One of my favorite animes is the series Mai HiME, which for no other reason than that I wanted to, I am watching again. This time, I'm working hard on developing vocabulary, which is why along with the usual words like "dinnertime" and "student," I've learned useful terms like "vampire" and "lingere collection."
There's a scene that has always had me curious: one of the subplots involves a bit romantic of Shakepearean confusion. The characters involved are: Mai (17), who has crushes on both Tate (17) and Ray, (18), and Shiho (14), who has a terrible crush on Tate. Tate and Shiho have known each other since young childhood, Shiho is loudly vocal about her crush and Tate puts up with it because, basically, he's not as much of an asshole as he'd like to pretend. Shiho has also extracted a promise from Mai that Mai won't go after Tate. At a school-wide celebration, Ray asks Mai for a date, and they spend the afternoon together. Shiho and Tate are also walking together, and in a previous scene Shiho had confessed to her diary that she was willing to give Tate her virginity if that's what it took. Toward the evening, Ray and Mai finally get the courage up to kiss each other, and sneak off to a wooded path. Tate and Shiho are on a nearby path and spot them. Tate, in an almost incoherent grunt, expresses his unhappiness with losing Mai, and Shiho just about loses it.
Okay, I can write that too. What interested me is the word Shiho choose to use. She points at Mai and all the vehemence she can muster starts shouting "うそつき！" The simple translation of the word is "liar," But it's not the most common word for "liar", that would be にせもの. It wasn't until I had thought about it a while that I realized that うそつき was the word children commonly use and the point the writers were making was that, in a moment of stress, Shiho reveals her essential immaturity.
I mention this not because it's particularily interesting, but because I have an essential split in my writing: I put stuff like this into my writing all the time, but when other people do it, I tend to miss it completely. It isn't until hours or even days later that I "get" it, that it comes to me that that's what the writer was implying when he or she put this or that into a story. I admire those people who can take apart some story or news article and point out the inconsistencies or hidden meanings, because I've never been able to do that myself.
There's a scene that has always had me curious: one of the subplots involves a bit romantic of Shakepearean confusion. The characters involved are: Mai (17), who has crushes on both Tate (17) and Ray, (18), and Shiho (14), who has a terrible crush on Tate. Tate and Shiho have known each other since young childhood, Shiho is loudly vocal about her crush and Tate puts up with it because, basically, he's not as much of an asshole as he'd like to pretend. Shiho has also extracted a promise from Mai that Mai won't go after Tate. At a school-wide celebration, Ray asks Mai for a date, and they spend the afternoon together. Shiho and Tate are also walking together, and in a previous scene Shiho had confessed to her diary that she was willing to give Tate her virginity if that's what it took. Toward the evening, Ray and Mai finally get the courage up to kiss each other, and sneak off to a wooded path. Tate and Shiho are on a nearby path and spot them. Tate, in an almost incoherent grunt, expresses his unhappiness with losing Mai, and Shiho just about loses it.
Okay, I can write that too. What interested me is the word Shiho choose to use. She points at Mai and all the vehemence she can muster starts shouting "うそつき！" The simple translation of the word is "liar," But it's not the most common word for "liar", that would be にせもの. It wasn't until I had thought about it a while that I realized that うそつき was the word children commonly use and the point the writers were making was that, in a moment of stress, Shiho reveals her essential immaturity.
I mention this not because it's particularily interesting, but because I have an essential split in my writing: I put stuff like this into my writing all the time, but when other people do it, I tend to miss it completely. It isn't until hours or even days later that I "get" it, that it comes to me that that's what the writer was implying when he or she put this or that into a story. I admire those people who can take apart some story or news article and point out the inconsistencies or hidden meanings, because I've never been able to do that myself.
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