Saturday 5 June 2004

Pic of the day: Ayase has unfailing trust in her highly relevant preparations for a date with Seiji-kun.

Ayase, queen of daydreams

No, it's not someone I have met on the Net, not really. It's a character in the anime Midori no Hibi. Actually the third most important character, after Seiji-kun and his right hand girl, Midori. Here be spoilers ahead for Midori no Hibi. Be warned!

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Ayase (her first name is Takako, but this is rarely used except in her dreams) is a classmate of Seiji-kun in high school. She is tough, telling people exactly where their place is. This includes, not least, the troublemaker Seiji, or "delinquent" as she calls him. She is what career women would call assertive, and rednecks would call a bitch. But one day a small group of actual delinquents appear at the school, and when she tells them off, they don't react like everyone else. They slap her and start to drag her off for some probably not amusing treatment. And nobody lifts a finger to help her ... except Seiji. Despite his right hand being in a bandage (because it has transformed into a gentle loving doll-sized girl, but no one knows that yet) he manages to rescue Ayase from the aspiring gangsters.

From this point on, Ayase gets a whole new interest in Seiji-kun. And the more she observes him, the more she likes what she sees. He is not actually such a bad boy. She falls in love with him, and the real fun begins. You see, Ayase has a very vivid imagination and a penchant for making up wild plots.

The anime is very good at showing the progress of her daydreaming. The first daydreams are shown as pictures from a comic book in black and white, but very prettily drawn. (In her daydreams, everything is prettier than real life, but above all Seiji.) Her daydreams progress, eventually becoming high-resolution color movies complete with ending credits, which are particularly hilarious because everything from script to lighting is credited "Ayase Takiko". (Japanese write the family name first.) Eventually her daydreams reach the level of a screenplay complete with applauding audience ...

Of course, her ideas become more and more far-fetched as well. She starts by "accidentally" having a left-over ticket for a movie of a type Seiji likes in particular. As their movie date progresses and Seiji does not catch on, she hatches wilder and wilder plots until she has invited him home while her parents are away and tries to make him peek at her in the bath. Her daydreams stubbornly keeps showing her only the best possible outcome of her wild plots. Luckily for all involved, Seiji is not only a nice guy at heart but also has the fairly competent little Midori as his right hand, literally.

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I find the lovesick Ayase vastly entertaining. There is something vaguely familiar about it. I have this feeling that if I ever had a daughter, she would turn out like this. Because her father would be a dreamer and her mother would have to be slightly insane and overly optimistic ... not to mention the ability to be totally blinded by love.