Yofukashi no Uta – 10 [Enlarge the Peeping-Tom Photos]

Welcome everyone to another (incredibly late) episode of Yofukashi no Uta! Apologies for the delay on this one, very busy Friday for me. Enough with that though, you’ve been waiting long enough for this episode so lets just jump right into it!

Starting off, lets talk about what Yofukashi is trying to be about this week. Like last episode, this one is trying to explore and humanize another of our new vampire side-ladies, Midori Kohakobe. And in doing so, it hopes to explore another facet human relationships and why we desire them so. This weeks topic? Attention. The desire to be desired, to be wanted, to have people look at you. This is a good topic, I think it’s something everyone feels at some point or another. That innate desire for recognition, to be seen. Whether it be for vanity or simple self expression, it exists in a lot of forms. On paper this sounds great. It’s right up Yofukashi’s alley and very similar to Seri’s episode. But in practice this week fell short for one very simple reason: Midori isn’t the main character of the episode.

I know that sounds like an absurd statement, but bear with me for a moment. Last week, there were only 4 actual characters: Ko, Seri, Akkun and Nazuna. Of those characters, Ko and Seri were the only two on screen for like…70% of the episode. And even during their scenes together, Seri by far dominated the conversation and presentation. To put it simply: Seri was the primary focus of the episode, she was the main character. Considering the episode was dedicated to her pro-active quest for non-sexual, non-romantic friendship, that sounds perfect. Now can you tell me what character had the most screen time in this episode? Well if we exclude Ko, the lead protagonist, then there’s only one answer. Arisa, the tertiary side character supposedly introduced to enable Midori’s story. Yet Yofukashi spends more time on her than it does Midori.

Now I understand why Yofukashi does this. Midori isn’t the type of person to open up like Seri, and we are no doubt supposed to view Arisa as a sort of stand-in. Shifting everything we know about one character to the other. Basically, Yofukashi is trying to communicate Midori’s obsession with being desired, her issues competing with the other vampires like we can see in the beginning trying to find a non-competitive replacement at the café, through Arisa’s similar struggle with Midori supplanting her as Number 1 at Café Vamp. All of this makes total sense to me, I get what Yofukashi was going for. But I don’t think enough time was spent exploring Midori’s side to really make it work. There was no investment, no effort put in, to associate Midori’s emotions with Arisa’s. At least, not enough to make me care personally.

As for why I think it failed to tie them together? I think Yofukashi’s attention was split between this story of desire and it’s own desire to titillate the viewer. Basically, I think it spent way to much time on the voyeurism to be able to give proper attention to the actually meaningful stuff. Maybe for some people that works, or perhaps they feel that surface level presentation was part of the point. This idea that people aren’t seeing who someone truly is, only their café persona. But if that’s the case, Yofukashi made no effort to really present or explore it. It’s definitely an interesting subject, it’s one I think His and Her Circumstances, which I’m watching now for Throwback Thursday check it out, does very well. Because of this, Midori and Arisa’s story both end up falling flat for me.

So yeah, all in all not a great week for Yofukashi. It spread it’s wings to far and tried to take on to much in a single episode, falling short of both. The voyeurism failed because maid outfits alone don’t really do much for me, not after working in a maid café at least, and the serious discussion on our desire to be desired didn’t get the time it needed. It’s a damn shame, because I really do like what Yofukashi is trying to do as a show. The way it explores our relationships with each other, both sexual and platonic, can be really interesting! But this week just didn’t pull it off. Hopefully the next vampire story we get does a bit better, because it’s probably going to be our last for the season.