‘…what Mean Girl’s so determined to keep from Ogiue?’ Damnit me, keep your characters straight!*
Lately, I’ve been wondering
whether some of the situations that come up, like Hato having to wait in line
for the men’s room while in drag, or Yajima being really hung up on whether he’s
a guy or not, are in fact jokes at the expense of his cross-dressing. I’d have
to watch the last few episodes again to really be sure, but I don’t think so.
The waiting-in-line thing dwells on his discomfort and uncertainty in a way
that makes it look ridiculous that he should have to agonize over something so
simple. I wondered last time if he should’ve just taken off his wig, but in
retrospect that’s not really a solution, because if he did that he’d be a guy
wearing women’s clothes and would still get weird looks. With Yajima, the joke
isn’t at Hato’s expense so much as hers, since what’s funny is how obsessed she
can be with him being definitively one gender or the other and unable to just
take him as someone who can switch between the two. It’s not that Hato’s
confusing her; it’s that her perception of gender is too rigid.
None of that is about this
episode specifically, but it’s related. Sure, I suppose there could’ve been an actual complaint that
someone who doesn’t seem to be a student has been seen regularly on campus, but
c’mon, what are the odds that Sketchy Guy didn’t just make that up to have an
excuse to hit on the ‘cute girl’ he’d noticed? Just because of how Hato looks
when cross-dressing, he assumed Hato was a girl. And because of her appearance
and mannerisms, when Yoshitake’s sister showed up everyone just accepted that
she was a boy. There aren’t really any jokes here, at least not about people
who cross-dress or look like the opposite sex. It’s more of a send-up of how
arbitrary the male/female dichotomy is and the way we try to classify people as
being one or the other by ascribing certain personality traits and styles of
appearance to each, as if those who are one can’t or don’t have those assigned
to the other.
Heck, just look at the comment I
made in my first post on this show, how “there really are no binaries other
than reproductive bits.” Except, I’ve recently come across stuff like this
(which I found through one of the comments here)
and yeah, that’s not necessarily indicative of anything either. Consider that
statement retracted, and I apologize to anyone I might have offended with it.
Or for that matter, there’s the fact that I’ve so far been treating Hato’s
‘default’ gender as male. As far as I can tell he’s a guy who prefers to act as
a girl in certain situations, but this whole thing does raise the question of
whether that’s the appropriate thing to do. I’ll probably stick with it for now,
but I definitely need to keep an open mind on whether it’s what I should be
doing.
Maybe I’m reading too much into
this. After all, the whole reason Hato started cross-dressing was to fit in
better with fellow yaoi fans, who are predominantly female (to the best of my
knowledge, at least). But would he put so much effort into it if his identity
wasn’t more fluid? Whether it’s intentional or not, this series does seem to be
raising some interesting points on gender identity. And that’s what’s standing
out about it so far, at least to me. Which is probably why this commentary
didn’t really have much to do with episode 6 beyond using some examples from it,
but hey, this is what it made me think about, so it’s what I wrote about.
*I said Ohno when I should have
said Ogiue last time.
Stella Women’s Academy [ep.6 – “Operation Soak” is Underway]
Well, that wasn’t anywhere near
as bad as I thought. The bikini target-shooting was still kind of ‘yeah, did
you really have to do that?’, but
whatever, it’s not like it took up the entire episode, and there’s worse. This
was really just a breather episode before what looks like the story arc that’ll
take up the rest of the show. Setting up a shooting range was a neat idea
(also, apparently Sono is an ‘I know a guy’ kind of person), and the ‘we spent
all our money on tea and cake’ joke was, I’ll admit, mildly amusing. It wasn’t
a necessary episode by any stretch, but it’s not like this is a high-caliber
show that would be better served not having something like this, so again,
whatever; let’s just see how the tournament goes.
The Eccentric Family [ep. 6 – Taking in Fall Colors]
So, Professor Akadama kidnapped
Benten when she was a teenager. That’s sketchy – no, just plain wrong. And it instantly
made Benten more sympathetic. Until now she’s come off as self-centered and
generally unlikable, but now that there’s a hint of why she may be acting that
way, it’s harder to fault her for it since it isn’t entirely her fault. Maybe things won’t turn out that way and
she’ll be shown to have completely gone over to her current personality, but the
scene of her crying at the well came off to me like she still feels some of the
trauma and loss, that her selfishness and climb through the ranks of the tengu
is an attempt to hide what she really feels. And it made Akadama, well, I’ve
never felt much sympathy for him up to now – he seemed like a grumpy old man
with an inability to let go, and not in a way that makes his emotional baggage
understandable – but at this point I’ve got him fully in the ‘unsympathetic’
category.
And you know, I think this might
be the first time she’s been explicitly referred to as human. At least, it’s
the first time I remember it coming up. I assumed she was human at first, but
then I got confused after seeing her fly. I looked it up, but if I hadn’t this
would be the first time I saw explicit confirmation.
I also really liked the scene
where Professor Yodogawa talked with Soichiro prior to the latter’s
hot-potting. It was saddening, but also respectable how much dignity he had
going to his fate, and how he was genuinely able to say ‘I’ve done what I
wanted to with my life, and I know my family will look out for each other; I
have no regrets’ (we should all be so lucky). It’s also an interesting little
tidbit of tanuki culture how he was also saying ‘eh, this happens sometimes.’
Getting turned into a hot-pot is just something that could happen to any
tanuki; it’s a fact of life for them. The brother that’s a frog says basically
the same thing. Between the two details, having gotten that far, it’s like
Soichiro would consider it an insult not to
be eaten, if that makes sense.
It also introduces an interesting
quandary with Yodogawa. Sure, he didn’t know tanuki were sentient until his
encounter with Soichiro, but now that he does he still goes through with it. On
the other, he saved Yasaburo’s mother, and it was obvious Soichiro bore him no
ill will for his fate, perhaps was even happy that at least one person who ate
him would fully appreciate it. If things go the way I suspect they will, those strike
me as the things that will prick at the back of his mind until they make him
come around and side with the ‘good guys,’ so to speak. Plus, seeing him get
drunk and ramble on about how cute tanuki are and whether eating animals is
actually a form of love, he comes off so endearing in a middle-aged eccentric
kind of way that I can’t help but like the guy.
He seems to have overlooked
something, though. Sure, he’s too much for one tanuki, but that just means he
could feed a whole family of them.
Now that’s putting his dead body to
good use! Wait, is that hinting at something…?
I haven’t had much to say about
this show until now, but it’s definitely picking up steam. I’m enjoying it more
and definitely interested in where it’s going.
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