There was an anime called My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU that came out last April. In it, the anti-hero says things adults think about High School after having years to properly reflect on how horrible it really was. The hero says them while trapped as a student. His teacher insists that he is wrong and forces him to join a service club where his perfected self-isolation, his choice, is disrupted so he can be a good citizen and conform like all the other ants that make up Japanese conformity. He is cynical and sarcastic and says what he means, and its refreshingly honest to have a character very much in tune with reality instead of the endless pretending, something that results in the highest suicide rate in the world. Its really unhealthy to fake it.
The endlessly needy sheep love to insist that lone wolf types (like me) are evil because we like to be alone instead of with them, wearing fake smiles. Because being different is the same thing as evil. And its not even creepy different, its just we'd prefer to being alone that be surrounded by fakers. Fakers aren't worth the effort of pretending to be polite. Folks like me know what we hate. I cry no tears over the deaths of crummy people. You're not supposed to say that they won't be missed, that they did nothing important, that they were irrelevant during their lives and merely ate food that could have gone to someone more useful, unique, or creative than they were. You're not supposed to say that because people know, deep down, that its true.
And that's what I like about this show. Its about saying the stuff we're thinking, the dark truths we know about the useless fakery, the people we know deserve some pain in their lives because they're pulling us all down... those people. What are they good for? Yes, we're not supposed to cut them off, or tell them to die, but in your heart of darkness, you really want to. Its the polite veneer of civilization that stops you. Its antisocial to tell them to die. In Japanese the word for die is "shineh", pronounced shee nay. Its usually said with a flat glare to indicate you are serious.
SNAFU has a lot of things to say about groups of people. About how they cut each other down, and settle for being the lowest common denominator, and how socialism is the death of happiness. It blocks aspiration. You may as well be a pothead or kill yourself as settle for being a smudge, just another sheep.
It is one of several shows about honesty, which is utterly refreshing in a nation of fakers. Japan is suffering for its fakery: declining population, very high unemployment. They are what we are going to become. Studying Japan is studying the future. Even if they still haven't come to the current decade of music and their tastes in fashion tend towards things considered too extreme for Paris or Milan. Wide collars are still in, and those went out of style in 1979.
Oreshura is also about honesty. Its about a guy who wants to go to medical school and thus has put all his time into studying rather than deal with crappy high school romance and "friendship" with all the useless eaters surrounding him. Then he gets blackmailed by a woman who needs a fake boyfriend to stop all the idiots hitting on her. She's sick of it. Something like 50 different boys have formally asked her out and she'd like a break. So she finds the delusional rantings of the hero in a diary and uses that to force him to pretend to be her man, ending the suitors and giving her some time for herself. She's intensely selfish, narcissistic, and the hero finds her repulsive. They of course end up friends and their cold sadomasochistic relationship twists itself further. I pity any children they have. It can only end in blood, or more likely a painful divorce and even greater bitterness on his part. He will be fortunate if he can managed to study and get into medical school, somewhere far aware from the woman who takes such pleasure abusing him to her own sick ends.
I happen to think the nerdy do-nothing misanthropes with an unwanted harem are probably just Japan admitting that their biggest fanbase are autistic kids who will never have to worry about reproducing thanks to their autism being excellent personality-based birth control. Autism is interesting in that it seems to be a dominant gene and makes autistic kids as the rule rather than the exception. These end up being troublesome people and unable to fit into cultures where fakery is required but has such high costs its rarely worth it. Ergo, programs about kids who don't want to fake it and just tell people off, or worse stare at them and don't say anything but their expressions are clearly saying "die in a ditch". Well, can Japan sustain its superiority complex as even this becomes a mainstream and popular admission? Can America?
This is a big part of what both heroes of SNAFU and Oreshura are about. The pointing and laughing they do against the fakers around them and you sympathize with their irritation. Perhaps we should be doing this in America, vocal derision and cynical objections to mock those who would insist we die for their ideals while they stay safely home feeling good about our deaths.
20 years ago, California was full of people refusing to be fake, but then the 90's happened and the fakers became dominant, controlling the rules, who got paid, who got jailed. It was all about faking it. About dishonor. Compassion is just another name for looking down your nose. And really, that's the biggest problem of all.
Both anime are available to watch free on Crunchyroll.com
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I am baking banana scones, this time with chocolate chips, dried cranberries, and chopped dried apricots. Baking scones is a wonderful thing because they produce lots of awesome for little effort and with allspice, your hunger is activated. With cinnamon, you can uptake all the sugar into your cells without getting wasted on all the insulin since it doesn't need as much to cope. This is why cinnamon buns are twice as sweet as anything else. The cinnamon is an insulin-like chemical. Type 2 diabetics who eat cinnamon with their meals can sometimes forgo other insulin-like uptake chemicals like Metformin. Sometimes. I am not that type, but I like the way cinnamon tastes and its good in baked goods, much like Allspice which is an appetite enhancer.
They are good. Better than last time. I added a 1/4 cup of Greek yoghurt to this. They're even more moist than before. Cake isn't this good.
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