Scum's Wish
★★★★★★★★☆☆
Scum's Wish
What a beautiful, messy bunch of fuckers. it's hard to like these people, but really hard to hate them. From beginning to end, as the tangled web of lies, jealousy, hate, deceit and perfidy they are all enmeshed in unravels, we get some of the most human characters of any anime i'v watched.
I rarely watch some of these stories more than once. Indeed my watchings of "Scum's Wish" are about two years apart and I am no less struck by this story's complexity on the second watching, as I was the first.
Seductive, Hana and Mugi's mutually destructive center holds court for the web of characters: All selfish, all cowards, all emotionally unreliable for each other.
While it is easy to fall into the trap of shipping who you want to ship, the story is true to life, in that happy endings for scum tend to be neither unlikely or overrated. For most folks, dissatisfaction and low self esteem ruin most good things.
Because everyone is scum... these are not nice people, but they love and are loved all the same.
The surprising emotional depths of this story, shock only as much as it was ever adapted. As anime goes, this is an adult story set in a high school, leaning on all Japan's narrative obsessions with school tropes you find in these stories. But it is unchildish, unrepentant in its portrayals and bittersweet (more bitter than sweet) start to finish.
Buckle up... this aintcha Mama's bishonen perfect romance heavy shojo. No friends, this is a voyeuristic & tragic look at how far cowardice can get you in relationships. Not for the faint of heart, cowards or anyone looking for shalala flavoured climaxes and saccharine perfect endings.
This is a study in anime angst like only the Japanese can produce with many, many, many thoughtful shades of grey, pink and yellow.
Where I come from we would say, "Pick sense from shit."
