Togawa Sakiko Mental Problems Stan Account

The book exchange scene between Chin-lan and Gujo is just genuinely one of the sweetest and most understated displays of mutual love I've ever seen in this medium. To me, the subtlety makes it sweeter; Chin-lan gives Gujo a book of Taiwanaese poetry because she wants Gujo to learn more about her, that much is obvious. Gujo's gift, a photobook of postcards, is less a statement about herself and more of what she wants her relationship with Chin-lan to be like. The device of exchanged writing almost makes it sound courtly, like we're talking about a knight sending letters to her princess, but in context it's clear there's a lot of passion there. It's the kind of scene that makes one wonder when, exactly, Gujo realized she'd fallen for Chin-lan. I bet you could pinpoint the very second, if you went back through the entire anime.

But, of course, there's the episode's A Plot. Ibuki and Botan, their relationship in a state of uncomfortable ambiguity after their previous big night together several episodes ago. I, honestly truly, thought that they were going to break up here. There is a really masterful wet-cotton texture to the tension throughout Botan x Ibuki's parts of the episode. I haven't seen something this wonderfully subtle at playing with the audience's emotions in a good while, and I think if you go into it with an open mind and respect for what it's trying to do, it'll sweep you off your feet, too. That tension really only lifts in the final scene, where Botan very explicitly tries to fuck Ibuki only for Ibuki to freeze up. And this, really, seems like the breaking point, where these two people realize they live life at incompatible speeds---Ibuki the patient sort of person for whom the coming years are a comfort, Botan the sort for whom they're a source of dread, fear, and uncertainty---and call it all off. The payoff, of course, is that Ibuki has known this the whole time. The whole 'earrings' bit has to go down as one of the great examples of (again) playing with audience expectations in this genre. Early in the episode Botan is informed by the jewelry saleswoman she met all the way back near the start of the show that one of her employees accidentally sold off the earrings. Botan is devestated, and it feels like a bad omen and, to us, like foreshadowing for an absolutely life-altering breakup. The reveal here is, actually, it was Ibuki who bought the earrings, because she wanted Botan to pierce hers, and she's just been shy about bringing the whole thing up. Immediately, the tension pops. Setting aside the obvious symbolism here, it's….an extremely believable level of miscommunication, one solved not with some big dramatic argument that we'd get in a melodrama (nothing wrong with those, of course) but by a careful, measured, and honest heart-to-heart.

to me, the telling exchange of the final scene is not the very last bit, where Botan expresses uncertainty in the future, wondering if they'll even be living together in five years' time (they reserved a bottle of liquor in reserve. This is a real thing people do! I've never understood it, but hey) and Ibuki confidently, fully assures her that they will. It's just slightly earlier. Gently cradling Ibuki's earlobe, examining the starter earring she put in for her the previous night, Botan asks

"Does it hurt?"

I think this is the rare anime where the second to last episode is in some ways a more satisfying conclusion than the actual finale. Mind you, I think episode 11 is one of the show's best, so we're going from "great" to "merely very good" here, so these things are all relative. With the obvious caveat that, as someone who largely watched this week to week and often felt a bit like I was missing one or two layers that the show was attempting to operate on, the finale feels a little too clever by half. I liked the relative subtlety of the *sub*title of Tabata's book being "A Hundred Scenes of Awajima." The whole fully-absorbed-cycle thing of adapting this book, which is of course based on real events in the show's universe, into a play performed by Awajima Revue's troupe itself...idk, it feels like a step too far. If what we're saying is that all things, good and bad, that have happened to these characters are justified because they made beautiful art in the end, I'm not sure I agree. There's no real overturning of the old order there, just empty movement. Being less glib; it just feels a bit like we're going back to the start in an unsatisfying way.

But, I mean, we're talking about a slightly bum conclusion---at worst---of a show that was often excellent, so I'm not too banged up about it regardless. We'll see what I think, a rewatch where I can keep everything straighter in my head definitely has the potential to alter how I feel about this show a good deal. So, check back on me in a couple of years to see what I think then? Lol.