Kashimashi through Episode 4: That Uneasy Feeling

[elfs]

So, I'm finally getting caught up on my anime and watching Kashimashi, also known as Girl Meets Girl (just so you know where I'm coming from). The premise is silly: Hazumu, a rather sweet an sensitive boy of approximately 14 years of age is accidentally struck by a falling UFO, the occupants of which, in the process of putting him back together figure that the Y chromosome is just a variant of the X and "fix" it: Hazumu is returned to his life now as a girl.

As it turns out, there were two girls who had a crush on Hazumu: the tomboyish Tomari, and the reserved, shy, sweet, already-knows-she's-yuri Yasuna. Tomari would much rather have Hazumu back as a boy, but Hazumu had his heart set on Yasuna, and now that Hazumu is a girl Yasuna is intent on making it so, and Tomari is willing to overcome her heterosexuality if she can have Hazumu.

It's all very cute, with Yasuna almost getting to a kiss with Hazumu before Tomari interrupts them. However, the show has developed an angle I don't find comforting: Yasuna is the way she is because she can't really even see boys. They're just a blur to her. It's not that she doesn't like boys, it's just that girls are so much sharper in focus to her senses that boys are sorta "faded out" of her world.

I hope the writers don't do anything really cheesy and basically have the aliens deus ex machina up two Hazumus, one male and one female, and "make everything allright" and, oh, by the way, Yasuna does learn to see and hear and actually communicate with boys. That would be too easy.

Comments

[solarbird]

That colour analogy shows up a lot, and it appears to me to be kind of spontaneous. I wonder if there's a study to do on this somewhere, or if it's just an artifact of film?

(For example, Andrew Sullivan, when he came out to himself as a gay man, similarly said that suddenly the world was in colour. Hm, what's Google have to find... oh, here it is: "To me, it was like being in a black-and-white movie that suddenly converted to color.")

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I can think of to examples in movies. The Wizard of Oz and A Matter of Life or Death, released in the USA as Stairway to Heaven. I think the latter might be a more direct influence on the concept, since it is, in part, a romance, and the coloured world is where the romance can be.

Of course, there's other Japanese influences, and a Doctor Who story last year used the alien medical mistakes idea. At least it doesn't involve humorous accidents with buckets of water.