Though I have not had as much time for anime lately as I would like, I have made room in my weekly schedule for one new anime this season: Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! The title may sound familiar to many in the anime community, as the title character, Hana Uzaki, was at the center of a huge twitter controversy in October of last year. The Japanese Red Cross had partnered with Uzaki’s creator, manga artist Take, to promote blood donations.
The result was this poster:
(She’s saying “Senpai, have you never donated blood? Could it be… you’re afraid of needles?")
A white progressive dude living in Japan was offended by the poster, and made the following tweet:
Aside from the insanity of using #metoo for a poster of a fictitious character, many responded in confusion and outrage, wanting to know just how a poster of a fully dressed 19-year-old girl asking passers-by why they have never donated blood was offensive or inappropriate.
Fast-forward a few months, and Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out the anime series premiers, and progressive twitter is still frothing at the mouth about this girl, to the point of posting several different redraws of her (most of which, by sheer coincidence I’m sure, make her taller, less skinny, and more Caucasian in appearance.) The way they have talked about the show, one would think is was the lewdest, most disgusting piece of Weeb trash ever made, promoting all manner of wicked things, including rape and child porn.
Like so many, I was intrigued, curious as to what the fuss was about.
I expected to find a show with racy humor and bad taste.
What I found was one of the most wholesome shows I’ve ever watched.
In brief, the show revolves around two characters: College student Hana Uzaki, and her scary-looking, muscular upperclassman Shinichi Sakurai. Though they were friends in High School, college life has turned Shinichi into an introverted loner with no social life. Afraid that he’ll miss out on all college life has to offer, the extroverted and loud Hana coerces him to hang out with her. “Hang out” isn’t a euphemism: that’s all they really do. They play baseball, go shopping, go to the beach, watch movies, cook, and play “MeowCraft” together, having fun and annoying each other in equal measure. Through it all, it’s obvious to everyone except them that a very sweet (and fun to watch) romance is blossoming.
So, again, what is the problem with Uzaki-chan that has so many Western progressives angry?
I can think of three reasons, all interrelated. First, anime is one of the few types of entertainment they know they cannot control. Hollywood, the major television networks, video game companies, and sports organizations in the West all bow and scrape and apologize when someone “woke” complains about something they do. The Japanese media, on the other hand, ignores them, and even uses woke anger as a marketing tool (as they did with Uzaki-chan).
Second, they know that anime is popular with people who reject their narrative, and therefore find the medium suspect. In this reading, Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out is just the latest scapegoat in their attempt to convince everyone to stay away from the medium, just as Rising of the Shield Hero was. A basic google search of “anime problematic” will turn up pages of entries by angry progressives, all complaining about how, in addition to the way it portrays women, anime in general is much too male-centric and doesn’t include nearly enough diversity (by which they mean that cartoons aimed at Japanese boys are much too masculine and much too Japanese. Wrap your head around that.)
But the last, and to me, the most important reason, is that they seem to harbor a subconscious (or conscious) hatred for the wholesome. When I decided to take my relationship with Christ seriously, including going to frequent confession and receiving the Holy Eucharist every day, something strange began to happen. Crass, crude, and lewd things started to bother me in a way they hadn’t before, almost akin to an allergic reaction. I believe that the reverse is true as well: the farther you sink into degeneracy, the more you react to normal, wholesome things like Gollum choking on Lembas bread.
The fact of the matter is that a show like Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out could not be made in the modern West. Any story made here about two college students in a slow burn romance would have the two of them jumping into bed together in the first episode, or else each jumping into someone else’s bed. The episodes would focus not on how fun going outside and hanging with a friend can be, but about various woke topics. There would be a Patronize… I mean… Celebrate a Minority episode. There would be an It’s OK to be Gay episode. There would be an Orange Man Bad episode. And in place of Hana’s passionate speech about how much she enjoys mint chip sweets, a Western writer would have her shouting about how proud she is to have had an abortion.
It would, in short, be like every other trashy show on television.
As it is, Anime remains one of the few mediums where one can find stories that don’t feature Woke Preaching or constant fornication. This, as I’ve said previously, is one of the many reasons I enjoy it so much. The raging of progressives has done nothing to change my mind, and I suspect all it’s done is draw more people sick of their puritan programming over to the Land of the Rising Sun.
So, in short, check out Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out. And remember,
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