My Senpai is Annoying – 01 (First Impressions) – Climbing the Stairs of Adulthood

I’ve been remiss, fellow anime lovers…for the last five weeks I’ve beeing missing out on one of the best rom-coms of the Fall. Fortunately it’s not too late to go back and rectify that error, bow deeply, and accept responsibility for the mistakes that were made. Like a true salesperson!

For those who like me have not availed themselves of it, this is My Senpai is Annoying, a workplace slice-of-life romantic comedy featuring the pocket-sized Igarashi Futaba and her office senpai, the truck-sized Kazama Souta. Futaba has a bit of a love-hate relationship with Kazama, but as the episode progresses, we see there’s a lot more love than hate.

The love goes both ways, in different ways. Futaba hates having her hair tousled, but after making a mistake on her first big sales pitch, Kazama takes responsibility and won’t brook any dispute about it. He even makes sure that the last can of sweet red bean soup (which I’m still kicking myself for never buying when I was in Akiba) finds its way into his kouhai’s teeny-weeny hands.

We learn through their interactions (and their chemistry is magical) that Kazama isn’t just being a good senpai, but harbors a genuine desire to look after this bitty go-getter, who is loved by everyone at the office for her chipper attitude, but also feel down and off when she’s feeling down and off. I can’t say I blame him, as Futaba is lovable right out of the gate. As Futaba goes, so goes the office, and Kazama helps Futaba out of the doldrums.

That’s because Kazama is such a loud, brash, upbeat guy. He’s a gigantic cuddly bear, and if Futaba is honest, she actually can’t get enough of him, even if he’s “annoying” some times. After some drinks at the pub, Futaba is honest whether she wants to be or not, asking Kazama, when he says if he had a wife and kid he’d want a kid like her, she asks why she can’t be his wife. It’s a sweet to behold as it is mortifying for Futaba.

I’ll have four more episodes of this or something like this please!

 

The aquatope on white sand – 09 – Compassion for the unfamiliar

Two very common ways anime deal with an interlopers is by either turning them into friends or putting them in their place. Aquatope does neither, opting for a far more nuanced, multifaceted, and ultimately more satisfying and enriching experience. In the complexity of emotions it expresses (and elicits), Aquatope is as diverse and colorful as its sea life.

Haebaru Chiyu is the interloper, and immediately an interesting choice was made to have Ishikawa Yui voice her. Ishikawa has one of the most charming and likable voices around, even as she voiced Mikasa Ackerman, one of the toughest motherfuckers in all animedom. I automatically like everyone she voices, even if they’re not easy to like otherwise.

Despite the only reason Chiyu agreed to go to Gama Gama for training was because of the “Legendary Aquarium Keeper”, Gramps pairs her up with Kukuru. Kukuru doesn’t know Chiyu, but hates everything she represents, and cannot mask her disdain and hostility.

It quickly becomes clear that beneath her polite façade Chiyu masks a similar contempt, but for an aquarium she believes (not without good reason!) to be a failure. The place is mostly empty and the equipment is falling apart. Not only is it a depressing place with which she has no emotional ties, it is to her the antithesis of a properly run aquarium.

Gramps and Fuuka are in the middle of the ensuing rivalry of passive aggression and pointed barbs; Gramps tells Kukuru it doesn’t matter what building an aquarium occupies; what matters is that people get to enjoy and come to love the creatures of the sea. Gran backs him up by telling Kukuru it would do her well to occasionally think outside her proverbial seashell.

To her credit, Kukuru does take a look at why exactly she’s trying so hard to save Gama Gama, and if she’s just selfishly clinging to her memories rather than facing reality and coming to terms with it. Fuuka tells Kukuru that she’s chasing her dream, and she’ll keep supporting her.

In response to this loving gesture, Kukuru brings up the possibility of having a sibling to someone for the first time. As the omniscient audience we’ve seen her look at those two maternity books, but now we know why: they’re in her parents’ shrine, but she’s never had the courage to ask Gran why there’s a second one.

Before going to sleep while holding hands, Kukuru promises she’ll be more civil to Chiyu tomorrow, but Chiyu has already had her fill of a teenaged assistant director, and basically demands that Gramps train her from now on. Gramps does his rounds, and Chiyu is suitably unimpressed with the “Legendary Aquarium Keeper.”

And why is that? Because with her outsider’s perspective she can’t quite see what he’s doing, and what he’s done, with Gama Gama. To him, an aquarium is more than just the building, but also more than just the fish. He knows and greets everyone, asks them how they’re doing. It’s a vibrant community of people young and old.

One could castigate Chiyu for so thoroughly missing the forest for the trees, but as we learn in her private moments, she has a dream too, and she’s not going to let what she regards to be a half-assed failing aquarium to hurt her chances at gainful employment.

That night in her Western-style hotel room—another sign she’s not interested in straying too far from her established world—she demands that her boss assign her somewhere else, and he agrees. She can’t afford to waste time…not when she’s come so far on her own.

Honestly, as much as she clashes with Kukuru and simply doesn’t “get” the appeal and value of Gama Gama, I can’t fault Chiyu for feeling or acting as she does. When Kukuru asks her what deficiencies she found there, Chiyu doesn’t hold back, and also makes the very good point that at the end of the day, Kukuru isn’t doing this for a living.

She may be slacking in her studies, but Kukuru is still young enough to do anything with her life. That’s less true for Chiyu, and because she desperately wants to work at an aquarium, she has to work that much harder in a country of 126 million with only about 100 aquariums.

Kukuru needs to use an unwitting Kai as a stress-relieving punching bag (a wonderful moment between the two old friends) not only because Chiyu pisses her off royally, but because Chiyu is right about a lot of what she said. For someone who earlier questioned her motives about saving Gama Gama, Chiyu adds salt to that wound.

The previous day, Fuuka overheard Chiyu remarking how no one at Gama Gama is actually looking at the fish. But as Fuuka learns, Chiyu was wrong: theyu have looked at the fish, over and over, with their cheap annual passes they’ve memorized most of them. They’re past that “tourist” phase of aquarium visitor. Now, Gama Gama is their living room, their lounge, their game room, their parlor….their home away from home.

Oh, and one of the kids mentioned he once say his dead dog, which means there’s something even more inscrutable and intangible about Gama Gama at which Ciyu turned her nose up. Between that kid’s comment and the brief look at Fijimunaa, the show wants to make it clear it hasn’t forgotten its magical realism elements.

Lest we forget Fuuka has her own baggage, she finally picks up when her old group-mate Ruka calls her. She eventually had to face her mom, and so it only made sense she’d have to face her very different past life as well. Unfortunately we don’t get to learn what exactly Ruka has to say to Fuuka, but it’s a great hook for next week.

Fuuka only gets this chance in part because Kukuru doesn’t go home with her, instead riding out to the big city to see the great nemesis itself. And just as her nighttime ride reminded me of Akira, seeing her behold and be dwarfed by the towering behemoth, still under construction and looking like a great sleeping beast.

This episode defly introduced a new character who was both likable in her own right while also providing a welcome thorn in the whole Gama Gama kubaya environment. Not everyone needs to be friends, and sometimes that makes for great, sometimes downright thrilling  anime, as it did here.

It also marked what looks like the beginning of some significant growth and soul-searching for Kukuru. She’s faced the beast…but what does she make of it, and what will she do next?

Nisekoi 2 – 04

I suppose it was predictable that Hana-san would turn out to be a better person than last week made her out to be, so I’m glad I was on the right track in hoping there was love behind her tough, intimidation, uncaring exterior.

A great symbol that Raku and Chitoge were both wrong about her is the cut to her breaking off a piece of her cigarette and eating it. It’s candy she uses for her oral fixation; she quit cold turkey when she got pregnant with Chitoge.

Even so, Hana is not the world’s best mother, though she provides for her daughter. She said all those harsh things out of the mistaken impression Chitoge hated her, for raising her strictly, as she was raised.

She has a drawer full of personally-chosen Christmas presents for her dating back ten years, but has never found the right opportunity to give them to her, and always asks her age because she’s nervous and isn’t sure how to treat her. There’s no bitterness or apathy here; only a lack of communication.

Enter Raku, with his most selfless and awesome heroics yet. It’s up to him to get these two very similar women in his lives who love each other deeply to overcome their misunderstandings about each other, while getting Hana to stop hiding behind her job and face her daughter properly.

It’s unfortunate Raku and Chitoge’s entire class, including the rest of his harem, is present when Raku whisks her off to a five-star hotel room, but there’s simply no time to explain. :3

Not knowing initially what his gesture’s all about, Chitoge is also flustered and overwhelmed, but when Raku explains on the way and asks her to simply “trust in him”, she does so without a fuss, nestling her head into Raku’s back as he pedals with all his might for her and Hana’s sakes.

Hana almost gets away on her private jet, but Raku manages to catch her on the phone, and puts Chitoge on the line to basically beg Hana to come back. Like any momma, the distressed cries of her young create a powerful urge for her to return to her offsprings’ side.

The resulting reunion on the runway goes from hilarious (Raku and Chitoge have to avoid being run down by the landing jet) to so heartwarming one forgets it’s Christmas and snowing out. Nice work, Raku!

Raku gives the hotel room to Hana to spend some quality time with her daughter after they go out to eat, and Chitoge finally learns why she treasures her red ribbon so much: it was the same as a character in a book she loved as a child, and ten years ago during the summer they spent together, Raku told her she’d look good in it.

All this time she’s treasured it because it was a connection to her distant mom, but it also connects her to Raku, which combined with her current feelings for him, lends Chitoge an extra layer of destiny to their reunion ten years later.

With that, Hana tells Chitoge to be a good girlfriend and go to the one who made their wonderful evening of reconciliation possible. Raku really worked his ass of this week like none other, so Chitoge doesn’t wake him up, but puts his head in her lap and enjoys the warmed of the guy she loves.

As for Raku himself, Hana doesn’t offer any revelations about his locket, but does figure out they’re pretend-dating, and wonders out loud if his feelings are really a sham. We know they’re not, and Chitoge’s certainly aren’t, but it’s more complicated than just that, especially in a post-credits scene with Kosaki expressing her relief to Ruri that Raku and Chitoge didn’t really spend the night in a hotel. Kosaki isn’t the best girl right now, but Raku likes her a lot too, so the battle is far from over.

Nisekoi 2 – 03

After a brief detour with Tsugumi last week we’re back to Chitoge. Specifically, Christmas is coming around, and she’s not particularly worried about how to spend it with Raku or the rest of her friends or anything else. Rather, her mind is preoccupied with the impending arrival of her mother, Kirisaki Hana, who is so busy Chitoge only sees her about once a year. Still, from Raku’s perspective, the fact she makes it a point to come ever Christmas Eve means her mom can’t be all bad.

His ridiculously easy defense of Hana would soon be thrown in his face, as Hana is, for all her corporations and billions of dollars and imposing aura, is an emotional deadbeat. Her first question to her daughter is “how old are you”, and while Raku knows Chitoge is wearing the red ribbon her mom gave her years ago, all Hana tells her to replace the ratty thing.

When her umpteenth secretary keels over from over-work (clearly she isn’t even the best manager of people, if she expects everyone to go at her literally peerless pace) Hana conscripts Raku as a kind of test to see if he’s worthy (with the promise of a five-star hotel suite for him and Chitoge to spend Christmas Eve if he succeeds).

Raku is a capable fellow, so he manages to get by by the skin of his teeth. When he finally gets a break he calls Chitoge up, worried she may be feeling down. After spending the day with Hana, he feels she should try being upfront about wanting to see her, not Raku, on Christmas Eve.

There’s no inner monologue mention of Chitoge’s present feelings for Raku, and at least on the outside this week she tries to keep a distance from him in the affection department, but it’s nice to see that even in an episode where her love life is on hold due to family issues, Chitoge still can’t help open up to her real/fake boyfriend, and is clearly heartened and grateful by his advice.

But the pace of this episode just didn’t indicate to me this was going to be resolved with a nice happy lovey-dovey ending with Chitoge and her mom. Chitoge tries to grab hold of the swirling tornado that is Kirisaki Hana, but ends up recoiling her hand, burnt by the sheer winds. Chitoge could maybe be clearer and more emphatic, but her mother cuts her off and hangs up, leaving her feeling like just another of her thousands of twenty-second calls with underlings.

Raku is there in Hana’s office when she rejects her daughter, and gosh bless him, he braves her wrath to call her out. Hana’s noblesse oblige self-defense is thin, and a little pathetic. Sure, there’s no one else who can do what she does quite the way she does it, and she’s needed everywhere all the time, but she’s also the only mother Chitoge has, and Chitoge needs her most of all.

If Hana’s corporate empire is so delicate that a month or a week or even a full day in which she’s not intricately involved in every facet of it will cause it to collapse, then it’s not much of an empire, is it? I get it; she had Chitoge when she was very young; maybe a part of her sees her as a mistake; a living breathing symbol of the failure she narrowly avoided. But I want to think somewhere in that cold, micromanaging heart of hers there’s some genuine love mixed in with that bitterness.

Still, Hana doesn’t deserve a daughter like Chitoge. She deserves Xanthippe Lannister Voorhees. Well, Xan’s “bad-girl” persona, anyway.