Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Deaimon: Recipe for Happiness
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thadec
Posts: 45 |
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Wait ... what? The whole "in sickness and in health whether richer or poorer" vow applies to marriage. If they were engaged, fine. If they had been together for a long time and the subject of marriage never came up ... well maybe she just dodged a bullet. Girlfriends and boyfriends are even less obligated to stick around during rough patches than longtime platonic friends are. Particularly if the reason for the boyfriend's being down in the dumps in the first place is "failed at my (very low percentage of success just as everyone warned me) dream of being a professional musician and now I have absolutely nothing going on for my long term financial future." Being the boyfriend of the 1 guy in 100 who actually succeeds at being a professional musician? Very cool and worth the risk of sticking around for awhile! Being the boyfriend of the other 99? Not so much. Tell him to catch up with you a couple years down the line after he's maybe finished a vocational program or something, has career prospects lined up and if he's lucky you may actually still be single. Sounds harsh but there is a reason why some guys choose boring reliable things like accounting. |
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Yttrbio
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Princess_Irene
ANN Associate Editor
 Posts: 2656 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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Maybe, but I thought the scene pretty clearly showed him crying over a letter that said that his dad was in the hospital so he needed to come home, he asked her to come with him, and instead she just packed her bags and told him she preferred western sweets before walking out. That may be his misinterpretation of events rather than what actually happened, but it's also the only full perspective we have at this point. |
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Yttrbio
Posts: 3672 |
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I'm sure that happened, but maybe that's not "our relationship is over" so much as "here we go again with the crying over sweets, I'm out for now," which certainly felt like a dick move, admittedly (although he seemed more worried about the sweets than his dad). She seemed baffled when he said she dumped her at the festival, and told Itsuka she got dumped by him.
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Saeryen
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My guess is Kanako felt betrayed by his going home, but I do agree that dumping him, especially when he thought his dad was in big trouble, was pretty jerkish. If she wasn't sure she could do long-distance or move to be with him she could have said "I have to think about this."
Though with these kind of shows we get to know every central character a lot and they're well rounded and human, so I think there's a lot more to her than what we've seen. |
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Gina Szanboti
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I don't know about a miscommunication between them. She framed it as "he chose his family over me," which is a rather selfish point of view unless they were engaged or had been together for most of the ten years he'd been in Tokyo. Even then, the situation wasn't either/or, as she painted it. He asked her to come with him, and it was her that chose, what, her job? Tokyo? over him. She didn't even give him an ultimatum of a choice, just packed up and left. It seemed to me that she revised things in her mind so that she wasn't the bad guy, as people often do to salvage their self-image as a good person.
I don't even think she was necessarily wrong to not go with him, but the way she did it was really cold. I guess we'll have to see how she shakes out in future episodes, but I'm definitely of mixed feelings about her right now. Anyway, I am enjoying the delicious watercolor backgrounds. 
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Electric Wooloo
Posts: 315 |
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I think there's a lack of communication between them for sure, but uprooting your entire life, job, connections, etc. to move halfway across the country with your boyfriend is a big ask. I don't think it's cold or even unreasonable for a couple to split over that. Perhaps there's MORE of a miscommunication going on with the letter we've seen in flashbacks, perhaps she was expecting to come back and be able to talk it over with him the next day but he left immediately assuming her walking out was a break up. Either way Kanoko is having second thoughts after all. I personally really like her as a character. There's not an ounce of bitterness between the two characters after breaking up, just some awkwardness, and they all have different priorities in life that they're figuring out how to get straight. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11602 |
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As I said, it was how she ended it, not that she ended it, that was cold. Just silently packing her things and then verbally flipping him off with "I like Western sweets," as she walked out, when he believed his family needed him, was pretty harsh no matter what her reasons for not wanting to go were. Also "halfway across the country" is a bit different in Japan, than say, the US. Tokyo to Kyoto is a five and a half hour drive or 2-4 hours by train, depending on which train. In CA a 2-hr one-way daily commute isn't rare. So it wouldn't be unreasonable to try long distance for awhile until both of them decided on what they wanted to do, instead of just flat walking out like she did. |
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Mencor
Posts: 65 |
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I'd say that in her mind she didn't end it. She took him for granted expecting him to hang around like a puppy and when he didn't she took it as him ending it. Hence the line of him choosing his family over her, she's just bitter that he betrayed her expectations.
In short she was selfcentered and arrogant. In the van when talking to him she thought that he would be hopeless without her yet, his doing fine. At the end she was surprised when he remembered the promise and again when he said that she dumped him. With a bit of luck the experience has tought her some humility. |
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Thesarum
 SubscriberPosts: 533 |
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For me, the breakup scene was weirdly out of character for what else we've seen of Kanoko (not so much Nagomu). Maybe it's just over abbreviated. Giving everyone involved a little bit of credit, it's a bit "mistakes were made" on both sides.
She had a job, and he just announced he was leaving without consulting her at all (and just assumed she'd come too), which is pretty much the bare minimum you should expect from anyone committed to a relationship. He was also clearly being ridiculous in suggesting only he could carry a business that employs a dozen people and he's not even set foot in for a decade. She however didn't attempt to hear him out, reason with him, or offer any kind of support (though I think she had arrived with the intent of consoling him over the breakup of the band). Just got up and left which is pretty damn cold to a guy clearly in a lot of distress. That said, from what else we've seen of Nagomu, it's reasonable to assume she was dealing with this kind of shit all the time, and possibly just didn't have the patience in the moment to explain to him why he was being a child, yet again, and he needed to take a step back and approach the situation like the adult he supposedly is. I think if anyone was talking those around them for granted it was Nagomu. Both his parents and Kanoko. He was upset, who wouldn't be to be contacted out of the blue to say your Dad's in hospital, but he was impulsively making some very big decisions that would affect both their lives. That's my read on the "western sweets" remark - it's blunt and insensitive, but the emotion is "how dare you just assume I'd drop everything to come work in your family sweet shop?". Kanoko could have handled it a hell of a lot better, but I've got some sympathy for the reaction. |
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wolf10
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Of all the places I was expecting this series to go, I was not expecting spoiler[Saki to have a drag persona. For extra bonus points, the explanation he gives is actually very much in line with how most drag queens feel about their other selves, which would be cliche in a western work, maybe, but coming from an anime is positively groundbreaking (it's also something well-meaning outsiders get wrong all the time, especially in this age of increased trans visibility).] I expected a lot of explanations when we saw the lock screen photo, but was totally convinced we were getting something, anything other than the most immediately obvious explanation.
But the real plot twist, spoiler["senpai" was Itsuka's dad all along. Yoshitsugu Matusoka is a little too distinct a voice to cast if a series wants to keep that kind of secret.] |
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Regalli
Posts: 113 |
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I’d been thinking spoiler[Nagomu’s sempai is Itsuka’s dad since seeing the bit in the ED of them still in school and then compared the hair color to Itsuka’s immediately after, but this episode definitely makes it even more likely. My take on him performing here, since he was clearly filling in last-minute, is that he’s not living in the area, he was just passing through again. … And didn’t go see his daughter. I wonder if he’s meant to sort of parallel Nagomu’s impulsivity or something? Like, while it’s obviously a bad idea to go wandering as a traveling musician when that means leaving your very young daughter in the hands of (not quite) strangers, compare to Nagomu leaving for Tokyo… and he and his parents apparently only contacted each other for New Year’s, though who knows who stopped contact first.] And in fairness to Kanoko, while she shouldn’t have been surprised by the letter after packing her bags (unless there’s more than what we saw), there’s definitely a lot of room between ‘my dad’s in the hospital, I need to go see him, will you come with me?’ and discussing the potential implications on the train and ‘My dad’s in the hospital so I’m moving back to Kyoto to take over the family sweet shop, come with me!’ The former doesn’t open with ‘quit your job and move to a new city hours away.’
The episode definitely feels bifurcated. I don’t mind either half, but it definitely feels like they shoved two chapters of the manga together with Saki as the tenuous connecting thread because neither of them could quite fill a full episode in their own right. [/spoiler] |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11602 |
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If what we have been shown is to be believed, she was already half packed by the time he got "Come with me to my parents..." out of his mouth. Zipping her bag was the period at the end of that sentence. And to me that doesn't sound like he assumed she'd come with, or he wouldn't have bothered suggesting it. Saying "come with me" = "I have to go, but I don't want to just break up and leave you behind." There's definitely a conversation to be had about that between them, but it appears she never gave him a chance to finish his sentence before packing, let alone have that conversation. But again, we'll have to see if that scene was actually accurate.
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wolf10
Posts: 929 |
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This week on Deaimon: If you must fail the Bechdel test, do it with panache. I realize the entire purpose of Kanoko's character is to overstay her welcome, but I'm glad to see her comedic potential put to use.
Moving on to the back half, I suppose the subs are a bit distracting if you don't already know the difference between a jinja and a tera, but it's definitely weird to translate one but not the other. I kind of got flashbacks to the before times, when translators would localize kouhai but not senpai, leading to awkward phrases like "senpai and junior." The great, burning "dai" on the hillside (proper name "Daimonji") is Kyoto's equivalent of Hollywood's classic signage, though I didn't know it was specifically tied to Obon. It's never too late to learn things. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11602 |
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Is it just me, or was it weird for Kanoko to invite herself along to lunch with two teenagers? I mean, they're not strangers to her at least, but she barely knows either of them to begin with. I'd feel awkward if they invited me, let alone inviting myself. I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with adults being friends with kids, but it kinda felt like there's a sort of clinging-to-lost-youth desperation in it, since they only seem to have Nagomu in common, and even more tenuously, the shop. All I know was that I felt as uncomfortable as Itsuka was for the entire segment, albeit for different reasons.
Aside from the thwacking, I rather like Grandma. She's done her duty and is enjoying her me-time now. I have a feeling that Itsuka's mom will be framed as the reverse - enjoying being on her own now and abandoning the duties she should have sacrificed herself for. I'll withhold further comment on that until I see how they handle it. |
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