Note – this posting assumes the reader is familiar with the Oniisama
E anime, and contains spoilers.
When I started watching Oniisama E, I knew what I was
getting into. I had already seen Rose of
the Versailles, and knew this would be a dramatic, heart-wrenching tear jerker. This didn’t make it easy to watch, but I went
in with my eyes open and my nerves steeled.
A common conceit about anime or manga centered on high
school (that is, most of them) is to present those years as almost an
idealization, the high school you wish you had.
Oniisama E takes the opposite approach, and presents a setting so bleak that
in the presence of weaker material, it would have broken down comically. The plot of almost any entry of this anime
would be a “Very Special Episode” of a conventional show, with themes ranging
from divorce, suicide, drug use, and more.
Amazingly, the show manages to take all that and sell it to you – almost
none of the melodrama feels forced or unnatural.
The main character of the anime is Nanako, a high school freshman
swept into the rarified world of an elite student organization called the
Sorority. An average girl ending up
elevated to a higher social stratum is a fundamental plot of shoujo, and at
first, this looks to be a thoroughly archetypical plotline. Two things make this setup stand out from its
peers. First off is the unrelenting harshness
with which the Sorority is portrayed, and the effect it has on the student
body. We see constant scenes of bullying
over who is and isn’t allowed in, as well as how the fear of losing one’s privileges
can make us complicit with injustice. Characters in the anime explicitly bring up
the Versailles comparison, and it’s wholly justified.
What also sets this anime apart is how Nanako’s growth and
character is handled. Given the series
background, I fully expected her to share the passivity that other shoujo protagonists
on her situation demonstrate. Instead, Nanako
showed surprising resilience, both in her caring for others going through the
harshest of situations (I wish I could be as patience as she was,) and her readiness
to stand up for others. Moreover, the
series doesn’t flinch from portraying her flaws, including some rather bad
decision making about smoking. While I still
prefer more active, aggressive heroines, Nanako is a sterling example of how to
take another approach and do it right.
(I also give the series major props for not having Nanako hook up with
her 6-years-her-elder stepbrother.)
The animation direction Oniisama E is also unusual. The series takes aggressive measures to
reduce its animation budget, and makes heavy use of stills, stock footage,
flashbacks, and animation re-use (panning over the same scene three times in
quick succession is almost a series trademark.)
To compensate for this, the characters and setting are beautifully,
lavishly detailed. This trade-off could
normally be tiresome, but here, it serves to dramatize each moment in a fashion
entirely consistent with the soap opera aesthetic of the show.
I had two major problems with the anime, and several minor
points of contention. Kaoru’s illness
being terminal is a soap opera trope, but I felt the series did a fairly good
job building up to that point, and I had pretty much expected it by the time it
was revealed. Saint Juste’s death did feel
like it came out of nowhere, but in the end, I feel like it more or less
works. Part of it is because the anime
did seem to be putting in scenes to lead up to this point (Juste is not safe
around balconies), and part of it is that it just fit fairly well within the
conventions of the genre. However, I
definitely feel like there’s room for disagreement on just how gratuitous this
death was.
A slightly bigger problem is how Nanako’s reaction to Mariko’s
(first) breakdown is treated. The anime
really does come across as making the point that Nanako should not have been
avoiding Mariko after the birthday party, despite the explicit and believable
threats Mariko made. I really did get
the impression that the anime agreed with Nanako’s assessment that Mariko not
eating was Nanako’s fault in the end, and that she should feel guilty.
The ending also presents two interrelated
problems that are significant enough to cast a shadow over the series in its
entirety, both tied up in the anime’s view of gender and heteronormality.
The first is the way in which
the series, after focusing on intense, apparently romantic, relationships
between women, the show takes a hard turn toward heterosexual romance near the
end. I knew ahead of time that this
would be coming, which took some of the sting out of the revelation, but doesn’t
make it any less troubled. While it’s
entirely plausible that a girl going to an all-female school might have
romantic relationships with women while in school, and then date men once in
more co-ed settings, the way Oniisama displays it is incredibly
problematic. The point is repeatedly
conveys that relationships between women aren’t entirely real (most explicitly
by Miya when lamenting Juste having died without having loved, despite the fact
that the death occurred on Juste’s way to a date with Nanako), and that
homosexual relationships are essentially something one grows out of. Every single character is, at the end,
portrayed as heterosexual or dead. In
the context of an anime that previously showcased such nuanced and detailed relationships,
this is hard to forgive.
Possibly even worse is the end
of Kaoru no Kimi’s character arc.
Throughout the series, she’s been presented as a masculine woman
struggling masterfully with disease. She
leads the charge against the sorority, helps keep Juste going, offers a
shoulder to cry on, and is the rock that anchors the entire anime. We see how seriously she takes her basketball
practice, and hear more than once how she’s looking for a dream of her own for
her future.
She never finds one. Instead, she, under heavy pressure from her
peers, marries Nanako’s step-brother (Takehiko Henmi). As soon as he re-enters her life, you can see
Kaoru visibly feminizing, notably demonstrated by the way she transitions to
conventionally feminine clothing. Worse, after the relationship is resumed, we
no longer see Kaoru defined by her own needs and desires – other than being
married and having children, she’s never given an ambition or goal for the
future. It truly hurts to see such a
wonderful character end in this fashion.
One of the reasons I watched
this show in the first place was due to the connection to Revolutionary Girl
Utena, my favorite anime of all time.
Oniisama E’s influence on Utena is undeniable, from the complex
relationships, to the setting, and art direction. This anime is a fantastic choice for Utena
fans – not only to emphasize Utena’s antecedents, but to highlight what Utena
got right by not doing. Oniisama is what Utena would have been if it had ended on episode 11, after Utena's loss to Touga.
This aside, Oniisama E is an
excellent anime, and I’m very glad I watched it. Fans of shoujo in particular would be well
advised to box of tissues, block out some time, and get ready for an emotional
rollercoaster. I will certainly be
inflicting the series on my own anime club at the next opportunity.
