There’s always this… something about plays that are performed in anime. I’m not sure what it is, but they always tend to bring out something fresh out of the characters. Aoi Hana as usual does this very subtly and full of emotions. In this episode, we see the play Wuthering Heights being performed by Yasuko and the others. I really have been watching too many cheesy soap operas lately, because this episode really surprised me at how well everything went, and yet there were so many emotions at the end.
Basically, nearly everything in the play goes smoothly, aside from a few pieces of clothing and books that aren’t at the place they should be, and when everything is over the teacher that Yasuko had her crush on congratulates her, which makes show a rather embarrassing side of her, which is something that Fumi happens to oversee. In your average anime, you’d usually expect Fumi to run away and refuse to talk to anyone, but interestingly enough the two of them were able to talk just fine after that: Fumi is clearly hurt when she found out that Yasuko still has feelings on her past crush, but both of them understand that it’s just something from the past.
There’s also this scene in which Yasuko claims that she dislikes the character of Catherine in Wuthering Heights. Well, I don’t know the full details of the Wuthering Heights novel, but Catherine seemed to be a passionate, wild and mischievous girl, who lead both her and Heathcliff to their doom. It’s interesting how in the same way, Kyouko actually looks up to her due to her strong will. They both have totally different ways in which they relate to her character, and it also signified the distance between the two of them, since Kyouko doesn’t know what happened in Yasuko’s past with her teacher.
And on a side-note, this series has something with hair. In every episode, you can see someone playing around with someone else’s hair. I like this though: it shows that hair is more than just brightly coloured stuff on top of people’s heads that waves elegantly in the wind to give off the air of good animation. I especially liked the animation of Catherine as she played the part. It’s much better to have a bit of a messy animation and movement, rather than clean art and a bunch of still frames.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Aoi Hana – 06
The author of Aoi Hana seems to have a thing for plays. In Hourou Musuko, there are even two of them.
I went to a girls’ school and we always played with one another’s hair.
It’s a sign, as far as I know, of how close you are to a person or how much of their personal space they will allow you to enter.
Touching someone’s hair, for me, anyway, is how I am affectionate. It’s not like hand-holding, so it can border amiable to amorous depending on how you want to let it flow.
But I think the anime is placing more attention on the hair thing than the manga. While it seemed like a side element to the manga, it’s used for thematic as well as character development.
Fumi changes her hairstyle depending on her mood. She also does it because it’s something Yasuko is attracted to. Akira plays with Fumi’s hair because they are best friends. Yasuko touches Fumi’s hair because it’s a way to be close to her in school without giving away that they’re a couple.
And if I want to be analytical about Akira tousling Yasuko’s hair, it was a way to show just how much of “lady killer” Yasuko is–she even seems deadly to Akira who realises just how much a flirt this girl is unintentionally. Plus, it’s the contact between the “best friend and the boy/girlfriend”. This was how Akira comes to learn about Yasuko, since really, all she ever did was observe the upperclassman. She never truly interacted with her, and that moment when she messed up Yasuko’s hair was their first proper alone time together. Not to mention the tension! She knows all about Fumi’s insecurity with Yasuko, so it’s pretty tough to now have to put her hands in the hair of someone Akira probably secretly wants to give a solid smack to for making her best friend worry so much. If this were a lesser anime, I wouldn’t have doubted Akira would have “accidentally” pulled Yasuko’s hair while massaging her. Thankfully Aoi Hana has a lot more grace.
And er, well, it sets up some stuff later on with Akira’s interaction with Yasuko. But that’s another story.