The Joy Of The Everyday: Emotional Intimacy Between Women in Slice-of-Life Anime

Sometimes, we just have a bad day. Or week. Naturally, we turn to some comfort anime to soothe our souls.. In my case, I have had a bad 2023. As I sat on my sofa, unable to do much due to severe Long Covid brain fog which made me incapable of concentration, I desperately turned towards a genre of anime I usually don't watch – slice-of-life anime. Or, as my crowd tends to refer to it, “Cute girls doing cute things cutely.”

As foggy as I was, I had criteria - anything I watched had to be wholesome. Teaching me – or inspiring me to learn - a new skill, food, and travel were thumbs up. Easy enough as so many Japanese anime revolve around these three things.

They also had to have female protagonists. Also not complicated, but limiting. I wasn't interested in watching boys learn how to take the final turn at top speed, or suffer defeat and cry sincere tears...I wanted to watch girls breaking out their wings and flying. So my choices were centered on the aspirational, rather than the inspirational. No championships here – being able to accomplish something was a personal journey. After watching a number of these series, I found I was not only being inspired to do things like build something or take a hike in my local area. I was also watching something profound – explorations of friendship and joy between women and girls in these series. Over time I found significant healing in these gentle anime.

Today I'm taking a look at a few slice-of-life anime to explore the forms of intimacy they offer, the joy of doing things with friends, and how those things together bring people closer.

The Protagonist

The protagonist of these slice-of-life anime is typically average. By “average” I mean they don't have any stand-out qualities. They may feel uncomfortable trying to talk to other people, to the point of neurosis or maybe they are intimidated by trying new things. This is of course, because we need to be able to relate to them. We need to see our own awkwardnesses and think, “I'm average too, I totally get it.”

Maybe we nod and “I have a hard time making friends, too!” as we watch Aoi avoiding talking to anyone in Encouragement of Climb: Next Summit, happy to do our hobbies alone, even if we also feel a bit lonely. Or perhaps it's “I'm scared to try new things,” like Serufu in Do It Yourself!!. I know I'd feel intimidated if someone handed me a power tool the first time and just waved me toward a bunch of wood.

Or how about Hiromi in Minami Kamakura High School Girls Cycling Club, on a bicycle for the first time since training wheels, trying to make it to school for the opening ceremony...in a new town? We share these moments of cringe with these characters, we recognize their flaws in ourselves. As a result, we look forward to watching them make this new skill their own. It's a clear message that we, too, can do or be something new.

There are some exceptions to the average rule, of course, and these, too, offer opportunities to find ourselves.

In A Place Further Than the Universe Mari sobs as she contemplates how little she's done with her life as a second-year in high school. The point is plain – this is the most freedom and time she will ever have, but she is too afraid to take it. How many times, have we passed on something that might have been terrible, might have been fun – but certainly would have been a great story? Sitting on my sofa, too weak to walk, too confused to think, I sobbed with Mari, as everything I had planned for 2023 was stripped away from me – I could accomplish nothing. Mari's desire to do something, do anything was my desire as well.

Fuka gives up a successful career as an idol to run away to Okinawa, in Aquatope on White Sand. In no way is her life average, and yet, certainly, we've all been tempted to drop everything and run as far as possible to escape our troubles. In Fuka's case, she finds a new home, a new career that is rooted in important ideals of sustainability and ecological education, and, as we'll see in all of these series, new friends.

Relatable protagonists remind us that taking that first step may be terrifying, but that what we achieve will be worth it – we'll learn something new, see something we have not seen before, and find ourselves in the process.

Obstacles in the Road Ahead

Once the characters have been established, slice-of-life anime presents some obstacles. Will there be enough people in the club? is the most common obstacle of school-based slice-of-life stories.

Whether the school club needs three, or four or sometimes an exorbitant five people, there has to be an initial bar. That bar sets expectations – will the club have space to practice? In "Ippon" Again!, the women's judo club loses its practice space to the larger Kendo club. As the story progresses, the girls claw that space back with the addition of one more member. The Outdoor Club in Laid-Back Camp has a club space, but due to its small membership, the space is more like a storage closet. More important for them is the issue of...equipment.

Equipment is, once again, a main point for club-based stories. Do we have the right equipment or enough for all of us? If we have enough members, we'll get the budget for equipment...we hope. This obstacle means that the Do It Yourself!! Club will come up with a plan for raising money (and then have to do it a second time as their plans fall through, reminding us that life, sometimes, is not fair.) Or in a non-club story like Encouragement of Climb: Next Summit, new hiker Aoi will get a job, save her money, and upgrade her equipment as her skills improve. Everyone pulls together, and everyone contributes. A slice-of-life story includes the kind of team-building that fundraising brings. I am reminded of my own many, many fundraising efforts in school, clubs, teams, and other groups from which I imagine I raised little money but came away with many ridiculous memories. “Remember that time we...?”

In A Place Further Than the Universe, the issue of money is compounded by the greater issue of access. Should our protagonists actually raise the money to achieve their goal, how on earth would they be allowed the chance to go to Antarctica? The story takes these two considerations as the main plot for the first half of the series.

These series are not above a bit of deus ex machina, either. The girls do end up in Antarctica, Hiromi in Minami Kamakura High School Girls Cycling Clubdoes get a road bike. There are an unlimited amount of supplies in Let's Make a Mug, Too, which solves the obvious obstacle of the girls working on ceramic items that can fail at multiple points in the process.

And, finally, most of these series contain some kind of Challenge – with a definite capital C. After failing once, will Aoi make a successful hike to the top of Mt. Fuji with her friends? Will Hiromi be able to cycle to Enoshima with the Cycling Club? Will the Do It Yourself!! Club make the treehouse? Will Michi lead the Judo club to victory or defeat?

In every case, these obstacles are the first moment when the club, the team, and the group, cease to be a number of individual people doing a thing and start developing bonds of friendship and intimacy.

Female Intimacy As A Plot Point

One of the overwhelming drives of anime and manga fandom is the drive to pair characters up. Honed by years of reading and writing fan fiction, and enjoying freely shared fan art online, (and before that, in ‘zines) fans almost always want their favorite ’ship to be canonized, or at least make it to the top of the polls.

As a Yuri fan, obviously, I enjoy a good ship myself. ^_^ But early on in my fan life, I noticed a trend in fandom to pair everyone in a series in a romantic pairing. Love Polygons, three-way relationships, hate-love parings...anything, as long as a character doesn't end up alone.

So what, you may ask? No one gets hurt and we all have a good time. And that is at least partially true. But there is also a real-world feature that is obscured by the fannish desire to pair everyone off...friendship between women.

In the non-media real world, women are likely to have many more kinds of relationships with the other women around them, than just lovers or family. The problem is that nuance is lost when everyone is perceived as matched romantically with someone else, regardless of their actual relationship. Friendship and intimacy are reduced to “Are they or aren't they?”

Nuance is what I now crave when I watch anime and I am always looking for more than just romance between characters. I find myself treasuring snapshots of emotional intimacy between women without the need for the relationship to become romantic in order to be seen as intimate.

As I watched these slice-of-life series, I noticed something amazing...something I longed for and hadn't even known it. Every one of the series I mention here was modeling a form of intimate friendship between girls that were not romantic, or familial (recognizing that the line between friends and family can get very blurry – especially for folks who don't have healthy families and who rely on friends to be a surrogate family or those people who form intimate bonds with found family for many reasons.)

These were friends who helped one another cared for one another, grew together, strived together, failed together, and achieved together. As I watched Aoi finally reach the summit of Mt. Fuji with the help and support of her friends, it occurred to me that the media as a whole does a pretty poor job of showing this kind of relationship between women. I found myself rejoicing in these anime that modeled female intimacy as a powerful thing, as something that is itself an achievement.

While most of the high school-centered stories rely on standard terms of exploring friendship – we all win, even if we lose, or when one of us falls behind, we'll all stay behind, and of course, the idea of finding something that feels like one belongs – there are some extraordinarily unique moments of female intimacy in these series.

In Aquatope On White Sand, Fuka is trying to help the women of Gama Gama and Tingaria Aquariums understand one another better. She gets them together for a ladies' night where, after some initial bumps in the road, they do share details of their lives. As a ploy, it is a raging success that brings the two teams more in sync and builds empathy among the individuals.

These women are peers. They work together and therefore must be able to trust one another. Some of them are friends, but not all. Some of them find themselves rivals in the workplace, while others are just protecting themselves from other people potentially ruining their tenuously balanced life. This is a very adult version of everyday female relationships and very welcome for all that. We're not always part of the same group at work, but when our goals are aligned, everyone wins.

A Place Further Than the Universe takes a different tack, one that requires us to think about what makes a “friend.” Yuzuki, an actress and talent (and the deus ex machina of the series) is intimidated by the apparent friendship between Mari, Hinata, and Shirase. She's saddened to not be part of their group, and fearful of trying to break into it. As they arrive in Antarctica, she brings it up only to learn that they all considered her a friend already since, as we know, struggle brings people together. What, we are asked, does being a friend to one another really mean?

These stories show different goals, from different places and with different groups, banding together to develop their skills. "Ippon" Again!/ relies on classic sports tropes of victory and defeat and befriending their opponents for a satisfyingly schmaltzy tale of teamwork, blood, guts, and tears.

Minami Kamakura High School Girls Cycling Club gives us something else we rarely get in high-school team stories – positive adult role models that are not part of the school. As the girls take their first long-distance ride to Enoshima, they come across a group of adult women from a local radio station also on a cycling tour. In a moment, the girls of Minami Kamakura High are shown a future of which they had never conceived, this time modeling adult female friendship that is supportive, non-competitive, and fun.

Many slice-of-life anime take an international look at the hobby or interest being explored. Again, Minami Kamakura High School Girls Cycling Club visits another country and meets a cycling enthusiast who has a dream of visiting their country. But, it's Let's Make A Mug, Too, that comes out on top here, as Japanese cultural artifacts are reimagined through the eye of the stranger who becomes a friend. Himeno's late mother was a prize-winning ceramic artist, and Himeno wishes to rediscover her craft When a girl named Ximena travels from Mexico to study in Tajimi, Himeno and the Pottery Club befriend her. Before she leaves, Ximena creates a beautiful, small offering set in Mexican pottery style, so rather than placing food on the altar, a family's cherished ancestors can eat with them.

And finally, Laid-Back Camp gets my top “Friendship” prize. In the series of shorts called “ROOM CAMP,” Rin and Aoi involve Nadeshiko in a children's stamp rally around Yamanashi Prefecture. These blatantly tourism-focused episodes are short and fun, and the climax is a delight. Rin and Aoi created the stamp rally and arranged for the stamp tables to be at various locations, just in order for Nadeshiko to get to see her new home. Those are some good friends.

In a year where I lost much of what I considered myself to illness, the messages of these slice-of-life anime offered hope. Surely, if I worked at things a little at a time, I could accomplish something. Here I am a few months later, able to walk and read and write again. I have slice-of-life anime to thank, in part, for that.

By modeling various kinds of friendship – even within a single group – these slice-of-life series are also windows into the nuance of women's lives that are so rarely portrayed in media of any kind. Yes, lovers and family are important, but friends know you best. After all, they are the ones who remember you when.

These anime provided healing and gave me simple things to aspire to when I was in a bad place. There will always be a spot on my viewing lists now for slice-of-life anime, as it helped me gain back a slice of my own life.

Let's Make a Mug, Too, Laid-Back Camp, Do It Yourself!!, Place Further Than the Universe, Minami Kamakura High School Girls Cycling Club, Aquatope on White Sand are currently streaming on Crunchyroll. "Ippon" Again! and Encouragement of Climb: Next Summit are currently streaming on HIDIVE.

Erica Friedman is the author of By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga, published by Journey Press. She writes about the Yuri genre on her blog, Okazu.