And then the movie isn’t even really about the literature girl in any other sense. She is not the protagonist; we don’t even get her perspective for more than one 10-second scene. The real focus here is Inoue Konoha, a character cast in the mould of such marvelous specimens of manhood as Shinichiro.

As Ryan points out, the main impetus of the plot and the drama in this film comes from his interactions with a cast of secondary characters, all related to him through romance in some way or other.

We have the crazy immature girl, Noe Miu.
We have the red-haired girl, Aiko Nanase.
We have the bro who’s crushing on the red-haired girl, Miyokichi Kazushi.

Literature Girl is a love quadrangle. Where’s Hiromi, you ask? There is no Hiromi.

There are three ‘characters’ vying for Konoha’s attention: Miu, Nanase, and Konoha’s writing.

Miu consistently attempts to undermine Konoha’s freedom and creative expression for her own therapeutic purposes. Nanase sees writing as a proxy for Touko, and knows that Konoha’s involvement in the school literature club equates to his involvement with Touko.

“I was rejected,” she says after Konoha tells her that he wants to write and runs off into the night.

She meant that she’d lost to Touko. The writers meant that she’d lost to writing. They’re both correct, in a sense—the truth isn’t always one thing. But really, much as True Tears was mostly about Shinichiro’s development as an artiste, so too is Literature Girl primarily about Konoha rediscovering his passion and taking up the pen once more.

Of course, Konoha loves Touko. She’s one part megalomaniacal Suzumiya Haruhi to Konoha’s Kyon, two parts obsessive Yomiko Readman to Konoha’s Nenene, and several parts unadulterated selflessness—erring here on the side of Mugi, erring there on the side of Alicia.

And Touko has no intention of competing with Konoha’s writing.

She’s not even a choice in the quadrangle: the moment Konoha runs to her side, she disappears, kawarimi no jutsu, and poof, in her place Konoha is left only with his desire to write.

Why does Touko unilaterally cut herself off from Konoha?

Guilt, maybe—guilt over hogging him for two years. Over forcing him into her club, forcing him to write for her. And maybe that complex hid his true feelings from her; maybe she doesn’t know that he never resented her until the last second before the train doors close. Maybe he even appreciated the heavy-handed encouragement!

But is Touko really clueless? She consistently displays vast insight. Despite her demonic genesis, her only “powers” are completely mundane: she’s good at conflict resolution; she has a vast memory for the contents of books; she has a friend who works at the school planetarium. And with powers like those, mundane though they are, she couldn’t possibly be totally in the dark, right?

She knows Konoha’s feelings, and she makes every decision at every turn throughout the film in an attempt to steer him back toward his novelist career, to push him back into his passion.

And so Literature Girl becomes the movie that isn’t really about Amano Touko, but maybe really, really is: despite not getting much screen time, despite not even being a potential love interest, despite being the supernatural plot hook to a completely mundane tale, Touko ends up being a proxy for Konoha’s true love (writing), not the other way around, and she helps guide our troubled protagonist back to the ‘best end’ of his love quadrangle.

Book title: ‘bungaku shoujo’ (literature girl)

And of course, on a meta level, Bungaku Shoujo (the book) within Bungaku Shoujo (the movie) is definitely about Amano Touko; it is undoubtedly Konoha’s love song to his bibliophile senpai.

P.S.

Seiyuu Stuff: Why did Production I.G. feel the need to hire Shizuka Itou for the sake of one line of dialogue? One useless, useless line of dialogue? Also, if you hate Asakura Miu, you’re not alone! lolikit’s got your back: Miu is yet another incarnation of the paragon ogress herself, Hirano Aya.

But almost all of the criticism leveraged against Aiko and her actions, nay, presence in True Tears is made within the paradigm of bad harem anime. People wanted True Tears to be a typical love polygon anime, they wanted Shinichiro to be a chick magnet for stupid reasons, and so on. They expected Aiko to be more or less, but not to be what she was: a wrench in everything. Something Shinichiro hadn’t planned on, but not a windfall. Something that threw him off. Something that threw off his audience.

The problem with Aiko is that everything about her is awkward.

Not that she as a character is awkward (though she might be).

But that she as a part of the show is awkward.

No one was ready for True Tears to be so honest, so genuine. Sometimes, your best friend’s girlfriend falls in love with you. And you’re like, “well, shit.” And you do exactly what Shinichiro did and refuse to let it become an issue. And she fades into Bolivia. And when the story’s over, and you’re happily sharing gentle days with a girl you love, you might remember the time she forced a kiss on you—but probably not.

Rest in oblivion, Aiko.

You were honest. And Shinichiro was honest. And True Tears was good.

No one—not even I—was ready.

But I understand you now.

Maria-sama ga Miteru: a show about disgustingly rich girls attending a private school that at once shields them from the harshness of reality and subjects them to the darkest, most horrific thing a girl could go through: romantic friendship with other girls! Maybe I’m a lesbian, by Yuki Seto, on sale at doujin markets near you.

I don’t like the new OP song but that’s just because I’m a stickler for tradition. When Undine came on in Episode 26 of Aria the Natural, I came fucktons of omobuckets. When they got rid of Pastel Pure, I cried more rivers than Noe can throw chickens into. Other thoughts on the OP include, but are not limited to:

• “the cake is lie!”
• “magical girl lyrical fukuzawa?!”
• “needs moar Rosa Gigantea (and not the Shimako variety)”
• “FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES”
• “キター！”

Fuck yes fuck yes Crazy Sachiko is back!!

The second best character Of All Time is Ogasawara Sachiko, AKA “Crazy Sachiko” as dubbed by my senpai and hero, Lovely Kitsune. I say second best because Fukuzawa Yumi (ribbons, funny faces) is younger, and thusly a more acceptable lust-target. Fuck yeah lolis.

Back to Sachiko… why is she so awesome? Nobody knows. All anyone knows is that she just is.

I mean, shit man. She has a “Sa” in her name (さ). Look at that mother-fucker right there. Where have you seen that before? I’ll tell you the fuck where. Remember this guy? Shit yeah you remember that guy. Coincidence? I think not. Sa-chan does not forgive and Sa-chan does not forget. Sa-chan is a psychobitch; expect to not go on dates with her. Did I mention she likes tea? Fuck.

It’s like a damn waterfall down there when I think of her, SHIT.

- question for the peanut gallery: if one can “come harder than omo,” can one “come down more gracefully than IcyStorm” (who orgasms while watching anime approximately once per episode per open IM window yet still functions in society)? -

Sorry for getting derailed. At least “Sachiko” is a better name than “Darry” and all that. Oh and her nose is more sexual. But I digress… back to the episode.

Waitaminute…

I’m going to go download a different version of the episode once my eyes stop being the new waterfall.

True Tears was surprisingly good in the production quality department, but that didn’t save it from failing hard as a show. Thankfully it redeemed itself in the last episode (or was it second to last? Who cares?) when Noe slipped and fell out of a tree, Ayu-style.

You all know what I think of Ayu.

Anyway, as I like to refer to the moment, “Noe fell out of a tree, epic lulz ensued.”

Oh sure, I remember some small details of the celebrations. We usually had turkey, and cornbread, and sweet potatoes. But that’s pretty generic.

Now, Thanksgiving doesn’t mean those things to me. It means a broken family. It means my parents’ divorce. It means spending the first half of the day with my father and the second half of the day with my mother. It means listening to my mother’s brother and my mother’s dead friend’s brother argue about whether or not all Muslims are terrorists, and whether or not we should exterminate them. It means holding my head and crying about the fucking idiot Jews in my family. It means too much food and no appetite.

Riex said that the goal of the promotion was to relate a food to an anime blog, so maybe this won’t be a dominating contest entry. But winning a contest is secondary to my goal of getting this shit of my chest.

Sixten represents brokenness. In fact, he is an emissary of it, what with his Miao-sensei comics that involve a genderbent, cat-eared, tsunderekko version of Jason. His blog is a bastion of it. His blog. My Thanksgiving. His blog. My life. His blog. My life. His blog.

So there you have it. Sixten, Sixten’s blog—they are like my Thanksgiving. Broken anime fans, broken families, whatever. Anime fans are like families, in that they can break.

Excuse me, I’m going to go wallow in self-pity now.

I might make a funnier entry for this contest at some point (like, Anti-Jason Brainwashing Cookies = me + drm + tj han + corydorf etc.). I might not. I DON’T KNOW.

So it looks like ef ~a tale of melodies~ is going to be the first in a long awaited new series of posts here on Miao on My Mind: A Certain Whoredom Index. Basically, what this means is that ef ~a tale of melodies~ is deep. Like a whore.

Before I go on, I want to make something clear: admittance to the Index is not necessarily bad. “Whore” is usually used as a derogative, but on this site it only means “thing that has some semblance of depth.” You know. Like a standard Kyoto Animation show. Or like Author’s incisive postings. Or like CJ. I could give more examples, but I’d rather add to the Index with further posts. That said, let’s examine our current specimen!

I called it before anyone else! Eat my dust, bitches!

So I was watching episode 3 of ef ~a tale of melodies~, and the OP came up, and I was like “lol” because the OP makes me lol. But then I stopped myself—”lolikit! Get it together! This show is srs fkn bsns!!” And I forced myself to take a second look at what I was watching. One opening of VLC, a shitload of play/pause syncing, and half a minute later, I was looking at the OP sequences of episodes 2 and 3 side by side. As I’d remembered, the OP had once been far more monochrome. It’s got colors now! Lots of them! They clash and look bad!

Shinbo must be up to something!

Furthermore, the girls have faces now. I remember when, in ef ~a tale of memories~, the OP visuals were changed so that the girls were like, no longer chained, or something (I don’t recall all the details, geez). But that was for the last episode, and this is episode three. If the changes were less subtle, I’d guess that the animators finally got comfortable with their budget, but really, it’s just a matter of colorizing something.

I guess another difference is in the amount of text displayed in the background at any given point.

Speaking of text… the text in the last ef’s OP was the text of Chihiro’s novel. What could this OP’s text be? The “policies” of Himura? It’ll be interesting to see where this ef goes, since Kuze seems to be on a 24 hour clock at this point and Himura’s backstory is not cool at all. He’s much better sitting on a church altar playing Isako than he is being angsty about his dead sister. Well. He is better. I’m not sure the plot is. But it’s all questionable either way.

And we’re left wondering, did the lily exploding and fading like a firework inside the dark recesses of Kuze’s mind at 00:26 somehow symbolize his chance at raw sex with Mizuki disappearing as his death draws nearer?

Fear not, Kuze! You can make like Narcissu and disappear into the waves, and then you’ll have no regrets because you didn’t die at home or on 7F.

Lily’s less important than that, right?

Eventually, Mizuki will get over you and begin screwing her love interest’s twin sister. After a couple weeks, Renji will find out and bow out of his relationship with Chihiro like the true wimp he is. Maybe, in desperation, he’ll settle on his mother (whom, incidentally, people seem to be forgetting is just as delicious as Furukawa Sanae). But no matter what happens there, everyone’s happy—including Himura, ’cause he got to send you off with some poorly-pronounced German.

Did I do a good job of presenting an “omg stylistic thingy omg” element, pretending to begin analyzing it, and then launching into rabid fanboyism? A good impression, right? You guys are impressed, right? I could take over for Owen anytime, right?

lol lights don’t work that way and neither do shadows

I have to confess to something shameful—Shirukii’s no-nonsense straighter-than-a-Euclidian-line anime blog has, in fact, affected my sense of humor. I’ll always remember a playful response by one of his readers to a comment by “Raigomaru“—”chickens don’t work that way, and neither does death.”

Alright, that’s all from me for now.

Hopefully that’s all the ef blogging I do for the rest of this season. We really don’t need more pseudo-intellectual elitist pricks around here, right?

Seriously, TT noefags. She didn’t even have an unhappy ending. Her brother’s still pumping her full of money, she has friends, Jibeta’s coop got repaired, and she was key to the development of a guy she cared a lot about. And furthermore, it’s arguable that she didn’t even love Shinichiro in a manner deserving the kind of relationship that he comes to have with Hiromi.

In conclusion, to anyone who is bitter about Noe “not winning”:
go search the cardboard box for some interesting pictures and let those satisfy your nasty desires.

True Tears is by no means a good show and by no means a worthless show. Actually, by some means it could be either. I don’t want to go into that here and now. All I’m saying is that characters are characters and they serve the greater plot and it’s not about who “wins” but what happens in the end. In the end, Noe got a pretty good deal for someone who should be diagnosed clinically insane.

TT, mother-fuckers.