Part 2 of An Anime Lent
(Warning: As with last week, this week's show is rather racy. No sexual acts ever actually occur on screen, but lewd jokes and references abound. As before, use discernment when deciding whether or not to watch, and say no to piracy!)
The first full week of Lent is over, and before sending us into another week of penance, the Church comforts us with the image of Our Lord transfigured on Mt. Tabor, revealing his hidden glory to Sts. Peter, James, and John, conversing with the glorified prophets Moses and Elijah, and endorsed by the voice of the Father out of the Cloud (Matt 17:1-9). This episode also foreshadows Our Lord's Agony in the Garden (in which the same Apostles, so enraptured here by Our Lord's glory, could not keep themselves awake to witness His sufferings) and the glory of Easter Sunday ("Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of Man be risen from the dead."). As the Apostles see Him now, so shall we see Him, and so shall we be, on the Last Day.
But this vision of Divine Love is reserved only for the pure of heart. It is this purity we seek to obtain during these 40 days, and our sacrifices and penances are worthless if they do not help us towards this goal. This was a difficult enough endeavor when western culture took the Christian Faith seriously. Unfortunately, we find ourselves in an age that holds innocence in contempt, sees greed as the gold standard, and spits out more filth than a flooded urban sewer system. Those reading this are, most likely, actively resisting this lewd atmosphere in their own lives and families. It is not an easy task, however: like it or not, it is the air we breath and the water we swim in, and, despite our best efforts, still affects us in surprising ways.
Which brings me to this week's anime show: Ao-chan Can't Study.
Like Watamote, Ao-chan Can't Study is a comedy, and stars a lonely, socially awkward high school girl (the purple-haired Ao Horie). It's humor also revolves around embarrassing situations and crude misunderstandings. Unlike Watamote, however, Ao-chan Can't Study is much more lighthearted, as can be seen in it opening song:
(Unfortunately, I couldn't find the op with English subtitles. You can listen to an English cover of the song here:)
There is one other crucial difference from Watamote (besides the presence of a male lead). Unlike Tomoko, Ao is conventionally pretty and doesn't have extreme social anxiety. What she does have is a single father who writes smut, and has advertised his work at every school event since Ao was in kindergarten. He even named her after a lewd joke ("Show them your Ao-face.")
As a result, she has no friends to speak of. She met her closest confidant when she was in kindergarten, and they haven't spoken in years.
To cope with this, Ao puts all her time and energy into studying so she can get into a university. Not because she has a passion for a particular subject or career; she just wants to get away from her dad. And no wonder: which of us would want to live in the same house with a man who assumes any emotional outburst means that we're "in heat," or whose first response to a question about boys is "Which fetish?"
Such is Ao's life, until one day at school her popular, handsome classmate Takumi Kijima confesses his love for her.
Takumi is, to put it plainly, a saint. When Ao's dad lifts up her shirt with a fishing rod in front of him, Takumi responds by pulling her shirt back down and telling her she's worth so much more that (this prompts him to confess to her.) When Ao's dad spikes Takumi's lunch with off brand Viagra, Takumi leaves his lunch date with Ao early so he doesn't, as he puts it, "do something I'll regret." When Ao's old friend from kindergarten tries to seduce him, he ignores her and wonders out loud how Ao is doing. When Ao asks for space after his declaration of love, he gives her space without complaint. When he and Ao are studying alone together, he doesn't pull any moves, because he knows how important Ao's grades are to her.
Ao's response to Takumi's affection is to be deathly afraid that he is going to rape her. Given the smut she's been raised around, this isn't too surprising. Most of the show's humor revolves around this misunderstanding: Ao will think that Takumi is about to try something lewd. He doesn't. She is relived, but increasingly frustrated with him.
This culminates in her thinking to herself that if Takumi was a girl and she were a boy, she would already have bedded him. What follows is an awkward silence as Ao comes to grips with the implications: Takumi isn't the pervert here. She is.
This is a classic case of the Girardian Scapegoating have all engaged in: projecting our faults onto other people so we don't have to fix them. Many is the time I've blamed an angry outburst on whatever "provoked" it, or excused laziness with "unrealistic expectations," or blamed my struggles with chastity on the culture we live in. And while any of these might be true to some extent, the reality is that none of these triggers would affect us so much if there were nothing in us that wanted to respond to them. Blaming others is easier, but it also ensures our hearts will remain malformed. The harder way, the way of humility, hard work, and divine grace, is the only way to root these things out of our lives.
Thankfully, Ao is able to recover somewhat from her upbringing. By the end of the series, she's able to be honest with Takumi about her feelings and be anxious about normal romantic things, such as kissing. (She and Takumi do kiss at the end, and it is glorious.)
So too it is possible for us to recover, and come ever more out of our carnal mindsets. Seeing as it's Lent, there is no time like the present.
One final point: throughout the series, Ao is repeatedly ostracized by her peers as "dirty," due to her dad's profession. Takumi never does this. Likewise, Our Lord Jesus never does it to us. He sees our struggles, and is ever cheering us on. None of us has lost our worth as a human being deserving of love, no matter how or how much we have sinned.
Happy repentance, my dear readers. Remember that my novel Cain: Son of Adam is available for free on Kindle Unlimited. Check it out and enjoy a mythological retelling of world's first murderer.
Stay tuned for next week's Anime Lent feature:
By the Prince of Demons: Jesus, the Pharisees and Teasing Master Takagi-san.