Jaku-Chara Tomozaki-kun 2nd Stage – 11 – Leaving the Garden

At the first meeting of the cast for Fuuka’s play the mood is a little stiff, but Hinami helps break the ice by acting out a line as Princess Alucia absolutely pitch-perfectly, which gets everyone into it. Dealing with all these people is a big step for Fuuka, but she tells Tomozaki she had fun the first day.

She wants to make sure he makes time for his comedy routine with Mimimi, so she says she’ll handle tomorrow’s rehearsal by herself. It’s also part of her effort to “change” herself, like he and Tama did, by jumping into the deep end.

Mimimi demonstrates how good a comedic duo she and Tomozaki make by simply engaging in their usual repartee, which always has a nice rhythm and structure to it. By comparison, hearing a recording of them following her script doesn’t pop the same way, so she suggest they include more improvisation.

Tomozaki admits in inner monologue that he can see him and Mimimi dating, but isn’t sure how that dynamic would differ from their current status as friends. Instead of talking to her about them more, he brings up Hinami and how he doesn’t get why she tries so hard to be the best at everything. Mimimi just hopes that Hinami isn’t “hollow” like she is after all that work.

When he returns to rehearsal, Tomozaki finds that Fuuka is just barely hanging on, as her effort to speak to everyone directly has led to a general lack of cohesion and inability for everyone to focus. It’s all well and good to try something new, but at the end of the day they do need to put on a show and that requires focus.

When Fuuka presents Tomozaki with the long-awaited ending to her script (and perhaps her novel as well), it’s not what he expects at all. Instead of answering the question of who Libra ends up with, after visiting the town and learning just how little she knows about the outside world, Kris disappears from the garden, gets a job, and starts living alone in the town.

Tomozaki thinks this ending is sad, too sad for the play. It’s the first time he’s seriously pushed back, and it’s when she’s clearly poured her heart into an ending she can accept. It also happens to be a path Fuuka herself wants to follow.

Leaving the “garden” of her isolated life in the library, she seeks to meet the “ideal” represented by people like Tama, Tomozaki, and Hinami. In response to his criticism, Fuuka tells him about one of her favorite Andi books with an outsider protagonist, working hard to change and “fit in” in the world.

At the next rehearsal, Hinami is present (she’d been in and out due to student council business), and Fuuka is very clearly taking cues from her in handling the cast. Mizusawa sidles up to Tomozaki and asks him what’s up with Fuuka.

When he tells him, Mizusawa notes that what Fuuka is doing is actually the opposite of what he and Tama were doing. Tomozaki’s ideal came from within, while Fuuka takes more of a birds-eye-view, wanting to meet the world’s ideals, not her own.

And that right there is why I understand Tomozaki’s concerns with the path Fuuka’s on, and even share some of them. It’s nice to want to change, but they way she’s doing it implies Fuuka believes she is somehow lacking, or deficient.

At what point does her self-improvement kick fundamentally change who Kikuchi Fuuka is? That is, the girl Tomozaki has a lot of affection for as a friend, and never thought of as someone in such dire need of transforming herself.

There’s also the whole matter of Fuuka believing wholeheartedly that Hinami Aoi is “a very ideal person”, when evidence is mounting she may actually a troubled person who either won’t ever reveal her true self to anyone, or doesn’t actually have one. You can’t say that about Fuuka, so if anyone is in need of a change, it’s actually Hinami, not Fuuka!

Tomozaki doesn’t know what exactly is going on in Fuuka’s head, but he wants to try to understand, so he buys the e-book of the Andi story she’s decided to follow stays up all night reading it, and believes he’s found a clue. I’m not saying Fuuka’s in the wrong for wanting to change herself, it’s just a matter of level, and not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Similarly, it’s okay and only natural to code-switch between school life, home life, work life, etc. But Hinami Aoi has taken it to a concerning extreme, and I doubt we’ll be able to scratch the surface of why that is before this season is out.