A Thousand Years of Death Going Postal
But where is your monocle, top hat and elitist editorial?
Summary:
Watashi flees from Hanuki’s toilet; Keiko, I choose you! He had begun his two year correspondence with his elegant and refined correspondent after finding her name and address in a second hand book from Ozu. Tonight is the night she has demanded to meet or hitherto discontinue their exchange of letters. Instead of going straight to the cafe, Watashi returns to sender’s address, only to see Ozu leaving from the source/destination.
Watashi realizes that he has been tricked but Akashi then reveals herself, revealing that she had been writing, at Ozu’s behest, the letters. Since they have both been pretending to someone else, she calls it even. Though she felt guilty about deceiving him, she also enjoyed their communication and still remembers how he, as Mochiguman, has come to the rescue of her high schooler self. Watashi is relieved but seizes on how he has been dancing in Ozu’s palm to fuel his self-righteous anger, winding the clock back yet again.
Reaction:
In a Tatami Galaxy far far away
Quotes from Mystlord’s post on Episodes 6-8 (Communication):
He is the eternal idealist. So trapped in his own mind that he can’t function with the world at all. Communication is the how humans interact with each other, so it’s extremely interesting to see just how Watashi treats each of these different forms [spoken, symbolic and written communication].
What intrigued me the most was how, despite Watashi’s failures, he still manages to reach across to others and to touch them in ways that belie his social incompetence. Hanuki promotes him to drinking friend, a status she only bestows to those she feels close to and unembarrassed to be with when she goes on her face licking rampage. Jougasaki was willing to entrust him with his beloved Kaori. Akashi enjoyed reading his letters and writing back to him despite the mutual (but not double blind) deception. Probably the most frustrating thing about Watashi is not his alleged incompetence but the wasted potential. Sometime that always pains me – like that big breasted girl from Hatsuki Limited who gave up on a stab at the Olympics because she was embarrassed by how her cleavage looked in her competition swimsuit.
Watashi’s own personality is divided up into his id (Johnny) his ego (himself), and his super ego (the entire view he has the world around him). Watashi’s ego as of now ONLY considers the super ego. He can’t mediate between the two. He locks the id, the drive for pleasure and action, inside. The super ego pines for “properness” and “morality”, and that’s what Watashi obeys.
I had similar thoughts about how this arc was written with Freudian theories in mind. Certainly it looks like he has poor Johnny and Bullseye penned up for an eternity of penal incarceration but it is not insignificant that (1) he acknowledges Johnny’s existence and voice – thus his id is not completely repressed and (2) he actually managed to convince Johnny to wait a little longer in Ep 6 while Johnny manages to take over in Ep 7 – he actually communicates with his id and it is not as securely locked away as one thinks.
The former example finesses Mystlord’s analysis on communication – Watashi pines not for properness per se but for his idealized romance – Johnny operating within the context of properness. That is the mark of civilization but Watashi goes too far and thus experiences its discontents. But the principle is not decried, just the application in the denial of serendipity. The latter example shows the dank horror when Johnny’s shadow is unleashed without any restraint and needs the flying kick of a more unrefined and unknowable love to save both Kaori and Watashi himself from being despoiled.
GIVE HER THE F**** MOCHIGUMAN DAMN IT!
The white Mochiguman doll is probably the groundhog day trigger. I really loved how he was also dressed up as the same White Mochiguman when he first triggered her flag, or at least her interest. It was also lovely how Akashi’s impression of him was not broken by the exaggerations about himself in his letters and how deception and fantasy gave both Watashi and Akashi insights into the other’s spirits. All this suggests to me that Akashi is Watashi’s Destined One. But will he have the foresight to see it? More importantly, will he still deserve her by the time he finally realizes it?
Quoted from Mystlord’s post from the perspective of purity:
The image of his happiness is linked with the image of a pure maiden. Akashi doesn’t embody that ideal. She’s strange, has a strange fear of moths, loves Mochiguman, and has a variety of other quirks to her. She is an imperfect being.
I have some difficulty with this interpretation. Watashi never makes any explicit criticism of Akashi along this vein. He did express admiration for her integrity, seen from how she participated in certain clubs without ever becoming embroiled in the unsavoury parts of their politics (e.g. the film circle) and how she resisted the bland blandishments and cheap pickup lines of her clubmates. I suspect that the latter has caused Watashi to rule her out on account of fearing rejection; ironically, it is how he treats with her in the spirit of friendship, with all ulterior motives directed towards faceless raven-haired maidens, that has nourished her seeming interest in and attraction towards him. And yet I do wish to see him redeemed and, thus returned to self-worth, to finally grasp the trigger (for the light in his tatami galaxy of 4 and a half mats) chance that has been dangling before him all this while.
Not without an expensive and scary team of lawyers you don't
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This post was written by...
Zyl – who has written 204 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
I have a penchant for Bishoujo, Oneesama and Yuri character dynamics. Genre-wise I enjoy drama and satire; tilt-wise I am terribly weak against self-consciously arty farty styles and reference humour. Sieg Lunamaria!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Haha I’m flattered that you chose to write up so many responses to my post, now write up some for anime|otaku’s and vendredi’s posts!
Anyway, some responses:
Even though Watashi was able to communicate with others, it’s still a rather garbled version of who he truly is. Hanuki does promote him to drinking buddy, but she was extremely depressed at the time, and just needed comfort from anyone. Jougasaki entrusts Kaori to Watashi… Except that even though he thought that Watashi was a “late bloomer”, it turns out that he still has sexual urges inside of him. And again with Keiko, Watashi embellished his true self so quickly that it was hard to discern his own ideal picture of himself from reality. I think that Watashi’s problem lies in both his incompetence and his wasted potential. He’s just too scared to translate thought to action.
About the Freudian interpretation, leave it to me to leave out the sentence that should have been placed right after – “But the repression of his id is unhealthy and ultimately causes it to lash out”. There are points where the id in fact takes over Watashi, such as influencing his decision to enter Hanuki’s department, and literally taking over Watashi’s body to have sex with Kaori. I do agree that it’s inaccurate to describe Watashi’s relation with his id as completely locking it up though.
The White Mochiguman is indeed a powerful symbol, and an important one at that. A certain line in episode 9 adds to the notion that Watashi is indeed Akashi’s destined mate, though I won’t spoil that here
Finally about purity, it’s not that Watashi criticizes Akashi because of her quirks, it’s that she’s invisible to him as a candidate for happiness because she’s imperfect. He can’t possibly view himself as ever being happy with her because she just isn’t that “raven haired maiden”. It’s an unfortunate ideal that he’s holding Akashi up to, and one that he’ll inevitably change by the end of the series (unless we see an incredible plot twist or something
)
Thanks for your response; I felt compelled to respond to your post because of how you picked up on the Freudian undertones too. Thanks also for the links to a|o and vendredi.
Had the impression from my feedreader that Ep 9 supersedes much of the discussion based on the previous eps so will try to catch up (to Ep 10) over the weekend and then write about them thereafter.