Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Gokinjo Monogatari – episode 2

May 12, 2006 on 11:38 pm | In Gokinjo Monogatari | 2 Comments

“He is my childhood friend!”

You know what I love about this show? They don’t even try to make Shishido Rumi’s singing voice sound good. It makes the whole project fit into the understated mid-nineties scheme: full of heart, low of budget.

Tsutomu’s friends force him to break a pet shop visit with Mikako so that they can go on a group date. Mikako gets very angry and almost cries. Nice Body-ko asks Tsutomu to go steady with her, while Mikako wonders “is this feeling love?”.

The first thing you might notice if you happen to watch this episode is that Noriji has an inner-monologue that describes his feelings: “Noriji is concerned,” “Noriji is shocked!”, “Noriji is crying!”. It’s hilarious stuff that was very briefly touched upon in the Paradise Kiss anime. But I made a deal not to talk about that.

As to the story itself: it seems a natural place for a series to start just as childhood friends begin to realise that they have feelings for one another. Tsutomu is at the stage where peer pressure is something that looms all over the place, and so he can’t really make a decision for himself.
The relationship with Nice Body-ko is a forced idea that he has no idea how to get out of, nor does he understand how he even got into it in the first place. When Nice Body-ko asks “Do you hate me?” and he says “No, of course not!”, but thinks “But I don’t [romantically] like you, either,” his dilemma is easy to understand.

Due to miscommunication, the episode ends with Tsutomu agreeing to “go steady” with this person that he barely knows. Yet, knowing that he’s not satisfied, and realising that the relationship brings Mikako pain, can he keep it up? I think not.

Gokinjo Monogatari fails to fall into any traps of this type of anime, with no allegations about girls being fickle or guys being in it for only one thing. You get a brief segment of lust from Tsutomu, but he has an overriding decency that makes this show sweet to watch.
Obviously you can’t string a fake relationship with Nice Body-ko over 52 episodes, so the pacing will be interesting to gauge. It can’t stay here forever, and so it will move on to exciting new pastures with likeable characters. Which is more than I can say for Paradise Kiss