I haven’t read much of the literature on the topic, but apparently Amagami SS episode 3′s been making the entire aniblogosphere hnnngh at the contents of the episode. Actually, this is a total lie: I’ve read far too many blog posts on the topic. I just did so in Google Reader, and didn’t pay much attention to who said what.

Except apparently there’s some lame blog called chaosderivative or something and it’s run by some third-rate snob who thinks it’s his place to call Amagami SS ‘crass.’ I did pick that up.

But moving on—someone somewhere said that the cafeteria scene warranted more attention than the kneepit-kissing scene. Yeah it did. Because while the kneepit-kissing scene is just a mashup for Clannad’s PE storage room (with the obligatory nod to Jason) and Kimikiss’s Mao-knee-kissing scene, the debacle in the school cafeteria is, as far as I’ve seen^[1] new territory.

From a conversation I shared with lelangir earlier,

6:59:51 PM LK: the fucking cafeteria scene shit man
7:00:06 PM LK: that’s legit one of the hottest things i’ve seen in a ¬hentai
7:00:39 PM LK: fuck that
7:00:47 PM LK: that was legit one of the hottest things i’ve seen.

When I watched the first episode of this show, I believe I meeled something like “I AM DISAPPOINT.” And here I am now, certain that Amagami SS will be my favorite this season if not this year. And why? Because I am projecting humanity upon the characters.

Maybe chaostangent is right when he says that the characters are [barely even] archetypes. Maybe all the win in this episode was unintentional. Maybe the cafeteria scene was just the Japanese being Japanese—therefore, weird. Maybe the cafeteria scene is a fluke.

But I don’t want it to be.

So I asked myself: if these were humans, real living breathing eating sleeping loving hating crying laughing humans, what would they be thinking during this (more than fairly) bold roleplay session in the school cafeteria?

Think about it.

For Morishima to play along, to acquiesce. She’s not a total idiot. She’s not just looking for an interesting meal.

For Tachibana to step up, to instigate. He’s not a total idiot. He’s not just trying to make lunchtime interesting.

Allow me to don my Captain Obvious face: there’s something more going on here!

It’s that something more that makes Haruka restlessly kick her legs as she lies on her couch thinking about lunch. It’s that something more that makes her shiver, it’s that something more that makes her giggle until she starts sobbing. This is leaps and bounds beyond the ‘deep insights into the female’s thoughts’ we see in other shows of a similar genre: usually some irrational brooding, or, less frequently, simpleminded excitement.

What I see is a feeling that can cause an upstanding and respected member of the fairly rigid Japanese high school culture to put her arms behind her back and play along with an extremely sexualized hostage spoon-feeding fantasy in the middle of her school’s cafeteria.

I might call it “thrill,” something I don’t think is realistically represented often if at all in anime.

And maybe I’m a tool of my own psyche.

But I am thrilled for Amagami SS.

Footnotes

these notes are like lelouch's head to the boot of this post's suzaku

1. A LOT [↩]