Occasionally, an anime comes along that is very different from everything else around it. It may not be the most prominent or the most successful show airing, but its influence can be discerned in its wake like ripples on a still pond. One such a show is Maria-sama ga Miteru.
No explosions, monsters or giant robots here. No zany comedy and every few stylised facial expressions. Maria-sama ga Miteru is a show about life at a very distinctive girls’ school, and the pace is slow, stately and elegant, the result best described as exquisite.
Lillian High School is a French convent-influenced Catholic school for girls in Japan. In order to help girls assimilate into the environment, there is in place what is called the ‘Soeur System’, in which an older girl takes a new student under her wing, presenting her with a rosary as a symbolic gesture. All the girls look up to the student council called the Yamayurikai, headed by the three roses – Rosa Foetida, Rosa Chinensis and Rosa Gigantea, along with their soeurs. The story begins when a quiet, insecure girl named Yumi is selected as a petite souer by Sachiko, a rather stern and distant girl who is Rosa Chinensis en bouton – the petite souer of Rosa Chinensis.
The underlying system is rather complicated, but the stories are generally simple – how little dramas in the relationships of the various soeurs are dealt with, told through Yumi’s eyes. Based on a series of novels that were unexpected hits with older teenaged boys who lapped up the homoerotic undertones of the girls’ absolute devotion to one another, and there is a romance and sophistication to the series, as well as a seemingly limitless charm, that makes it irresistible.
The art is somewhat inconsistent, and still frames often look very ugly – girls with strange pointy noses or painfully skinny bodies – and there is little to animate, but the simple, muted style suits the tone perfectly, and the real stars are the writers and the voice actors. Marimite (as it is known to fans) has one success that stands above the rest – the characters. They are quite simply the most believable characters I’ve seen in an anime, with varying levels of complexity. One of my favourite moments came when I rewatched the first episode of this anime after the end of the first series. When I first saw it, I was thrown in at the deep end, seeing all these unfamiliar characters who all seemed to be part of this one organised group, and I was barely able to distinguish between them, but the disorientation perfectly matched Yumi’s confusion. But then later, I had got to know all the characters and rewatching the scenes, I saw how each of their personalities were always there, but I just didn’t know them well enough to see them on the first viewing.
Everything is very gentle, stately and somewhat idealised – the girls are all very different, but all totally lovely, and life’s problems usually come unravelled in the end. Still, there’s a yearning quality to the beauty that I respond to, understanding why this ideal is so attractive. It’s the flaws that make it believable, the adult edge to all the innocence that make it seem so much more real.
And the fan community (as well as the official creators, with outtake-style DVD extras that are utterly hilarious) has responded to Marimite with great fervour, understanding transplanting the characters into bizarre scenarios works so much better because they’re presented so seriously to begin with. I for one can’t get enough of Nuclear Soeur The Fighter or Maribato, the totally inappropriate shooting and fighting doujin (fan-made) games.
But what really matters is that (while Yoshino is my favourite), Yumi is just the cutest person ever to grace a screen. Ever.
(originally written 31.3.06. Seasons 3-4 here)
No comments:
Post a Comment