#seashells!?

AHEM!

When analysing a work of art, especially when analyzing its themes, it’s important to pay attention to repeated imagery or motifs. They can tell you a lot about what the work is trying to say. The most common use cases of something like this would be colors like Red and Black symbolizing evil and blue and white symbolizing good. Ie. Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, even Kingdom Hearts. Sometimes these are used as shorthand, based on what the audience knows, so that when a guy in spiky black armor with red eyes shows up, we can assume they’re the bad guy. But, the more interesting case of this is when a work creates its own imagery. It could still be based on something the audience is familiar with but it’s given different or just more complex meaning by the story.

For instance, an object that’s meant to represent a certain character. Like roses for Anthy Himemiya from Revolutionary Girl Utena (greatest anime of all time). Anthy constantly has rose imagery related to her. She’s often seen tending to her rose garden, in the movie, she and Utena first meet amidst a field of rose pedals… and the way that the other characters in the story interact with roses tells us a lot about how they feel about Anthy without needing to say it out loud.

Kinda niche anime references aside, I think you get the idea.

Do No Harm gifts us with an especially potent motif in seashells. Now, pre-established knowledge: We as an audience have a few associations for seashells. Hermit crabs, oysters, clams. Creatures that use shells to protect themselves. And we do see these represented. In episode 4 we meet Sebastion who is a crab and has a shell, when danger arises, he and flounder hide within a large clam shell for safety. It’s a very literal use of the shell. But there’s a lot more to it than that.

Way back in episode one, we’re introduced to the seashell motif by Kairi who apparently… eats them. She eats seashells. High in calcium she says. So already we have a link between a character and seashells. It’s literally like one of the first things she says. Kairi and seashells, that’s important. So we’re already primed for analysis. What does Kairi’s eating of seashells tell us about the character? What does it tell us about what seashells mean in this story?

Well for one, Sora and Riku haven’t had any seashells to eat because Kairi has been eaten them all. Meaning that seashells represent something that Kairi has that Sora and Riku lack. Given what we already know about seashells, that they are a way for vulnerable animals to protect against threats, is it that much of a leap to say that Seashells represent boundaries?

Sora and Riku’s stories see them dealing with a lack of boundaries in different ways, Sora lashing out to protect himself while Riku has no real way to protect himself so he just sorta takes it. Kairi on the other hand, is safe from danger for the entire series. Partially because she’s absent for most of it, but that can pretty easily be explained as hiding away in a shell, just like a hermit crab.

So seashells represent boundaries. The first episode establishes that. But now that we know that, there’s a pretty cool connection that comes from that.

Once again returning to episode 4, we have the character of Ariel. One of my faves. Sarge always was my favorite red vs blue character… Ariel is a character who- wait she’s also played by sophie. fuck this is just the sophie motif. Anyway- Ariel is an 18 year old drill sergeant fighting in an undersea war and taking commands from her general dad, king triton.

During a conversation with Ursula, it’s revealed that Ariel has never dated, and most defintely has never had an opportunity to be intimate with anyone. But we could probably already tell that based on her CHARACTER DESIGN!

Ariel has a clamshell bra and as we’ve already discussed, shells represent boundaries in this series. So this bra is meant to represent a boundary against intimacy. Thus it’s placement on her chest. Yknow like where a bra would go.

Ariel, who has never had the opportunity to date or be intimate with anyone has a visual representation of that on her character at all times. It’s like if a character had a bra made of literal shields.

which is cool! so yeah…