Do girls think it is fun to drag boys into their human world?
Another masterpiece by Kyoto Animation is the 22-episodes animated TV series Hyouka. These guys really know quality, but that is not my sermon today. Rather, if you’re not busy with work or some such, I would like you to watch the animation to the opening song for the second half of the series. The dream of the main character sums up the whole 22 episodes pretty well, but in a purely metaphorical way. In the series, the boy starts out with the attitude to conserve his energy, emotionally even more than physically. He does not want a “rose-colored” high school life, but a colorless one. What I would call detached. His motto is: “If it is not necessary, don’t do it. If you must do it, be brief.”
Over the course of the series, he slowly changes, and it is due to his three friends in the classics club, mainly the girl we see at the end of the animation here. Watch, preferably full screen. There will be a quiz. ^_^ No, but there will be an autobiography.
Did you watch that? Clearly the message of the clip is that even if you think people are your friends, they will just have fun with you when you don’t watch out. *_*
The message of the dream sequence however, that is what I am talking about. As he falls asleep, the boy feels that he is drowning. When he reappears, he has become something like a ghost: He is seen only in sketchy drawings and as reflections in shiny surfaces. Time passes: We see the snow of winter and then spring or summer, indicating a very long duration in which he aimlessly watches the world from outside, noticed by no one. Finally he appears in the glass of the high school club room, where his childhood friend recognizes him and the girl with the bright purple eyes reaches through the glass and pulls him back into the world of the living.
This is entirely metaphorical. The anime is not a supernatural story in the least, although I am kind of itching now to write such a story. But it is his detachment from the hectic world of humans with their wishes and wants and desires, their plans and their goals. He watches that world pass by as if from a slightly different world, in which he has no needs for anything from the human world, only a mild curiosity from time to time as he wanders alone in a world no one else can see. And then someone notices him, and a girl reaches into the world where he was alone, and pulls him into the human world.
Been there, as extremely long-time readers will remember. Girls are mysterious creatures with uncanny powers like that. It may even feel like a good thing for a little while there. But in the end, you know you can’t really trust humans. It’s good to be back here in the phantom zone, where there is nothing I need in the human world. ^_^ I feel sometimes like it was a near miss. But probably not really.