Thursday 24 June 2004

Pic of the day: "I was afraid of losing my tiny self." (Screenshot from anime Boys Be...)

Revelation of Kyoichi

I guess I cannot call him "St. Kyoichi", not after the way he looked at Chiharu ... but he is certainly a kind and gentle soul. Yes, we're talking about the anime Boys Be... and the boy who is probably the main character. (Different characters are major or minor in different episodes, but the anime begins and ends with Kyoichi.) I believe many good-natured boys will recognize themselves in Kyoichi. A soft-spoken, artistic man with neither talent nor interest for sports, he has few but good friends and is largely overlooked by the girls, which suits him just fine. He is really only interested in one of them anyway, and she is a childhood friend so she's not hard to meet. And that's pretty much as far as they go, although they are seen holding hands from time to time.

During summer training camp, Chiharu is strongly attracted to another boy, who is also a nice guy and more mature and sporty as well. And not least, this other guy is not hiding his feelings, like Kyoichi tries to do. (Not always successfully, it seems.) It is just a summer romance, but it breaks them apart as Kyoichi accidentally watches her kiss the other boy goodbye, and none of them is able to talk about it and get the misunderstanding out of the way.

***

In the last episode, Kyoichi goes to Hokkaido to paint. He is, after all, studying arts, and Hokkaido is famous for its beautiful nature. (And rightly so, from what I have seen ... it is not unlike Scandinavia in parts.) On arrival, he literally bumps into a young woman. She is half Finnish, natural blonde and with the more obvious female body shape that is common in much of Europe (Japanese tend to stay more androgynous and childlike). She is also strong, confident, and an artist working with wood. She immediately takes a liking to the shy and polite boy and becomes his guide, driving him around on her large motorbike. She likes to tease him, but in a friendly way, enjoying his naivety. When the night comes, she lets him stay at the workshop where she also lives, out in the countryside.

Only after they have started enjoying each other's company do they remember to give their names. Her name is ... Chiharu. Not entirely uncommon (my spell checker doesn't mark it like it does Kyoichi, for instance) it is still enough to remind him of who he really wants. And although they have lots of innocent fun together, nothing untoward happens between them. But it is clear that Kyoichi now understands for the first time how "his" Chiharu must have felt, and the pieces begin to come together in his soul. Rather than finishing off his wounded love for his childhood friend, the experience revives it. But that is not the only thing that happens on this trip.

Despite the wonderful nature, he is not entirely happy with his sketches. He shows them to blonde Chiharu and asks what she thinks. To be honest, she says, they look forced. As if he tried to force the whole landscape into his tiny drawing. The frank criticism stings him, not least because he now sees himself that it is true. He admits that she is right, but is not sure what to do about it. Still thinking about this, he falls asleep.

It is sunlit morning when he wakes up. As he goes downstairs and stands before the window, he looks out ... and something happens. The walls seem to fade away, and the world embraces him from all directions in its endless beauty. "I was running away into a small world" realizes Kyoichi. The walls that fade are the walls of his soul, where he had always stayed apart from the world, only allowing what he could capture and put into frames.

***

And this, dear congregation, is the revelation of Kyoichi. You cannot capture the world; if you want it, you have to open yourself and become a part of it. The price of grasping the world is that you risk being overwhelmed by it. Unless you pay that price, you will always see it as through a glass, or the frames of a picture.

Or the rectangular screen of a computer like this, I guess.