Sakamichi No Apollon, just divine! Ahhh, kami! Yes, love entanglement! The flow of unrequited love! Just like Macross! AnoNatsu has descended again! This is the most divine moment of the anime! So here are the charts of the flow of unrequited love!
Sakamichi No Apollon: Kaoru (nerd megane) → Ricchan (down to earth Christian [of course Catholic!] girl) → Sentarou (DQN) → Yurika (beautiful senpai/ojosama).
AnoNatsu: Mio (naked big boobs) → Tetsurou (ikemen megane) → Kanna (short hair loli) → Kaito (hetare megane) → Ichika (mysterious megane senpai).
Ahhh, Kaoru the jazz pianist, I so identify myself with him! Kaoru is the man. He plays Bill Evans’ Some Day My Prince Will Come to Ricchan as a confession of love! So awesome! And Ricchan’s face got red! Yes, her chest goes “kyun!”
Surely lit the fire in her heart. Ahhh, so cute. Oh yes, he has the exact same taste as mine, Christian girl moe! Their otomeness is what makes me go crazy! Especially when she was at church praying humbly to Virgin Mary. Yes, Nuestra Señora, our Lady, Notre Dame, Nostradamus, the mother of God. Theotokos! And I can tell the story takes place in Nagasaki of Kyushu since Roman Catholicism is historically big over there, and since her dialect is Kyushu-ben. I so much want to pay pilgrimage to Nagasaki now! Of course, to honor Maria-sama, yuri defensor (Defender of yuri), the Goddess of yuri!
Yes, that’s a typical musician’s disease: can’t help playing music to a girl he has a crush on, in some way Chuunibyou. Oh yes, reminds me of my high school days, when I played guitar to my crush. So, one day, I took a huge risk and played a Beatles song and then confessed my love to her, but unlike Ricchan, she turned me down in a nano-second. She didn’t even give me a chance to say, “You don’t need to give me the answer right away.” But it was a light speed.
Man, I wish I could play jazz instead of the Beatles. But I wasn’t intelligent enough to understand and play jazz. I wish I could play piano instead of guitar. If I played piano, she would’ve accepted me as her prince. But I didn’t have enough sophistication to understand piano techniques. I wasn’t an All A student like Kaoru, but a mediocre one. How come I wasn’t born smart? I wish I was a genius like Mozart. God is unfair. Yeah, it sucks to be me….That’s why male pianists are the target of my jealousy. Yes, I’m indeed jealous of Kaoru! He’s smart and can play jazz piano, what more does he need! This proves that otaku and nerd are essentially different, although they sometime overlap. So, unlike Kaoru, I was more like Captain Lebyadkin from Dostoyevsky’s novel Demons.
Captain Lebyadkin is always looking for an opportunity to show off his original poems, or jisaku-poemu, especially to a girl he’s crazy about. But when a girl is dismissive, he laments, “How can that be? I’m supposed to be the greatest poet ever since Ivan Krylov, but how come I’m still living in a hut? Russia’s fate is cursed, because Russia doesn’t recognize my masterpiece!” Yes, as a romantic lyricist, I totally understand him because I’m always like that. Whenever I get rejected by 3D girls presenting my jisaku-poemu, I get bitter like, “How can that be? I’m supposed to be the greatest singer-songwriter ever since John Lennon. But how come I’m still living in poverty, crawling in a shanty place like this? The world is cursed, the reality (3-D) is absolutely cursed. Riaju must explode!” And yes, when I was rejected by a girl in high school, I also said, “Japan is cursed, because Japan doesn’t give a damn about my talent!” That’s one of the main reasons I came to America. Obama also admits that he took a romantic rejection as a rejection by the entire community commenting on the feeling over the election loss.
“it’s impossible not to feel at some level as if you have personally been repudiated by the entire community…They’re the sorts of feelings that most people haven’t experienced since high school when the girl you’d been pining over dismissed you with a joke in front of her friends…the kinds of feelings that most adults wisely organize their lives to avoid (The Audacity of Hope p107).”
So, I’m not sure how Kaoru’s fate will turn out. If he gets rejected, oh yes, I bet he will move to America like I did. That’s better off for him though since America is the mecca of jazz. But yes, Ricchan is so cute. It’d be heart-breaking to see Kaoru get rejected since I also love this Christian girl, and at the same time, a bit of relief since I’m also jealous of him. It’s strange, anticipating both success and failure. Yes, a human emotion is very complicated indeed. But Ricchan secretly loves Sentarou, but Sentarou is all about this new girl Yurika, his love at first sight, or hitomebore! When Sentarou was all sweet for Yurika during a picnic, Ricchan’s onigiri (riceball) was shaking out of jealousy. A taste of onigiri is saudade! Ahh, a picnic with girls, how envious! And then she runs off and cries behind the tree. And to that scene, OMG, I was screaming like crazy, “Oh my fucking Goodness!” Spiritual orgasm. Later that night my vocal cord got so worn out that I couldn’t speak with a normal volume.
Just divine. A girl getting yakimochi (“roasted rice cake,” romantically jealous)…nothing is more divine than that! Or yaki-onigiri (roasted rice ball) in her case. The divinest anime this season since AnoNatsu! Probably the No. 1 must-watch show of the Spring 2012.
For the Eucharist of the Lady’s Lunch, I must go get onigiri now!
Once when I was in high school, I was playing a riff on an acoustic guitar from one of my favorite bands at the time, Marillion. It was the main guitar hook from the mid 1980s hit, Kayleigh. A girl I knew heard and, stopping, told me that it was very pretty. I told her what it was, and that it was from a band she probably hadn’t heard of, and she seemed really interested. We talked a bit, and later, I even lent her a CD of the album Kayleight is from, Misplaced Childhood.
Lo and behold, Marillion were actually going to be in town for a concert, and it took all my courage, but I basically asked her out to go to the concert together. She took a few days to think about it, but in the end turned me down.
So I know your feelings, M. LaMoe. I really do. If only it were as easy as singing or playing a beautiful song! Glad you are enjoying Kids on the Slope too. And trust me, I was a jazz pianist, sort of, and that did not get me any girls either.
(The full version of this story, which I wrote about on my personal blog years ago, is here.)
@gendomike
Haha, you knew I wrote this article to you! But I’m not direct since I’m a Japanese, so I put “Kaoru” instead of “gendomike” in the sentences. So you were into prog-rock a big time. And I didn’t know you also played guitar. You multi-instrumentalist!
Ahhhh, that’s so sad. I got rejected in a second, so it was rather easier to move on, while I still can’t forget that event till this day. But taking all this time but got “No” in the end, that’s more emotionally damaging…I feel for you. But at least your guitar made her stop and gave an opportunity to start up a conversation with her, to note a positive side of it.
I don’t know, I always thought piano would get any girl, since I’ve seen male pianists surrounded by girls in my school days. And jazz piano is the most beautiful music I’ve ever known, and if I’m a girl, I would definitely fall in love instantly by just hearing that music. 3D girls are hard to fall in love at default, so I always thought music was the magic to soften them up. Yes, like audio massage. Oh yeah, I love Kips On the Slope. I think you and I share pretty much the same taste in anime.
Funny thing is I also loved “Kiss Me” back then! It’s a very simple song, but I just loved it because that song is so shojo! Otome’s lyrics. It perfectly matches Sawako of Kimi Ni Todoke. Someone should make AMV with that music! I also remember back then, there wasn’t iPod, but radio was constantly playing that song. It probably was as viral as “Lovefool.” I didn’t know that album had a reference to Pablo Neruda, which is informative.
Ahh, so that event somehow contributed to the twilight of your prog mania? For me, Eva was the turning point to move away from the Beatles to new genre, Bossa Nova.