Summary/Reaction:

Watashi, worn down with RONERY, wants to turn back the clock again. He pieces together information about the different people he has met in the lives lived via all those other rooms. He recalls Aijima and his visit seeking information about Higuchi and Ozu. His thoughts turn to why Higuchi was so revered and how one of his selves had even become his disciple. And then the proxy war with Jougasaki and the frustrating dynamics between Higuchi and Hanuki. Seeing the various people from the different angles across the myraid rooms, he starts to see a more complete picture of each person. This is the first step towards his redemption – with what he learns about others, he also learns more about himself.

He also yearns for something other than the fishburgers he has been surviving on. An onigiri, freshly cooked rice and the true paradise of being able to eat Neko Ramen. Of all the people, Ozu, he who bore castella to the rooms, still eludes him with his numerous exploits and plots involving everyone else but realizes that Ozu was his only true friend. It was astounding how simple and yet how profound this change is. From the assertion that his life would have been better if he had never met Ozu to the cry of true tears (yes, pun intended) – Ozu had always been there for him, had truly understood him and had tried to help make his life more interesting, to include him in his mad capers in that multi-coloured tumult of those two years of gloriously wasted university life.

He chances upon Ozu’s smart phone in one of the rooms. Kohinata’s name unlocks the phone and reading the messages, learns that Kohinata is Ozu’s girlfriend and her desire to see all the Gozan fire words on the five hills of Kyoto which is possible only by air. But as her wish is Ozu’s pure pure love command, he plans to ‘borrow’ the Honwaka airship. Watashi realizes that Aijima is on to Ozu and, fired up by the desire to help this friend he has never had in this life but failed to appreciate in so many others, tries to warn him but the phone runs out of battery power before he can send the message. This strong desire to help someone else had been present in the Hanuki vs. Kaori vs. Keiko arc but also distinctly less encumbered by his superego mores and reservations. But also how the desire to help does not flow, like a confluence – two rivers into joining one another, into the possibility of romance and sex from the one being helped.

Watashi again thinks of all the things he would want to do if and when he escapes from the closed tatami galaxy: eat tarako sphagetti at Cafe Collection, eat Neko Ramen, dive into the big tub at the public bath, see movies at Kawaramachi, haggle with Dr Octopus bookstore owner, listen to during his university lectures, become Higuchi’s disciple, experience Hanuki’s drunken hell rampage, help Jougasaki in his passionate, meaningless movie making, dabble in secret society activities. He has seen what he has done in all those other lives and, more importantly, he sees them anew, in a new light, in a more positive light, what a change a change in perspective makes – after having seen the sterility of the tatami galaxy, experienced the same and same again and again and again, how the self needs to be affirmed by others even if they do threaten to his sense of self and his fantastical sense of entitlement.

Coming full circle, Watashi bashes through to his original room and has his penultimate epiphany – all those other lives which all those other (he/me)s had considered wasted were to be treasured, that while he dreamed his unrealistic dreams, he never saw what was truly valuable around him and recognizes that he was responsible for making those choices in his lives and he had gotten the results what he wished for.

That admision of responsibility unlocks his good end and leads to the memory of the white Mochiguman and the memory of his first meeting, the only person he has actually met in this world, with Akashi at the second hand book fair where and when he unambiguously, straightforwarded and with a doubt recognizes that, with the softening of her expression while talking about her treasured Mochiguman, he had fallen head over heels for her.

He recalls how he had found the White Mochiguman in the laundromat in place of his boxers but did not but should have taken the initiative to search for Akashi and return her treasure to her. This final ultimate realization, which had long been foretold by the fortune teller and which we have all been waiting for, fills Watashi with the resolve to seize the opportunity and do whatever is necessary to bring it to fruition. As he grasps the White Mochiguman, a flood of moths appear and force him through the window and back into the streets of the real world.

It is the night of the Gozan festival. Where a crossdressing Ozu is surrounded by a bloodthirsty mob. Through a borrowed looking glass, he sees the friends he had in all those other lives and charges through the crowd, his different iterations flashing through, his clothes and beard stripping away and thus born anew, stands by his old/new friend. The cloud of mothes descends upon them and they fall into the river. Ozu’s leg is broken but Watashi keeps him from being swept away, refusing to let go and, in the first reversal of roles (like how the OP and ED are switched around), tells (instead of being told by) Ozu that they are bound by a black thread of fate. As they are fished out, Higuchi cools down the crowd and Hanuki takes Ozu to the hospital. Watashi then turns to Higuchi and insists that he explicitly ask Hanuki to come with him on his travels. We’re filled in on how Ozu had failed to steal the airship and had snuck down back to town by boat and rendezvous with his master Higuchi but his crossdressing disguise actually attracted more attention and thus the wrath of his pursuers.

Watashi finally puts the White Mochiguman into the hand of a moth-traumatized Akashi; the surprise calms her down and, like Cinderella, except with pantsu, Watashi tells Akashi that the boxers she found in place of her Mochiguman will fit him perfectly. He immediately invites her to have Neko Ramen together with him. She agrees immediately and feels like she has been waiting for that invitation for a long time as the echoes from across the different time-spaces continue to resound for the better. The invitation, the date and the development of Watashi x Akashi romance is a success, so obvious that the elaboration thereafter is omitted as nothing is more boring for others to behold than a smoothly successful love story.

Watashi succeeds Higuchi and starts to tidy up the room, removing the innumerable bottles that had served as his toilet in the toiletless four and a half tatami world. He thinks about his seniors who, like him, have moved on with their lives; Jougasaki and Kaori, he wishes them happiness. The proxy war continues with and between Watashi and Ozu; the former painting the latter’s Dark Scorpion racing bike pink while he was hospitalized. Never wanting to sleep in his old room again, Watashi finds new digs in a six tatami mat room. With ensuite bathroom a must. a postcard from the pyramids arrives, show Higuchi and Hanuki in contentment, mutual and selves.

On their way to visiting Ozu in the hospital, Akashi is surprised when Watashi tells her about Ozu’s love life and she wonders if he becomes a good boy in the presence of his love. Ozu is shocked and flustered when Watashi teases him about his relationship with Kohinata. Akashi piles it on by getting independent third party verification from Hanuki – Ozu had tearfully sought her counsel once in a panic when he thought he had been dumped. Noticing that various parties are still waiting for an opportunity to seek revenge against Ozu, Watashi offers to help him escape and lie low for a while. The price is that Ozu must introduce Kohinata to him. Off balance again, Ozu is again puzzled by Watashi’s interest in helping him. Watashi’s face twists demonically, in yet another reversal, and tells Ozu it is his way of showing his love. And as Ozu screams his rejection, the reversal is complete.

These Reads I Enjoyed

Michael is really on a roll with his expositions on:

• The colour palette in the different episodes and the colours of the different characters; my own take on Episode Five’s colour is yellow – the colour of honey, of Fool’s Gold – that all that glitters is not, embodied in the Honwaka honey with its ominous interwebs hints of not being as wholesome as it is claimed and may even be bad for you, for that unattainable royal jelly that is Kohinata who has turned out to be the gold that has transmuted Ozu into a fool for love and thus opening his gate of truth, his grin becoming that of an innocent.
• Reflections on the Revolution in Episode 11 and on the Proceedings of Certain Watashis in the Tatami Galaxy: “It is finally the end of cowardice and the beginning of action… Watashi returned the favor of friendship to the people who had tangentially or directly helped him in the past…” Which reminds me of the definition of a meaningful life from Angel Beats! – someone who has lived their lives doing all that they wanted to do and all that they wanted to do for others.
• Watashi wa Shiroi Mochiguma Desu. (I/Watashi am the fifth Mochiguma.) I also liked the parallel, from Episode Nine, about how the White Mochiguma would always return to her without her having to search for it. And so it has, finally, by Watashi’s hand in this finale. Like an irresistable attraction that needed the first step to break into a run:

gaguri bares his feelings:

• “It was majestic and beautiful. The vice that has been squeezing my heart from following Watashi’s depressing tatami galaxy was lifted, and my tears were flowing at surrendering myself to what was one of the most powerfully cathartic climax in cinema.” The thought triggered by this post was: The only way that Watashi could escape from the closed tatami galaxy, from his unhappiness, from his unchanged fates was through his own realization; many have given him help, knowingly or not, along the way, but in the end, it was a decision and an action for him and him alone.

chaostangent says:

• “Maaya Sakamoto as Akashi who stands out the most though; a mas­ter­piece of char­ac­ter­isa­tion: with very few scenes fea­tur­ing her and fewer still with any mean­ing­ful dia­logue she remains an enigma…” Also nice to see a fellow fanboy. To pick up on that last point, the quiet roles are always the most difficult as there is not much scope to use volume to deliver changes in emotions, like Kirika in Noir or Yuki Nagato in The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya movie.
• And his eloquently ringing endorsement: “Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei is a reminder of just how thrill­ing a series can be when it dares to be dif­fer­ent. Under­neath the speed talk­ing prot­ag­on­ist and the eye­ball LSD art-style is a cur­rent of enthu­si­asm that is pos­it­ively infec­tious; it toys with nar­rat­ive, char­ac­ters, aes­thet­ics and music in such a play­ful and endear­ing way that before long it doesn’t mat­ters if the series fits together all the pieces, the energy and cast are enough to carry it through.”

Vendredi‘s marvellous attention to detail, catching that open door. Likewise, his observation about how Watashi’s private sanctuary Neko Ramen has become open to the members of all the clubs he had participated in across the series. Another complete reversal in how he had been living his life thus far.

Mystlord is seized by the power of the visual imagery, check out his detailed scene-by-scene exposition.

Related posts:

1. Yojo-han Shinwa Taikei 08
2. Yojo-han Shinwa Taikei 07
3. Yojo-han Shinwa Taikei 09-10