This is a post about the endings of anime, in particular Real Girl and Higehiro. While I don\u2019t think anything I\u2019m going to spoil should ruin your enjoyment, I am talking about the ending of shows, which means I am spoiling stuff.<\/p>\n
You have been warned.<\/p>\n The first time I watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington<\/a>, I did it in a college class on the First Amendment. If you\u2019re unaware of what Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is, it\u2019s a 1939 movie directed by Frank Capra.<\/a> It tells the tale of Mr. Smith, a newly elected senator, who finds himself in a cynical version of Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n At the story\u2019s climax, Mr. Smith is fighting to keep a bill full of graft from going to a vote. He starts to filibuster. Not the way that they do it today, but the good old-fashioned way \u2014 by refusing to give up the floor. His speech drags on for 25 hours. Now the powers that be to everything to try and crush Smith.<\/p>\n But Smith refuses to give up until, eventually, he collapses on the floor.<\/p>\n Then the miraculous happens, the senator confesses<\/a>. Everyone ends up happy, and virtue defeats corruption.<\/p>\n But my professor posited a different ending. She said, at the time, that it was the intended ending of the movie, but I don\u2019t have any proof of that. What if Jimmy Stewart collapses and dies? What if Mr. Smith is simply too good or too naive for the real world? Doesn\u2019t that turn this into a noir story?<\/p>\n Now I don\u2019t think Mr. Smith suffers from having a happy ending. Much like Frank Capra\u2019s other movie, It\u2019s a Wonderful Life, it\u2019s a dramatic tale that leaves the viewer feeling that maybe people aren\u2019t so bad and evil will eventually be toppled by the weight of good men and women.<\/p>\n But I can\u2019t help but feel that the alternative world Mr. Smith would tell is just as compelling of a story.<\/p>\n That has got me thinking about anime, happy endings and two shows that I\u2019ve recently watched \u2014 Higehiro and Real Girl.<\/p>\n I have been on a kick recently of romances, romantic comedies and coming of age dramas. I pointed out earlier that these three fit into a similar silo of shows that I enjoy.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is an expectation in a romance, at least the two main characters (and probably others) will end up together. This can take a lot of forms. Either they end up together at the beginning of the story, or they end up together at the end of the story. Either way, the relationship forms the fundamental tension of the story.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, these two shows handle this in very different ways. For those people who don\u2019t know, Higehiro is the story of a salaryman, Yoshida, who discovers a high school runaway, Sayu, sitting under a street light on his way home from being dumped. While this could turn really skeevy, we soon learn that he\u2019s not going to take advantage of her. She literally tries throwing herself at him, but he rebuffs her.\u00a0<\/p>\n For most of the story, we really explore Sayu\u2019s damage. The fact that she\u2019s lost all respect for herself.\u00a0<\/p>\n It becomes pretty clear early on that the salaryman isn\u2019t going to sleep with her. On top of that, two other women in his office are doing everything except showing up at his house naked. I\u2019ll get back to this later, but let\u2019s just say for now that the main story is about Sayu, and it is more of a coming-of-age story than a strict romance.\u00a0<\/p>\n While the expectation is that the teen and the salaryman will hook up, the show plays against that. Even in the end, where it\u2019s obvious she is in love with him, he still doesn\u2019t take advantage of her.<\/p>\n The tension comes from whether she will be able to overcome her demons and return to a normal teenage life.\u00a0<\/p>\n Real Girl, on the other hand, is all about romance. It primarily focuses on the relationship of Tsutsui, a super nerd otaku, and Iroha, a beautiful weirdo. Just as a side note, this show could quickly dip into manic pixie dream girl territory, but it doesn\u2019t. I\u2019m just using weirdo because Iroha\u2019s character motivations are pretty opaque until the end of the show.\u00a0<\/p>\n They start dating early in the show, but we\u2019re told that their relationship can only last six months. This, of course, provides a baseline of tension in the series. Will they stay together? How will they stay together?\u00a0<\/p>\n But the story is really about Tsutsui\u2019s and Iroha\u2019s relatively tumultuous relationship. This is primarily driven by Tsutsui being awkward and Iroha having to put up with Tsutsui.\u00a0<\/p>\n Well, until the second cour, which mainly focuses on the other two relationships in the show.\u00a0<\/p>\n The expectation, of course, is that Tsutsui\u2019s and Iroha\u2019s relationship will somehow prevail, and they will make it. But we find out that Iroha isn\u2019t just leaving to go to another school; she\u2019s leaving to have brain surgery. And not just any operation, it\u2019s one that will likely cost her the memories of Tsutsui.\u00a0<\/p>\n When she leaves, she tells Tsutsui that he will have brand new memories and be happy. She asks him to do the impossible and forget about her.\u00a0<\/p>\n So here we have two shows that play against expectations. They give us that alternative Mr. Smith ending.\u00a0<\/p>\n Until they don\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure which ending bothers me more, but I\u2019ll start with Higehiro.\u00a0<\/p>\n After getting Sayu home, we see Yoshida return to his empty apartment and break down crying. If it had ended here, it would have been the best ending. I would have loved it.\u00a0<\/p>\n But instead, we flash forward two years, and we see Yoshida at work. He still hasn\u2019t hooked up with either of the two women in the office. He seems comfortable with this. Again, it could have ended here.\u00a0<\/p>\n But it didn\u2019t. As we work our way through a montage showing where the various characters end up, we see Yoshida walking home along the same path he walked during the first episode. Then he comes up to the streetlight where he first met Sayu.\u00a0<\/p>\n And there\u2019s Sayu.\u00a0<\/p>\n Look, I get that people wanted these two to hook up. I know groundwork was laid out for this. But I have two problems with it.\u00a0<\/p>\n The first is that it undercuts a lot of their relationship from earlier in the show. He spent so much effort working on getting her to go back home. Making sure she was healthy and could have healthy non-sexual relationships.\u00a0<\/p>\n And the message is that she still ends up seeking out a possibly dependent relationship with a man she met when she was in her most emotional state. At best, this is unhealthy. At worst, it\u2019s just turned this into the thing that it spent 12 episodes not being \u2014 otaku Mary Sue fan fiction.\u00a0<\/p>\n My other problem is that Yoshida\u2019s relationships are the least exciting thing in the show. I don\u2019t buy that he\u2019s in love with Sayu. On top of that, I don\u2019t care who he ends up with. Like I said earlier, the primary tension is about Sayu and her well-being. Why make the last thing we see about Yoshida? I want to see her succeed. I don\u2019t care about him. He\u2019s just a means for how she gets there.\u00a0<\/p>\n Real Girl presents a different problem. About halfway through episode 23, we get a flashback of a college-bound Tsutsui remembering his final conversation with Iroha, where she makes him promise that he will forget about her. This would have been an excellent place to stop.\u00a0<\/p>\n But it keeps going for a bit, and we see the cast of characters when they\u2019re 25. Tsutsui meets up with his friends from high school for drinks. They\u2019re all successful. As he\u2019s walking home, he has one final conversation with Ezomichi, a fictional magical girl that appears in the show from time to time. In it, he thinks that he would rather have his memories of Iroha and the sadness they bring. Again this would be an ideal place to end it.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the end of the episode, we see Iroha at 25 without any memories. She has returned to Japan. She ends the conversation by telling her brother, \u201cLet\u2019s go back to Los Angeles.\u201d This would have been a weaker ending, but I would have been OK with it.\u00a0<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not where it ends. In fact, there is one more episode where Tsutsui\u2019s and Iroha\u2019s love conquers retrograde amnesia. Because, of course, it does.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/searchofno9.wordpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/tsutsui-iroha.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/a><\/figure>\nWill they or won\u2019t they and other expectations<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/a><\/figure>\nHow they really end<\/h2>\n
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