Transitioning from middle to high school can be somewhat of a fresh start, where people get to reinvent themselves in order to better fit their new surrounding. There are also those that stick to their roots and hang out with the old friend they have had from the previous years. There is no clear right or wrong way to approach such matters, but the one thing that stays with both situations is they are trying to establish some type of group to be apart of. While, at the same time, thing to be someone who is special, someone who sticks out from this group is also important at this new stage in live; and that struggle to balance the two different categories, group vs individual, is one of the difficulties of being in high school.
That struggle is something that I find interesting and Japan as well, by the sheer amount of anime set in a high school. Unfortunately, there aren't that many anime that tackle this endeavor head on. This is where the likes of the Young Animator Training Project -- known as Anime Mirai -- comes to shine with the one shot style of anime. In this case, the anime name "Harmonie" is the one I thinks stands out this year and is also the one that deals with this individual versus group topic.
What is Harmonie?
Harmonie focuses around the spaces that every person has to themselves. Whether or not these worlds are affected or influenced by the people around you is debatable, but one thing that is certain is it's somewhere comfortable, for the creator of such a world. What if there was a way to step into someone else's world and be able to explore it? Well this is something that Honjou Akio did after listening to a song by Makina Juri. What is in such a world is where all the interesting bits come into play. Let alone that closeness that people undergo after having very similar experiences. Only thing is, these things don't come without a price.
Collectivism vs Individualism
Being the "weird kid" can be both freeing and isolating at the same time. With the freedom to express your individuality, but also be shunned from most groups. This battle of collectivism and individualism is something Juri has experienced in her youth, and that resulted in her completely distancing herself from what makes Juri herself. She traded her world for what was an all access pass to being in, what I guess would be considered, the in crowd. In the case of Juri, she traded her individuality for the comfort of being accepted by a group of people who happen to be the more popular type of people within the high school.
On the other hand we have Akio, who hangs out with his friends and they discuss anime together. Although Akio isn't as much of a tragic case as Juri, he only really interacted with this small group of people because everyone else thinks of his group as weird. So, it is almost like Akio chose his individuality, but still has a group of people who accept him and the majority of everyone else actively avoids them talking under their breath about them quite frequently.
I would say there is a divide between collectivism and individualism, it just has its own benefits and consequences based on which one you favor most. Of course a mix of the two is far more powerful of a bound, and that is what happened when Akio was the one of the first to enter Juri's world absent of the judgement that Juri has had suffered through in her childhood.
Connecting the Two
The one talent that makes Akio standout, but he isn't that proud of, is his ability to learn a song just by listening to it once -- which the anime would call "perfect pitch". That talent is what made Juri aware of his existence after Juri's ringtone went off during class. That song was something that came from the dream Juri has been having since she was a kid. That song was essentially the key to what was Juri's world and after she allow Akio to listen to the full song, he fell right into the same world Juri has visited often. And this new-found common starting place is where a new relationship started.
Juri finally had a place to be both apart of a group, rather someplace outside her head, and actually express the one thing she has tried to push away from for so long. I find this was of connecting two people very intriguing because of the mundaneness it is on the surface, but for the most part all relationships start at one common place. I also love that it brings together two people from different groups and create something that felt like Juri has grown by accepting herself, and Akio is stepping outside his familiar group of friends. The only this is, as I alluded to in the summary of Harmonie, there is conflict that comes from this newly forming affair.
Conflicting Conclusion
Most of the push back that came from Juri and Akio becoming closer was from Juri's friends, mostly just Gotou. The details aren't that important, but there is an interesting parallels to be made about this high school world and Juri's dream world. A lot of what happens in that dream is very similar to what happens between Juri and Akio. The closer the kid and the female doll got, the more these other dolls tried to break them apart. And by the time they break free for that conflict, both of them end up become extremely close, while also enjoying their time together. So even if this anime didn't show them getting closer, it is inferred based on the dream and the ending of Juri happy crying about finding someone similar to her.
To conclude this post, I want to say I enjoyed this anime way too much than I should have, but unfortunately it is only one episode. Since it was only one and ended so well, I still wish there was some fleshing out of the friction that was going to eventually happen the closer Juri and Akio became. Also, it would be nice to see how Akio's friend would react when the relationship between the two main characters get more serious. There is also the relationship being based on the hazy memories of Juri; Akio never really told her the full truth to Juri when he found out the dream he had were suggested to him from the track after Juri's song.
Last is the end scene in the dream world where the doll girl shows the boy her rainbow insides. That seem like showing him her true self; and as I concluded that the dream world parallels with that real world, I want to see Juri also showing her true self to Akio.
So leaving an anime open to questions like this really is the strength and weakness of it. It shows that I'm invested to just trying to predict what might happen to our main characters and also leaves a starting point for if studios decide to pick it up. Either way, I'm glad that I watched it and hope more people watch out for things coming Anime Mirai.
Orginally posted to the now shutdown sekijitsu.com: Archived Page
