becomes the wife of a 15 year old boy. Sort of. Actually they are too young to marry, and besides this is the furthest thing from his mind. He doesn't like small brats, he likes older girls and preferably his teacher. Sadly they don't have much of a romantic interest in brats either, so there you go.

Rizel, however, takes her job as wife very seriously and advances with great energy. She has looked up in the library and believes herself to have a pretty good idea of what is in store for her and her husband. Her legal guardians are three scientists (secret government project, remember?). In a welcome break from the orphan tradition in anime, the boy actually lives with both of his parents. To his despair, however, they are easily won over by the government agents showering them with money and praise. It is unclear what the nature of the secret project is (it is secret, remember?) but evidently Rizel is genetically altered in some way. She is extremely resilient, but on the downside her tears are highly explosive, roughly like nitroglycerine. The husband's main role is to make sure she doesn't cry. As you may have guessed by now, he is strikingly unsuitable for the role. But she loves him anyway. Having a husband of her own is her big dream, evidently, and thus begins his nightmare.

The anime isn't exactly new, from the looks of it. Either that or it is rather low-budget, as TV series often are. Even so, it made it through 2 seasons each of 12 episodes, so it must have been somewhat popular. The basic plot was recycled in the recent anime Final Approach, which was more serious when serious, more funny when funny, and aimed at young adults rather than the puberty bracket. Still, Rizelmine has a crazy charm. It is just far enough out to not take too seriously.

***

I, however, take it too seriously. Because of what I have recently thought about girls reaching puberty at 8, the 12 year old trying to worm her way into the boy's bed is striking a bit too close to our reality. I guess Japanese girls are less developed after all, due to their hard physical training and eating fish and vegetables. But here in Europe, only legalities block a possible union between a 12 year old girl and a 15 year old boy. They are most likely both young adults by then, and can do anything an adult could.

And I am not sure how I feel about that. In our society, marriage is postponed and postponed, while people reach physical maturity earlier and earlier. This seems just wrong to me. It means that the generations now growing up get totally used to handling their love outside of marriage, one way or another, for a decade or even more. By then, it is most certainly second nature. Whatever happens if they marry at all is likely to have much less impact than in a society where marriage is the natural framework for men and women to become one. Perhaps we could need some more secret government projects.