[Archive] Let's talk about Kemutai Hanashi, everything about "normality"
[This was written around late 2025 - early 2026]
Well, let's talk about the story! Rather than presenting a dense analysis or an intensely personal narrative, I want to explore why this work feels so compelling to me. I will save my more individual reflections for the chapter-by-chapter thoughts, which I encourage you to read alongside this.
What does it mean to live a life? A life is never born in isolation; it becomes attached to concepts, relationships, people, and things we cannot always define. For humans, these connections are essential because they help us recognize who we are at a given moment. Everything that leads us here is shaped by the parts of ourselves we still fail to fully understand.
This brings us to Takeda and Arita, two entirely different people with no obvious compatibility between them. Their accidental and non-linear relationship resists easy definition. Living together within the quiet space of their apartment, their lives carry a constant sense of unpredictability. We often define a person’s life through destiny, karma, or some clear outcome, as though existence naturally follows a visible direction. Yet life is rarely that simple. Things seldom unfold exactly as we wish, and our feelings are rarely understood in their entirety.
This is where kindness and normality begin to emerge. Takeda’s nature makes him both a source of comfort and a source of frustration to those around him. When you give too much of yourself to everyone, you eventually lose the ability to understand yourself, and others lose the ability to truly see you in return. People struggle to interpret the meaning behind his selflessness, creating a quiet but unresolved tension. For Arita, witnessing this becomes deeply contradictory. He cannot help but wonder why kindness seems to yield so little in return, why their version of normality feels so difficult for others to accept, and why people insist on viewing their connection through a negative lens. Why can they not simply exist and be acknowledged as a normal bond?
Normality is the central theme of this story. Perhaps there is nothing more frightening than realizing that everyone simply wants to be normal, to exist within their own ideal version of a normal world. People pursue this desire in different ways: through a relationship without labels, through quiet affection toward someone kind, or through the simple experience of being in love. In the end, most people do not necessarily wish to stand out or become exceptional; they simply want to feel normal. Not average, but accepted within a space where they no longer feel as though their existence is inherently wrong.
The comfort of a normal life lies in the freedom to be ourselves, to share ordinary moments, and to exist within a space that feels like our own. Two contrasting points can still create a straight line, just as two entirely different worlds can still find harmony with one another. These worlds may not be perfect, and they may still carry emptiness within them, but they create a place where people feel they belong. People do not fill each other’s gaps because they are incomplete halves; they do so because they make each other’s worlds feel livable.
Normality also carries the hope that one day we will no longer need to endlessly search for answers we cannot properly articulate. In a world that constantly moves forward and backward at the same time, the quiet desire to exist and be seen is ultimately just the wish to be accepted as another human being among others.
We may never fully understand ourselves or each other, and perhaps that answer will remain unreachable even at the end of our lives. It is a sobering thought because humans naturally seek meaning behind everything they do. Yet true understanding may come from accepting that these definitions are merely concepts we construct ourselves. That realization, in itself, is normal within a world where our thoughts are rarely entirely our own. We inherit language, values, expectations, and emotional patterns, then spend our lives trying to determine which parts genuinely belong to us. The world we long to inhabit is often a fragile balance between our own constructed realities and the realities created by others.
Within their shared space, Takeda and Arita are simply allowed to exist. There are no expectations attached to their connection, no rewards waiting at the end of it, only two people living together within a quiet sense of harmony. Takeda remains Takeda, and Arita remains Arita, free from rigid definitions or restrictions. Although they continue to struggle internally, Takeda must eventually confront his tendency to detach himself from others, while Arita must come to terms with his desire for a relationship without labels. Yet the beauty of their journey lies in the fact that these realizations never destroy their inner worlds. They learn that there is no need to rush. Growth is cyclical, and eventually they will find where they belong.
Growing up, meeting expectations, damaging and repairing relationships — all of these things represent the human effort to search for a sense of normality. Characters like Ririko, Hinako, and other characters, each possess their own understanding of what a normal world means to them, which is what makes their individual journeys feel so resonant.
The story never places overwhelming demands upon us, nor does it force us into a suffocating perspective. It does not ask us to run so fast that we forget who we are or why we continue moving forward in the first place. That gentle approach is precisely what makes the experience of reading it feel so distinct.
After all, everyone wants to be normal, right?
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