From Truant to Anime Screenwriter My Path to Anohana and The Anthem of the Heart Mari Okada
Visit to download the full and correct content document: https://textbookfull.com/product/from-truant-to-anime-screenwriter-my-path-to-anohan a-and-the-anthem-of-the-heart-mari-okada/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant download maybe you interests ...
Write Your Way to Success: Lessons Learned on My Path From Ordinary Developer to Writer of Multiple Programming Books That Sell 1st Edition Azat Mardan
https://textbookfull.com/product/write-your-way-to-successlessons-learned-on-my-path-from-ordinary-developer-to-writer-ofmultiple-programming-books-that-sell-1st-edition-azat-mardan/
The Saginaw Trail From Native American Path to Woodward Avenue Leslie K. Pielack
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-saginaw-trail-from-nativeamerican-path-to-woodward-avenue-leslie-k-pielack/
Slapshot to the Heart Lila Grey
https://textbookfull.com/product/slapshot-to-the-heart-lila-grey/
Stories from My Heart A Cardiologist s Reflections on the Gift of Life 1st Edition M P Ravindra Nathan
https://textbookfull.com/product/stories-from-my-heart-acardiologist-s-reflections-on-the-gift-of-life-1st-edition-m-pravindra-nathan/
Trauma Guilt and Reparation The Path from Impasse to Development 1st Edition Heinz Weiss Ursula Haug Translator
https://textbookfull.com/product/trauma-guilt-and-reparation-thepath-from-impasse-to-development-1st-edition-heinz-weiss-ursulahaug-translator/
Classical and Quantum Dynamics From Classical Paths to Path Integrals Fourth Edition Dittrich
https://textbookfull.com/product/classical-and-quantum-dynamicsfrom-classical-paths-to-path-integrals-fourth-edition-dittrich/
Sports Cardiology Care of the Athletic Heart from the Clinic to the Sidelines 1st Edition David J Engel Dermot M Phelan Eds
https://textbookfull.com/product/sports-cardiology-care-of-theathletic-heart-from-the-clinic-to-the-sidelines-1st-editiondavid-j-engel-dermot-m-phelan-eds/
Classical and Quantum Dynamics From Classical Paths to Path Integrals 5th Edition Walter Dittrich
https://textbookfull.com/product/classical-and-quantum-dynamicsfrom-classical-paths-to-path-integrals-5th-edition-walterdittrich/
Classical and Quantum Dynamics: From Classical Paths to Path Integrals 4th Edition Walter Dittrich
https://textbookfull.com/product/classical-and-quantum-dynamicsfrom-classical-paths-to-path-integrals-4th-edition-walterdittrich/
Table of Contents
Cover
Prologue: The Anthem of the Heart (The Heart Wanted to Shout)
Chapter 1: A Place to Belong in School
Chapter 2: Who Do I Say Hello To?
Chapter 3: Day by Day, My Life Disappears
Chapter 4: Warming Up For a Big Occasion
Chapter 5: Mother, Your Hands Aren’t Clean
Chapter 6: Chichibu, the Cage of Green
Chapter 7: Mr. Shimotani and My Grandfather
Chapter 8: Through the Tunnel and into Tokyo
Chapter 9: “I Want to Become a Screenwriter”
Chapter 10: From DTV Films to Anime
Chapter 11: A Screenplay of TheWorldOutside
Chapter 12: My Mother, the Protagonist
Chapter 13: Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day
Chapter 14: The Anthem of the Heart (The Heart Wants to Shout)
Epilogue: Something that Takes Shape when Released
About J-Novel Club
Copyright
You would do well to choose your ringtone carefully.
Imagine a dimly-lit hallway connected to a waiting room. Several people with pale faces rush out of the hallway in frantic search of someone. They emerge briefly, only to disappear again in search of someone else. Everyone utters something different along the way, but they always end up saying “Sorry!” Imagine such a tense scene, but with an incessant ringtone blaring out from someone’s smartphone: an anime’s opening theme; the DragonQuestlevel-up jingle; the theme song of an old TV show—a sound so utterly out of place, it warps the atmosphere around it.
I composed the script for the anime film TheAnthemofthe Heart. Immediately after the film was completed, it was screened in Chichibu, the town where the story was set. Held in an outdoor venue called Muse Park, this was a special event where I made a speech alongside the director, Takayuki Nagai. I somehow managed to get through my stage appearance intact, but when the film itself started, it was beset with technical difficulties. Just as the story was reaching its midway point, the footage suddenly cut off.
In the darkness of that summer night, the audience waited for what felt like an eternity for the film to resume.
It was late August, 2014— The humidity was still stifling around then. Chichibu was already a difficult place to travel to even at the best of times; and from there you had to get on a bus just to reach the event, which was located at the peak of a mountain. To make matters worse, the screening commenced at night, which meant that, as time wore on, many of those who had come from other prefectures wouldn’t be able to return home that same day. I’d heard that quite a few people had anticipated this and arranged for overnight accommodation accordingly. They had come all this way, expending so much effort and money, all for the sake of an original film that no one had ever seen before. Nobody could vouch for its quality; nobody could say beforehand whether it was interesting or not. They had done all of this just for us, but what did they receive in return?
Nagai and the voice actors had taken a bus back to Tokyo when the pre-screening talk show had ended. Nagai had probably kicked off his shoes and fallen asleep like a log, sitting cross-legged like he always did. He had pulled an all-nighter just the day before.
For some reason, I didn’t feel like going home, so I stayed behind with all the staff at the venue. But because of that, I became an ineffectual busybody when the sudden mess started. I paced around the hallways restlessly, unable to do anything except twiddle my thumbs. Whenever someone passed by me, they would say things like: “We’re terribly sorry, Ms. Okada” or “We’re trying to get the situation under control, Ms. Okada.”
I didn’t want them to apologize to me. For one thing, I didn’t want people fussing over me, and I certainly didn’t want them attaching “Ms. Okada” to every little thing they said. In an attempt to escape from all the painful awkwardness, I retreated inside a tiny and secluded dressing room. It was there that I realized why everyone had been apologizing to me.
My face was bright red.
Whether it was because I was furious or because I wanted to cry, I don’t know. At any rate, my flushed face was staring back at me through the mirror of that dressing room. I looked like I was about to faint. As I gazed at myself, I thought dispassionately: I’mgetting old.I was at an age now where crying would ruin any speck of charm I had. Seeing my face in that state drove home the idea that nothing in life is permanent.
As I was pondering such philosophical thoughts, I received a text message from my aunt, whom I’d been forced to invite to the event.
“Hasn’t it started yet? Everyone’s waiting.”
My mother had also come to the venue today. A number of events had been held in Chichibu thus far, but I had never personally reached out to my mother about them. I didn’t want her to watch me fumble my words onstage.
And I especially didn’t want her to see me so defeated.
“I’m really, truly sorry.”
There was a voice outside the door. It belonged to Shunsuke Saito, a producer.
“You’ve worked so hard on this, Ms. Okada. I swear I’ll do something about it.”
Every once in a while, Saito would get carried away and say things like that. Despite the fact that our current dilemma was entirely out of human hands, he probably felt some responsibility for not preparing a backup. I didn’t blame Saito one bit; if anything, I wanted to cheer himup.
But all I could say was— “Enoughalready.”
I’m hopelessly inadequate with words. Whenever I try to say something, the words will clog up in my throat. I may think of three or four potential things to say, but I’ll flounder over the right choice. Feeling compelled to answer immediately, I’ll invariably pick the wrong option.
Until I became a scenario writer, I’d thought that it was solitary work where you could carefully pick the right words to use and express your feelings perfectly. But that’s not how it was at all.
Being an anime scenario writer means grappling with people. You can’t just write your feelings in text; you have to say the words out loud.
The production of TheAnthemoftheHearthad been fraught with difficulty.
When making an original anime, you have to complete the script first before you can start animating any part of it. I stumbled over that very first step.
Nagai and I hadn’t been able to see eye to eye at all. We had become very close after working together on so many projects, and because of that, we lost all pretense of politeness or restraint around each other as the situation worsened.
“Don’t give me that crap.” “I’m sick of your shit.” “Piss off.” Words that you’d never think would be uttered in an adult workplace flew out of our mouths. Underneath the “gentle world” portrayed in the film was a reality underscored by hostility and toxicity. Every morning I woke up feeling like I was in a haze, as if the world were
spinning around me.
The reason that Masayoshi Tanaka, the character designer and chief animation director, didn’t attend the event was because he and the animation staff were frantically at work putting together the final corrections on the animation. If Nagai and I had been able to work together better, we would have had more time to complete the production itself.
And yet, it’s strange. I felt a peculiar kind of fondness for this script, which had been completed in the midst of all that doom and gloom. TheAnthemoftheHeartended up becoming a very important anime to me, belying the circumstances in which it had been made.
Feeling that I had scaled a mountain, I loosened up and let my guard down. That was when the screening trouble happened.
When I thought about how much the audience must have been looking forward to that screening, my stomach churned in pain. As I stood there alone, my imagination ran wild. I thought about dashing onto the stage right that very minute and prostrating myself in front of the entire audience. To tell them how really, truly sorry I was to have wasted everyone’s time.
But then, something else occurred to me. Three people’s names were attached to this film: mine, Nagai’s, and Tanaka’s. If I showed up alone, wouldn’t I be making it out that Iwas the main character here? The audience might like our work when it was done by the three of us, but detest me personally.
Besides, look at what an emotional wreck I was. I was absolutely sure that I’d burst into tears while apologizing. If that happened, I could just imagine what people would say.
“Whatastupidbitch.”“It’sdisgustingtoseeanoldhagcry.” “Bringoutthevoiceactorsalready.”“Isn’titlikeweallsaid?Mari’s anemotionallyunstablenarcissist.”
Trapped inside my own head, the slurs against myself intensified. My willpower to leave this tiny and suffocating waiting room steadily evaporated.
It was then that I had a sudden thought: Ireallyhaven’tchangedatallsincebackthen.
Since the time I grew up in Chichibu— When I’d been entrapped in a town surrounded by mountains; when I’d shut myself away from the world even further, lying inert in a room surrounded by walls.
I’d never been able to tell anyone that I’d grown up in Chichibu. This was something that had been exposed on Twitter and the Internet long ago. And yet, despite that, I’d never been able to make that fact concrete, to declare it with my own mouth. I made each and every journalist erase their words whenever they wrote that I’d grown up in Chichibu in the Saitama Prefecture. Every time I asked for that, I felt as if I were suffocating.
How long was I going to be chained by the past?
I came out of the waiting room. I’d accomplished nothing, but I figured that I had better go outside for the moment. I knew from experience that if I stayed inside, I’d only berate myself and make things more painful.
By then, nobody was left in the hallway; it was dead silent. The quickest way to the venue was to go out of the hallway and into the first hall, and from there you had to come out through the lobby. A lot of the staff members had probably gathered in the lobby and were likely having a serious conversation. I didn’t want to intrude on everyone, so I decided to go out through the back entrance.
When I opened the back door, I was taken aback by the silence. Just one hundred meters in front of me, there should have been hundreds of people, and yet all I could hear was the buzzing of insects. That only made the silence seem even more overbearing.
All I could see was verdant greenery. Chichibu’s Muse Park had been built when I was in high school, so it wasn’t that familiar to me personally; but when I was in elementary school, I did go on an excursion to the nearby Ongaku-ji Temple. Did I have fun back then? Not particularly, from what I recall. I remember not getting along well with the most popular kid at the time and eating my lunch alone, feeling anxious and miserable.
Anyway, I decided to go around the parking lot and into the
venue. I tried to walk, but my nerves were too strained and my limbs wouldn’t move. Before I knew it, I was being attacked by mosquitoes from all angles.
Over and over, I scratched the places where the mosquitoes had bitten me.
Incorrect, incorrect, incorrect... I felt as if my body had cross marks all over it. It was then I recalled something that someone had once said to me:
“Okada, you’re a failure of a human being.”
The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology defines truancy as being absent from school for more than 30 days a year. Going by that definition, I officially became a truant in elementary school.
In order to cook up an excuse to skip school, I’d roll up my pajamas past my stomach and dream of getting a cold. If I woke up those mornings without a cold or bowel problems, I’d rub the thermometer against the futon. When confronted with the reality that you can’t actually change a thermometer’s reading using friction, I’d move to the kitchen with the idea of using hot water. It was then that I’d be discovered by my mother, to whom I’d mumble a feeble excuse about cleaning the thermometer. After putting on so many childish pretenses of being in pain, I would always receive a cold look from my mother, who saw right through my fake illnesses. Even then, I still succeeded in skipping school once or twice a week.
My classmates and the people around me saw through my acts as well, obviously, but they never acknowledged me as a truant. Going by the literal definition of truancy, there was no way I could talk my way out of it; but the word “truant” has an air of defeat around it that I certainly didn’t want to accept.
At the time, a game called “Ten Times Fast” was all the rage.
“Say white ten times fast.” “White white white...” “What do cows drink?” “Milk.” “Wrong, it’s water!”
When you repeat the same word ten times, it starts to lose its meaning in your mind. Wordplay was big with elementary schoolchildren at the time, and many publishers were releasing books with suggestions of words to use with “Ten Times Fast.” At first I played along with it cheerfully, but as the number of challenges increased incessantly, a particular one had come up. Whoever devised it must have wanted to curse me.
The words were “true aunt.”
“Say true aunt ten times.” “True aunt true aunt...”
“Who skips school on New Year’s Day?”
“Truants.” “Wrong! Everyone skips school on New Year’s Day.”
I was the only one my classmates liked to use these words on. But if I let my face cloud over even a little, it would be the same as
admitting that I was a truant. I was regularly performing simulations in my head so that whenever the “true aunt” question came up, I could immediately answer with “Everyone!” As long as I could rattle off the correct answer, nobody could press me on the matter any further.
I was still okay. I still hadn’t been branded as a truant. I was on the borderline, but I was safe.
I rationalized it all to myself fruitlessly, all the while skipping school whenever I found an opportunity. Things went on like that for a while.
In truth, I could sense that the people around me were also puzzled by my truancy.
Back when truancy wasn’t yet a major part of my life, only one or two kids in the entire school skipped class from time to time despite not having a chronic illness. Unlike them, I was lacking one necessary trait of a truant:
I wasn’t being bullied.
It wasn’t as if I never faced any bullying at all. Sometimes I faced the silent treatment, or got hit lightly by the other kids—things like that just happened in schools in those days. I don’t think it is accurate to say that I was a victim of bullying when there were other kids who were burdened with the casual cruelty that came with being the “Other.”
“Why aren’t you coming to school, Mari?”
People asked me that sometimes. I’d insist that my body was weak, to which I was always met with a skeptical gaze. “Mhmm,” my inquisitor would say, never looking entirely satisfied.
It wasn’t until around my first or second year of elementary school that I first experienced the “targeted” kind of bullying. I had bad motor skills and was slow when eating my lunch. With my timid outward demeanor and cocky inner self, I was the typical kind of kid that so easily got bullied. Whenever I walked around the classroom, people would stick out their legs to make me trip. When I brought my cute “Little Twin Stars” pencil to school, someone would
say, “Let’s trade!” and I’d end up with a with a cheap CandyCandy knockoff pencil with a blunt tip. Sometimes they’d just take my pencil from me by force. There were other times when I’d return to my classroom after gym class to find my classmates’ pencil boxes and other school-related things crammed inside my desk. Everyone would blame me for it, saying, “Mari pinched our stuff!”
After school, I’d be surrounded by the bullies and dragged to the playground. Due to my poor motor skills, I couldn’t climb the poles. Knowing that, they forced me to climb up a pole and watched on with amusement as I struggled haplessly at the task.
“She can’t even do that!” “She’s crying! What a dummy!”
As the kids hurled their crude insults at me, I clung to the pole and tried to hold back tears. I thought that maybe I could climb the pole if I tried hard enough. But when I imagined their jeers if I failed, or the next hare-brained mission they’d send me on, I couldn’t move. The prospect of humiliation immobilized me.
Behind the bullies there were mountains, their deep black forms prominent against the sunset. No matter where I looked, there were mountains. To me, they looked like an enormous cage.
At that moment, it hit me: Ican’trunaway. But I did anyway.
“Where are you going, Mari?!” “You’re no fun!”
As the bullies’ yells rang in my ears behind me, I sprinted as fast as I could. I was worried that they’d catch me straight away since I was a slow runner, but perhaps they’d been surprised by my unexpected rebellion. Or maybe in my crazed desperation, I had tapped into the athletic skills that had laid dormant inside of me. Whatever the case, I managed to escape from my pursuers this time.
I ended up a short distance away from school, in a parking lot near an apartment that I wasn’t familiar with. I hid in the shadow of a mini truck and held my breath until it reached ten minutes before nightfall. Then, after making sure that enough time had passed where no child would be allowed outside anymore, I went home and found my mother waiting outside the entrance, worrying about me. She told me that the bullies had come to our house.
Apparently, they’d tearfully declared that I’d gone missing. I burst
out laughing, feeling vindicated.
“They were crying! What dummies!”
Encouraged by my initial success, I became adept at running away from things I couldn’t stand.
Normally, I did that after school; but one time, after someone locked up the cleaning supplies while I was still on cleaning duty, I had slipped past the boys who were keeping watch on me and dashed out of the school.
Worried that I wouldn’t have time to put on my shoes, I ran out still in my slippers. Blindly, I sprinted down a road where one of the bullies lived. There was a lady there, drying her laundry. “Is something the matter?” she called out to me. A child running around in their slippers during school hours was abnormal, no matter how you looked at it.
Inside my head, I cursed the lady: Yourdaughter’sbeenbullying me,youstupidhag.
At that moment, my heart thumped. What I actually did was shut my mouth and slow my frantic running pace. Even in my head, I was constantly telling myself not to use bad words; so whenever I did think of curses from time to time, my heart would start beating wildly in my chest.
At heart, I was the kind of girl who couldn’t say what she was really thinking.
As the pole incident showed, I was overly self-conscious and had a habit of assuming the worst. I would always imagine that I would suffer terrible repercussions for what I said. Fear would pin me to the spot.
This tendency of mine took on its worst form at the cusp of winter.
I needed to go to the bathroom during homeroom. But I wasn’t embarrassed at the thought of saying so—no, I was mortified at the thought of the abuse that would come my way.
“Shejustsaidshewantedtogotothetoilet.”“Pee-yew!”“This girllovespoop!”
All these words swirled in my head. In my mind I yelled, Idon’t
wanttodoapoop!Ijustwanttopee!All the while, I just sat there trying to hold it in until I couldn’t anymore.
“Mari’s wetting herself!”
One of the bullies sitting near me turned around and stared at me in surprise. My mouth moved to say something. I wanted to say something even more horrible than “This girl loves poop.” No, I mustn’t, I thought... At that instant, I yelled at the top of my lungs.
“You scum!”
And then I cried and cried, and when my teacher asked me what was the matter, I only said the words “you scum” over and over. The puddle of pee underneath my seat started to lose its warmth.
The next day, my mother bought me a belly band.
Apparently, my homeroom teacher had advised her to get me one to prevent me from feeling the urge to pee when I got stomach cramps. My teacher also told her this:
“Mari won’t speak up for herself. She’s the type who can get bullied.”
By then, I was already skipping school once or twice a month.
Of course, I didn’t manage to skip school easily.
I lived with my mother and grandfather. My grandfather had a stern personality, but he was also taciturn, so he would only yell at me once in the morning and then proceed to ignore me for the rest of the day. For a child, it hurt to receive the silent treatment from someone their own age, but being ignored by an adult was no big deal.
My mother, who was in her early twenties at the time, took no half measures when her daughter started playing hooky. She’d hit me and say, “This is what you get when you don’t go to school.” She’d refuse to serve me food in an attempt to use starvation tactics on me. And she’d even hang a plate saying “I played hooky today” around my neck and force me to stand outside. I may have been kicked out of my house with my school backpack on, but because I had escaped from school, the kids would chase after me during their commute, saying, “Catch Mari!” I was slow at running, so I’d eventually give up and change tack to
gripping the electrical pole. All the kids would work together like in TheGiganticTurnipto pull me away from it, which should have made for an idyllic scene. But I’d cling to that pole as if my life depended on it, and when I was eventually dragged away, my hands would be bleeding and covered in scratches.
My mother merely watched all of this numbly. Although it did come as a shock to me that she never lifted a finger to help me, I suppose her reaction might have been natural for a young mother discovering with her own eyes that her own daughter had suddenly become a problem child.
Her way of fixing the situation was very characteristic of her. That year, she held a Christmas party at our house. As the host, my mother invited my classmates to come around. Underneath a cheap Christmas tree, she laid down a small bag packed with erasers and pencils with anime characters on them, along with other items that the bullies had taken from me.
I’d known from a young age that my mother was the type of person who tried to get on other people’s good sides by giving them things. Did I have to give people money and presents for them to get along with me? I’d already been reeling when they’d taken things from me, so why did I have to give them yet more things? My frustration and anger welled within me, and I lost my self-control.
“Don’t do that!” I screamed at my mother.
And then I insisted that the kids give back the presents they had received. I didn’t get the presents back; all that happened was that the Christmas party ended with an uncomfortable atmosphere.
I was still crying even after everyone had gone home, and this time it was my mother’s turn to get mad. Back then, I didn’t understand what she was feeling. Now that I’m older than my mother was then, I think: Shehaditrough.I want to stroke my mother’s head instead of my younger self’s head.
After that, no matter how she punished me whenever I skipped school, my mother never did a thing to address the cause behind my truancy.
One day during spring break, when I was preparing to advance to the next grade, I made a crucial decision. In my own childish way, I considered why I was being bullied. Me being timid and bad at sports were the main reasons, but there had to be something else, too. The conclusion that my young self came to then was that I came across as a stuck-up individual.
A kid who didn’t actively bully me but was merely complicit in the act had come to my house once. “You act so posh, so I thought you’d have a prettier house,” she’d said to me. My grandfather ran a dye store, which he had at one point made a small amount of money from; but by the time I was in school, the store had closed down, and we lived almost entirely on my grandfather’s savings. But my mother’s little sisters, who worked in Tokyo and enjoyed the high life, would constantly come to our home. I think that their influence must have rubbed off on me.
My aunts were finicky about my clothing. Almost all the other kids wore the school-prescribed jersey, but I wore shirts and skirts according to my aunts’ tastes. The kids around me would wipe their noses on their sleeves instead of using a tissue, so the cuffs of their jerseys would gleam with snot...
My aunts also had a beautiful way of speaking, for people who had grown up in Chichibu. In rustic Chichibu, women spoke just as roughly as men did. Nobody said things like “sir” or “madam.” My aunts didn’t normally live at our house, so I must have picked up their way of speaking in a patchwork sort of fashion. The lady next door had once laughed at me, saying, “You use so many big words, it’s confusing.”
That’s what I was like in first grade. I figured that from there on out I’d have to at least roughen my way of speaking. I’d have to use the local dialect, too. I shouldn’t carry any tissues or a handkerchief with me, and I shouldn’t leave any food on my plate. I should chomp everything down and say, “Hey, gimme some more grub!” with a stupid look on my face. The reason people around me would make fun of me no matter what I said was because I was a meek girl who still seemed like a baby. The charismatic kids were the violent and strong-willed ones who stood at the forefront.
Also, the kids who had something they were good at were considered strong as well. There was only one thing I was good at, and that was reading books.
I wasn’t particularly smart, but for some reason I could read kanji. I also had confidence reading kanji for adults, although I may have actually been getting almost everything wrong. At any rate, since I was very good at presuming things, I was never satisfied with reading the books aimed at children in their lower years of elementary school. I’d be entranced by my aunts’ novels in my house, reading them out loud and becoming absorbed in the story world.
I decided to use that as my starting point.
My chance came in the first Japanese class after the new school year started.
“Someone read this section,” said the teacher. “You can skip the kanji you don’t know.”
I was incredibly nervous, but I thrust my hand into the air anyway. My classmates from the previous year stared at me in surprise.
I expected to read that passage fluently. I expected that the atmosphere in that classroom would change.
I don’t know how it actually looked to someone watching from the sidelines. But as far as I was concerned, it was the first time in my life I had ever made an active decision. I wasn’t the shy and passive girl I had been up until that moment. I felt as if I were under a spotlight, just for that moment when I was reading a book aloud.
When the class ended, the teacher praised me. My classmates also said things like, “Mari, you’re amazing!” and “So you canspeak up!” I felt as if I’d discovered the way to escape from my hell. And so, Japanese became the only subject that I felt like studying hard for.
Through this, I became reasonably smart and good at speaking. I learned to use the proper amount of rough language, and I even started wiping my nose on my sleeve. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do anything about my poor athletic skills, so in this country classroom
where the sporty kids held the power, my position in the school caste leveled out at the lower part of the middle end.
When you’re pitching an original animation, establishing the personality of the characters is tantamount.
No matter what kind of story you want to tell, the characters are the ones that make it move along. When a character’s initial personality changes as the story progresses, it gives the story a sense of realistic charm. So when the character’s transformation doesn’t represent growth, but rather, just a slight shift in another direction, then the story can reach an impasse. You can’t backtrack to the original plan, and a feeling of hopelessness begins to pervade the narrative.
Having received a new character template from the one I had before, I dithered along the path to adulthood. I finally became a truant in earnest in fifth grade.
There were problems with disciplining the students in my classroom, where you’d see prime examples of bullying all the time. The boys were particularly awful; they’d stand on top of the gymnastics equipment and strike people with their knees, or force others to sit in the uncomfortable seizaposition in the social sciences resource room for long periods at a time. At any rate, their actions were mainly violent, and just watching them from the sidelines was nauseating.
Compared to them, the girls bullied others in a more peaceful way. They’d mostly just badmouth others or give them the cold shoulder. This was slightly easier to deal with than physical abuse, honestly.
Furthermore, bullying existed in every social group in the classroom; so people resigned themselves to the fact that even if you escaped from your own group, you’d still get bullied by someone.
I belonged to a group that didn’t stand out much in our class, but even this group had its own leader. That leader would order the others not to talk to a particular girl out of the blue, and the target would be left alone, even during recess, while the others would badmouth her behind her back based on things that weren’t always even true. Everyone took turns with this, so I knew I’d be on the
receiving end eventually. That didn’t stop it from being a painful and nerve-wracking experience every time my turn came around. Up until then, I’d been taking a day off school once or twice every month; but around that point, it became once or twice every week.
Back then, there were two things I took comfort in.
The first thing was that I rapidly grew taller until around the time I reached fifth grade. I’d always had a good physique, but after seeing my rapid growth, the boys would call me “Golem.”
This nickname came from the Famicom game DragonQuest. The golem, who protected the city of Cantlin even after it had fallen into ruin, was a lonely creature with superhuman strength. It would fall asleep if you played the Faerie Flute, so the boys would often blow on a recorder in front of me. But no matter how often people played the school anthem on their flutes and shawms at me, I never fell asleep. Instead, the shame of being called a golem inspired strength in me. With my stout arms, I’d grab the boys by the scruffs of their necks and beat them up one after another.
This brutal strength had never existed in my old character template from my early years of elementary school, but personally, I was thankful for it. I never had to think about how to bridge the emotional distance between us. If the boys kicked me, I could kick them back, and that was a considerable stress reliever for me.
The other thing that saved me was my homeroom teacher, Mr. Oshida.
As a weak-willed, aging teacher with barcode hair, he was often teased by the kids. When the boys casually boycotted class, Mr. Oshida would stutter in response: “D-d-d-don’t do that.”
Mr. Oshida would always stutter when he was nervous and became flustered in front of the students.
When we were doing the iron bar in gym class, Mr. Oshida showed us how to do it multiple times. Whenever his body flipped over, his barcode hair would flap upward, go back to normal, then flip up again. Everyone would go “Whoaaaaaa!” in unison. Mr. Oshida would assume that they were all impressed with his
technique and kept doing flips over and over. No— Maybe he did it because he knew that it made the students happy.
Mr. Oshida never made a big deal out of it whenever I missed school.
Apparently, he had nominated me for a student health excellence award behind my back. I didn’t get it, of course. “You’re big and strong, and you also study hard,” he told me. “If only you didn’t have tooth cavities...”
He was disappointed because the only reason I wasn’t eligible for the award was due to my cavities. I was always taking days off school; my health and my grades weren’t that great; and I wasn’t even very athletic. Despite that, he never saw me as a problem student. In that sense, I think that he really did save me.
I wasn’t the only secret fan of Mr. Oshida. Yoko from our group liked him, too.
When the two of us got together, we gushed about Mr. Oshida as a matter of course. We’d chatter about incidents where he showed endearing sides of himself, and laughed until our bellies ached.
Then finally, one of us would always say, “When I grow up, I want to be like Mr. Oshida,” and the other would agree.
He was a kindhearted man who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Even if he never solved any underlying problems, his mere presence was a comfort. If everyone were like Mr. Oshida, the world would be a wonderful place... But deep down, I had a thought: Yoko was a bit like him.
Yoko was a precious friend to me, but that also made my feelings toward her complicated.
Yoko looked like me at first glance. When we were both in kindergarten, my mother had called out to Yoko by mistake. She was taller and wider than average, and she had curly hair just like me. Back in kindergarten, we both had long hair, but it was the same style: thick and unattractive, like straw from a paddy field.
She wasn’t very smart either, and her motor skills were even worse than mine. She wore strange ocher-colored socks, and she
didn’t have her own special “talent” that I’d assumed was so essential to avoid getting bullied. But there was one thing she definitely had going for her that I didn’t.
Yoko was loved by everyone around her.
Even in our group, she was first on everyone’s lists to play with. Only Yoko could avoid becoming a target for the “cold shoulder” that everyone took turns enduring. Despite being so meek and docile all the time, Yoko had friends who would stick up for her, and even go against the leader if they had to.
There was a line in a Kenji Miyazawa poem I learned around then that perfectly described her:
Unyielding to the rain
Unyielding to the wind
Bested by neither snow nor summer heat
Strong of body
Free of desire
No anger
Only quiet mirth
(omitted)
Called useless by all
Neither praised
Nor a burden
Such is the person I wish to be
The Yoko I knew was a kind girl, and I couldn’t get the least bit mad with her.
She would absolutely never tell lies, nor did she ever badmouth or attempt to flatter anyone. She seemed like the textbook example of a bullying victim; but then she’d take the initiative to tell a funny joke, and that stopped her from ever seeming pathetic. There was something warm in her vague demeanor; she had a big heart that you wouldn’t expect to see in an elementary schooler.
Yoko was everyone’s idol, and she liked me for some reason. She would get the leader to shut up so that the two of us could play together. Then she would confide to me her problems about the leader. It was only ever slight, trivial things that she didn’t have a serious issue with, but hearing her complaints made me feel special. Yet whenever I got carried away and went on about how I really disliked the leader, Yoko would fall silent and refuse to make the conversation about insulting others.
I liked Yoko, but I hated her, too.
Next to Yoko, I always felt like I was the bad guy. I felt like I deserved to be hated. Why was she the only one who was loved? It wasn’t just me—there were other girls trying so hard to get by when their friends ignored them. So why was she the special one?
I entered the sixth grade, and while my classmates stayed the same, my teacher was different.
Unlike Mr. Oshida, who had been approaching old age, Mr. Toyama was only in his thirties. His eyes sparkled, and so did his greasy forehead.
It was soon after the first term started when Mr. Toyama called out to me while I was cleaning the classroom. We hadn’t built up any trust at that point, when out of the blue, he said:
“Mr. Oshida must have been bad to you, since you haven’t been coming to school.”
He began by insulting the teacher I liked and respected, before casually uttering the last word I wanted to hear:
“Mr. Oshida turned you into a truant.”
I was a truant.
The world turned yellow and warped around me.
I’m the type of person who, despite being big and brawny and capable of beating up the boys, broke down pretty easily. People were eying me with quiet suspicion, or at least that’s how I saw things. Yet this Toyama guy had branded me clearly as a truant and during cleaning time, no less. There were other students gathered around the teacher’s podium.
Oh,it’sfinallyhappening,I thought.
Everyone else must have realized it long ago. But as long as nobody said anything, I could get by without having to confront it. At least, that’s what Mr. Oshida did for me.
Shame welled inside me, and I looked down, red-faced. Mr. Toyama, however, wasn’t done with me yet.
“If you skip school again, everyone will go to your house and call for you. Right, everyone?”
It seemed that he was attempting to solve a single student’s problem in front of the entire class, like he was the passionate teacher out of a school drama. Perhaps he was trying to use the truant student as a pretext to fix the lack of discipline in the class. But those idiotic kids totally fell for Mr. Toyama’s scheme anyway. “Yeah! We’ll go to Mari’s place!” they shouted, strangely enthused.
Just outside this circle of kids stood Yoko. As usual, she stood there doing nothing in particular with a vague, spaced-out look on her face.
As a result of being branded a truant, I spent more time off from school than ever. I’d been taking two days off school every month, then all of a sudden I started spending half the month at home. After being forced to swallow something I emphatically did not want to accept, I may have become more defiant in a certain sense.
The thing that I’d been so afraid of—Mr. Toyama and his volunteer squad yelling “Maaari!” at my door—never actually happened.
Somehow, I graduated from elementary school and entered middle school.
The middle school I attended had students from the three nearby elementary schools, so the same group leader from my elementary school ended up in my class again. It came as a bit of a shock, but the matter was out of my control, so I grit my teeth and made a decision.
I’d been looking to middle school as my chance to escape from my truant lifestyle. I thought about my earliest memories of actively achieving something, the revolution I wrought upon myself in early
elementary school.
For the first time in a long while, I bit the bullet. I reexamined my personality once more.
In elementary school, I had to fill in a frightening survey called: “Which person do you want/do not want to be in the same class with next year?” I don’t know how much that survey influenced the end result, but when I entered fifth grade, there was a time when a girl I didn’t know very well talked to me. “I wrote down your name as one of the people I wanted to be in the same class with,” she said. But then she continued: “But I thought you’d be a more cheerful person.”
This girl belonged to a different group. If I had to say it one way or another, she was more of a bullying victim than a bully, but she regarded me with hostility. When she was on food duty, she would pile the side dishes that nobody liked on my plate, which would mildly annoy me. On the other hand, I could turn that against her by saying that I hated a dish that everyone else liked, which would allow me to obtain a large bounty. I didn’t particularly like or dislike this girl, so I was initially taken aback by what she said. I wondered what I had done that was so reprehensible in her eyes.
Of course, she hadn’t done anything wrong. Back then, I was always ending up on the side of the bullied. I was aware that I had an indisputable flaw.
One of the letters to the editor in the women’s magazine that my mother occasionally bought had a query that went like this: “My child is getting bullied at school. They haven’t done anything wrong, so why?”
The person who answered was a fortune teller, but they gave a very interesting reply:
“When they encounter someone different from themselves, people will instinctively reject them. If your child is being bullied for no reason, then it means that they have a special aura that others around them don’t have.”
Oh, what splendid praise! I was such a thoroughly twisted child that I wasn’t even capable of accepting that lip service at face value.
But there was one thing about it that I couldaccept. Using myself
as a representative example of a bullied child, it was true that I gave off a different aura than a more wholesome kid would. Even when I shut my mouth so as not to cause trouble for others, people would get the impression that I was scheming about something. When I was ill, I would make others feel uneasy... I was easily characterized as “that girl you can’t get along with.”
And the one who made me realize that was Yoko.
There was a reason why Yoko was so popular. It’s true that she had a good character. Personally, though, I thought there were tons of nice people who got bullied. And yet those girls were hated while Yoko was loved.
The reason for that was simple: Yoko had a non-threatening aura. She really was Kenji Miyazawa at heart.
Using Yoko as a reference, I set out to change my character template.
I had to cultivate a laid-back attitude and not state my opinions too strongly. I had to make sure not to belittle others or complain about things. I had to tell jokes and make funny observations at bullet-fast speeds, and I had to respond to any excessive bullying I received with nonchalant laughter. Yoko had qualities that only belonged to her, so I couldn’t strive to be like her too much or it would make a bad impression. I still had to be me.
As I was pursuing this life, the things that Yoko used to get wrapped up in during elementary school started happening to me as well. For example, someone would whack me from behind and jump on my back. “Give me a piggyback ride!” they would say, playfully. There was something about Yoko that would bring out the childish side in people. Putting my feelings aside, it would still hurt physically. I hadn’t felt this much pain when I was fighting with the boys, but perhaps that was because of the adrenaline.
The boys and girls would both tease me, and I became the butt of jokes. This had the side effect of making me realize that this was Yoko’s fate, too. MaybeYokohaditsurprisinglyroughherself, I thought in surprise. But since I was one of those people who had actively made fun of Yoko as well, somehow this thought relieved
me.
I also had a nickname: People would read the kanji in my name as “Marori” instead of Mari.
The boys had come up with insulting monikers for me before, but I had never received an affectionate nickname from the girls. People started saying things like, “Marori, you’re really funny,” and “Marori, you’re nice.” I would always respond casually with “Nah, no way,” while on the inside, I was pumping my fist like crazy.
People teased me in class, and the teacher hated me because I was too talkative. I thought of that as victory. The word didn’t exist back then, but the fact that the teacher hated me was proof that I was a “normie.”
One of the big reasons that I succeeded in becoming a normie was because I made friends with Isoda from my class.
Even in middle school, Isoda was the kind of person who stood out a lot. I’d known her because we’d been in the same kindergarten and elementary school, but we’d never been in the same class. When I first met her, I thought of her as a free spirit. She had some grown-up tastes in music for a kid; back when everyone else still liked Hikaru Genji, she liked bands like Unicorn and JUN SKY WALKER(S). Everyone looked up to her as someone with good fashion sense.
Chichibu in those days was still dominated by “Yankee” culture, which meant you had to get along with rascally kids even in middle school. By using Isoda’s example, I was able to have a peaceful life there, too.
Isoda was always talking about how much she wanted to improve herself. I was also desperate to change myself, so I suppose we were two peas in a pod. Isoda often invited me on her trips to Tokyo, where we would watch concerts and buy clothes. My mother was delighted that I was constantly going out with a friend, and would give me some pocket money for it.
My standard clothing choice was a shirt made out of jersey knit fabric that I’d bought from a trendy brand at the time. It was a hideous yellow and green striped thing with a giant heart on it. I
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
“Don’t you love it all?” she sighed. “Light, love, laughter,—what a part they play in life.”
He was inclined to agree with her The triumphant wine was singing through his veins; the mad music was goading him to a frenzy of happiness; the dazzling shoulders and gleaming arms of Mrs. Belmire were pagan in their beauty. The whole combination, wine, woman, song, was for him. Every fibre of his will was weakening in this atmosphere of sheer delight.
“She’s got me going,” he almost groaned. When she turned away her head he emptied his champagne on the floor
Seeing his glass empty she plied him with another. “You don’t drink anything,” she said. “Come, it’s a poor heart that never rejoices. Let’s abandon ourselves. It’s so jolly nice to be together like this. I wish it could last forever.”
The champagne was taking possession of his sense. He saw her through a roseate mist, a wholly voluptuous, desireful creature. He had drunk nearly two-thirds of the wine; more would be fatal. To avoid real intoxication, he stimulated a slight false one.
“No more of the damned stuff,” he said roughly. “My head’s all buzzing with it. It’s poison. The tears of widows and orphans, the widows and orphans the old professor’s working for....”
She leaned forward eagerly. “I heard you made quite a lot to-day.”
“He made nearly quarter of a million ... for his widows and orphans.”
“Why for them? Why not for you, for us?”
“What do you mean?”
“Wouldn’t you like to be rich? Wouldn’t you like to have a life like this always,—flowers, music, good wine, delicate food, a life of luxury?”
“No, I wouldn’t. I want quiet and simplicity. I don’t want to be rich.”
“Oh, you make me lose patience. You say you would like to be a painter. Well, why not study,—Paris, Rome and so on?”
“That takes money. I haven’t got it.”
“Yes, you have. All you want. Millions!”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll tell you later. Have some more wine.”
“No, no. I’ve had enough. You want to make me drunk. Come on, let’s leave this cursed bordel. My head’s splitting. I want fresh air.”
“Poor boy! You want to lie down a bit. I say, come and stretch, chez moi. You can smoke a cigarette and have a snooze if you like. It’s quiet there.”
He would have broken away, but she held his arm and called a voiture. It was exactly ten o’clock when they left the restaurant and descended to the Pension Pizzicato. Once in the open air the fumes of the wine affected him with sudden drowsiness.
“Look here,” he said, “I do believe I’m a bit squiffy. Perhaps I’d better lie down on your sofa for half an hour.”
“That’s a good boy. Come on.”
He remembered descending unsteadily from the voiture and stumbling up to her room. They met no one on the way. He threw himself on her divan and closed his eyes.
4.
When he opened them again she was bending over him. She wore a lilac peignoir that clothed her loosely. As he looked at her, surprised, she said:
“My dear boy, how’s your poor head? You know you’ve slept nearly two hours. And look who’s here,—Mr Fetterstein. He came just a few minutes after we did. We’ve been chatting.”
Fetterstein was comfortably seated, smoking a huge cigar, and drinking a whiskey and soda. He grunted amiably to Hugh.
“Yey, boy! Some snorer too, hey, Mrs. B.? Well, feelin’ better?”
“Yes, thanks. I’m all right now.”
“Have a cigar?”
“No, thanks.”
“Well, if you’ll excuse me I’ll hit the hay. I’m not the night-hawk I used to be. Gettin’ old, hey! I’ll leave the rounder game to you young bloods. Good-night, young chap.”
When he had gone Mrs. Belmire came impulsively to Hugh and knelt by the side of his chair.
“My poor darling! Are you really feeling better? We talked low so as not to disturb you. Old Fetterstein’s not a bad sort. You mustn’t mind him. You know he wants me to go to Vichy with him. He will pay all my debts.”
“Are you going?”
“I don’t want to. I want to go with you. Let’s go to Venice. It’s a dream.”
He looked at her in a dazed way. She put her arms around his neck.
“Oh, come. You’re the only man I love in all the world. In a few more years I will be passée; but now I am at my very best. Look at me. Don’t I please you? Take me. I’ll be everything to you as long as you like. When you tire of me, I’ll go. I’ll be yours, all yours. I’m not fickle. I’ll love you, you alone. You won’t regret it. We’ll live in places that glitter and glow; we will drink to the full the wine of life. Oh, take me, take me....”
“I don’t understand. How can I do these things? I’m not a man of wealth....”
“Oh, yes, you are, if you like. There’s the old professor. You know how to play as he does. You can get hold of his books, copy his figures. We’ll go to San Sebastien, Buenos Ayres, everywhere roulette is allowed. Play, play for yourself. Become rich. Life without money is hell. Come! you’ll do it. Won’t you, won’t you....”
She clung to him. He looked at her with something like horror.
“You want me to steal the professor’s system?”
“Yes, if you want to put it that way. Why not? He’s old, half mad. Charity begins at home. Why not?”
“Never!”
“You will ... you will....”
She seemed to be holding him with all the strength of her body; she kissed him like a mad thing. He could feel her hot panting breath on his face, see her eyes burn into his.
“No, a thousand times no!”
She was like a splendid animal mad with passion. He rose and wrenching her arms apart, backed away from her, a look of repulsion in his eyes. She saw it and knew she was defeated.
She crouched by the empty chair, her head dropping on her outstretched arms. She seemed to be sobbing.
He paused by the door. Something forlorn in her attitude touched him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “If I were mad for love of you, I would do anything you asked me, but ... I’m not. I can’t go with you because I don’t care for you in that way. I realize it now. Perhaps I should have known it sooner. Please forgive me.”
She rose and faced him.
“Forgive you.... You poor fool! Did you think I meant it? Why, I was only acting. Did you think I cared for you? It’s only money I care for, money, money I offered myself to you and you refused me. You are the only man who ever did that. It’s that that hurts. You’ve wounded me in a way time will never heal. I hate you, hate you! Oh, I could kill you. Go!...”
She pointed to the door, then turning, once again dropped beside the chair. She was really crying now, shaken with great rending sobs.
He left her. As he passed in front of the dark Casino, the pinkish face of the clock showed it to be one in the morning. All the way downhill
to the Condamine he did not meet a soul. There was no moon; and the quietness was almost eerie.
The passage leading to the house was as dark as a tunnel of anthracite. He plunged into its blackness, then stopped short. A man was blocking his way. Instinctively his hand went to his hip pocket for his automatic. Assassins....
Then a second man, darting from behind, gripped his arms. He struggled madly; but the first man, closing in, struck at him with something hard, and he remembered no more.