Wednesday 25 June 2003

Pic of the day: In episode 10, the tentative main character starts to have creepy dreams, panic attacks and a sudden sense of isolation. But the answer is not the obvious one.

Boys be ...

Whoa. This anime was not what I had expected. It was better, perhaps. More thought-provoking for sure, or perhaps that's emotion-provoking. I will try to write a kind of review without spoiling too much for those who haven't seen it. It's a TV series and currently only available as fansub for English speakers. (I got mine via AnimeSuki.com. They are down at the time of writing, but the translations I watched come from AnimeFactory.)

First and last impressions were like night and day, so different. After watching 1 episode I thought it was the anime version of a dating game, and slightly less decent than its competitors. After the last episode, I felt like the characters were my real friends and I had really been there with them. At the beginning, I thought of it as simple humorous entertainment. After finishing, I just sat there staring at the screen and thinking that perhaps, after all, I had missed out on something really important in my life.

(I then gathered my remaining initiative and hurried to play Morrowind until I lost consciousness late in the morning. There are some things man is not meant to know.)

***

The series is indeed about koi, romance or the type of love you fall in, love on equal terms between a man and a woman. About being more than friends, and the difference between it and other feelings.

The episodes are not all about the same guy, like in other such anime. The same people tend to turn up as minor characters in each other's stories, and each of them has an impact on some of the others in some way, as they are a fairly close-knit group of friends. But each has his own personality and his own problem.

One of them is unable to see the difference between love and friendship. "Why would she call me without a reason?" Another is unable to keep love separate from lust. If he sees a shapely body, he is immediately in love until it is out of sight. And one thinks pining for a girl is love. That one really struck me, for I have never heard it before. "Some say unrequited love is love too" says his friend, "but to put it harshly, it is stalking." Ouch.

It's not all about romance, friendship is also there, but is more taken for granted. You know who your friends are, but you don't know who loves you. It can be hard enough to know who you love, much less tell it. Especially to them.

There is even some humor, although it is not really a humor series. There are of course the clueless boys themselves, but also some hilarious situations. Like the young photo model in a Santa Claus uniform, calmly telling a small boy that Santa is her secret identity ... and that the young man with her is actually a reindeer. The small boy takes a look and admits that yeah, he looks a bit like a reindeer. Reply: "I hear that a lot".

***

But above all, Boys be... is a gentle, humane look at the mystery that is love between a man and a woman. And the answer seems to be, there is no answer. Love comes differently to each. And sometimes love could have been there, but is kept at bay by a wall of misunderstanding and silence.

A part of me wishes that I could have seen this anime when I was young. At least young enough for it to matter. But then, it is not sure that I would have spent my time now writing ...

As I write this, late the next day, I am still ... well, perhaps not shaken anymore. But somehow changed. As if I had watched a revelation, and things can never be quite the same again.