Summary:

Watashi joins the Lucky Cat Chinese Restaurant secret society which controls all the shady serious business in the university but it is not a fortunate choice. He fails, as a member of the Library Police, at collecting an overdue copy of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea from Noguchi. He fails again, as a Copy Shop delivery boy, when it rains fireworks on his party and wipes out the bogus reports of 200 paying customers.The last straw is his refusal to partake in leader Aijima-senpai’s against Jougasaki’s Kaori but the promised revenge never arrives; Ozu has overthrown Aijima and installs him as Master Sergeant of the Cheery Cycle Cleanup Corps in which he excels at, raking in the dough and all the consequent rewards.

But Akashi catches him in the act of stealing her Birdman and slaps him. The blow brings the nagging emptiness in him to the fore and Noguchi tells him that possibilities are limited, that he must accept the him that he is now and that there is no such thing as a rose-coloured campus life. The hammer falls when Aijima abducts Watashi from his drinks session with Hanuki; Ozu, a fool in love, has been relentlessly working to his true objective – to steal the Honwaka Honey airship so that he can take his beloved on a night tour; he crashes and burns but Watashi realizes that Ozu, unlike himself, has lived a fuller two years than him. He encloses himself in his room, the walls of his four and a half tatami galaxy closing in on him.

As a Four and a Half Tatami Mat Ideologue, Watashi celebrates the virtues and pleasures of staying in his room as much as possible. But one day he finds himself trapped in a universe of endless rooms similar to his own. Gradually he realizes that each room is slightly different, pregnant with the possibilities of different choices and different lives. Through rose-tinted glasses, he sees how the grass is greener on every other side, how he seemed to, could have had fun in those incarnations (without the rapid fire narration of discontent) and eventually chances upon himself in Episode 5 who promptly pushes him back into his closed world where despair and exhaustion overtake him.

Reaction:

To Flags on how

this episode not only gave Watashi and the viewer a new impression of Ozu, but it also gave us both a new interpretation of why Watashi has wasted these years over and over again.

Hanuki had talked about Ozu’s love previously but there’s nothing like seeing is believing – so that’s what she meant when she said he had pure feelings. Oh how right he is about a new interpretation which cuts like a knife and stings like a thousand bees when you see someone whom you had regarded as unworthy of loving and being loved being loving and being loved. This is the hammer that finally smashes the idols of Watashi’s rose-tinted dreams, bringing brute reality into undeniable territory. About which Michael eloquently regales us:

Unlike Watashi, Ozu tried to enjoy his life as much as possible, not aiming for impossible ideals or perfection. He loved; he enjoyed meaningless things; but he enjoyed them fully. He made what little possibilities he had into reality. It could be seen that the ending no longer had a clock resetting: finally, despite the somber ending, our Watashi has become grounded in reality.

Which also breaks the cycle of repetition which Mystlord expounds on:

The beauty of Watashi is that he never evolves as a character. Throughout every repetition we’ve seen, he remains the same individual. Instead, all we learn is more and more about his current character… In every repetition, Watashi consistently plays the blame game… In every repetition, not once has he changed the eventual outcome of everything. With or without him occupying a role in every club, most of the events in each episode still come to fruition… Watashi’s presence in all of these episodes has ultimately been meaningless… Only Watashi doesn’t know what he wants to do, and as a result he’s been living a transient existence – one where nothing he does matters. For all intents and purposes, he doesn’t exist in this world.

Is Yojo-han a challenge to Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being where everything that has happened has already happened and will happen again endlessly, conversely what happens in one’s life – where other lives are unknowable – happens only once and never again and like it may have never happened before and thus, unbearably light? Or an affirmation? (I read it last year and don’t have my copy with me.) It is true that none of Watashi’s different decisions ultimately matter but as Noguchi’s important pointer, which Mystlord blockquotes in its entirety, points to how Watashi himself is the root of his problems, that he will never be able to make a good choice, even with all the choices across the worlds, until he changes his assumptions, his desires, his understanding of others, himself.

Vendredi channels ghostlightning:

Neko Ramen, however, is the place where Watashi feels most at home, most able to express himself freely. His closest and most honest conversations – with Higuchi, with Hanuki, Ozu, and even Kaori – have all taken place at Neko Ramen. The fact that Akashi has not yet been to Neko Ramen, and Watashi’s hesitance at doing so – speaks to his hesitance about entering a relationship with her.

It’s an observation that struck me like a thunderbolt. It’s just like the old lady fortune teller said: “The chance is right in front of you, within your grasp.” Not just the white Mochiguman that brings the light but the promised place where Watashi can redeem himself by redeeming that long ago promise to Akashi to bring her to the Neko Ramen stall.

And the series does hold out that tantalising prospect, going on Vendredi’s comparison of Samsa with Watashi, in the line that “only this Watashi has the benefit of perspective.” He has seen the other possibilities, he has been brought down to his nadir but the black thread of fate has been cut by the flight and fancy of Ozu’s love and even at the bottom of the Marianna trench, the only way is up – if he has the strength and the will to do so.

And the starting point is laid out Mystlord regarding blame:

At the start (or somewhere) in each episode, he always asks the question: “Who is to blame?” He can’t seem to accept the fact that perhaps there is no external force to blame. The blame rests on you, and only you.

Or responsibility. Both paths lead down the same road, regardless of the semantics of translation. Likewise Michael‘s caption for his first screencap arrives at the same destination and his speculation that:

Looking detachedly at his other incarnations he reflects that they’ve made better choices despite failing than the current him who was even too scared to make one. This is the little epiphany that will most probably drive the final episode… It’s up to him to fix himself up.

He has, even if he doesn’t always appreciate it, already had much help and insight from friends, even if he doesn’t quite always acknowledge them as such, he made along the way of this journey. I look forward to the conclusion.

Related posts:

1. Yojo-han Shinwa Taikei 07
2. Yojo-han Shinwa Taikei 08
3. Yojo-han Shinwa Taikei 2