Amagami SS Sae Arc – Third Time’s the Charm

The third parallel story arc, featuring the shy and quiet first year Sae Nakata as the heroine, finished up last week. True to form, the story was not compelling in the slightest, the characters were typical to a fault, and everything came together far too easily. But by twisting the storytelling formula just slightly, AIC turned the entire ship around and produced what is easily the best arc of the anime yet. In fact, the success I saw in this arc leaves me with hope that AIC is fully aware of how to handle Amagami SS, and it could end up being one of the best high school romance series in recent years. Do I sound crazy? Read on.

What a difference 4 episodes can make! After Haruka’s arc to start the show, my outlook on this show couldn’t have been more negative. Yet Kaoru’s arc had left me even more in despair by providing a story that started with promise before it fizzled out at about the halfway point. To quote myself from the previous post: “I do intend to stick with this show all the way to the bloody end.” I was not optimistic, to say the least.

But Sae’s arc was a complete turnaround, a great chapter of this anime that had been notable only for its extraordinary failings. In fact, the execution in this arc leaves me hopeful about the direction of this show in general, something I never would have predicted just a month ago.

Haruka made some great appearances in this arc, including her response to, "What does it mean when a girl says she doesn't want to be your little sister?"

Let’s start with the story: there was nothing about these past 4 episodes that were any better than the previous 4 or the 4 before that. Junichi was as uncharismatic as ever, and a little creepy if anything in how he dominated Sae from the very beginning. I did like how the story started out in the summer, showing just how malleable the formula could be, even if the core elements – Junichi’s rejection from 2 years ago, his star-decorated closet, the finale on Christmas – have to remain the same.

And our heroine Sae was somehow even more boring than our hero, with a personality defined solely by the one characteristic: shy. Especially compared to the relatively powerful figures of Haruka and Kaoru of the first two arcs, Sae’s meek and unobtrusive personality was frustrating at times. Seriously, the girl spent 3 weeks training for an interview to get a job as a waitress because she couldn’t talk to people normally.

The plot point that Sae was a transfer student from a rich family was just dropped after the first episode.

Also, her squeaky, high pitched, so-soft-that-it’s-barely-there voice was hard to bear at times (alas, there is but one Mamiko Noto in this world). Her voice was about the same in her ED song, though the animation and art, sometimes reminiscent of Bakemonogatari’s Nadeko OP (Renai Circulation), made the sequence overall better than the first 2.

But none of the story’s glaring flaws ended up mattering in the slightest, thanks to the new approach to the storytelling taken by the show. Perhaps the simplest way of putting it is, the show “got it.” It came in on its own joke and successfully turned into a parody of itself. After Haruka’s awesomely miserable arc, I had decided to keep watching the show out of a macabre fascination, just to see how much it could fall. Perhaps the producers at AIC shared my macabre fascination and decided to make fun of the ridiculousness of the source material instead of simply accepting it and running with it.

The overuse of brushed shots like this aided the humorous storytelling greatly.

“What if Amagami SS turns out to be good?”

Partway into the second episode of the arc, that truly shocking thought occurred to me. It was one of those things that seemed so patently ridiculous that I felt I should be committed for merely entertaining the thought, but somehow, it all made sense, and it still does.

Bear with me, if you will, and listen to the musings of someone who is likely insanely optimistic in the most literal way possible. What would you do if you were a creative, ambitious director handed the responsibility of adapting Amagami into an anime (remember, Amagami SS is directed by Yoshimasa Hiraike, the same guy who directed last season’s excellent Working!!)? A work that is so horrendously derivative, whose characters are insultingly flat, whose attempt at romance is so filled with cliche and misogyny that, well, it makes normal anime look positively feminist by comparison? What would you do?

Wouldn’t you want to make a big “fuck you!” to the original work and its fans? Wouldn’t you want to use this opportunity, to use this adaptation as a platform to criticize the very source material you are adapting? Get a bit of attention by announcing that each of the six stories will get its own adaptation. Then use the first 2 to show everyone just how disastrous straight up adaptations of these typical wish fulfillment dating sim romance stories would be. Next, you turn the tables on the audience. You use the 3rd adaptation to show everyone that you’ve been in on the joke all along. The 4th through 6th? We’ll see.

No fetish kissing scene this arc, though we do find out that Junichi is into furries. And there was obviously that fish footjob scene at the bath in episode 10.

Anyway, as I wrote above, on its own merits, the story was bad. It was exactly what I’ve come to expect out of Amagami SS. There were times when I genuinely felt like cringing, when I really thought that there was no way that the show could bounce back from such a horrible turn of events (some scenes that pop to mind: ro sham bo game at the end of episode 9, speed changing in episode 10, public tentacoo wape in episode 11, gothic lolita + Engrish director in episode 12, I could go on). But each time, the narrator graciously guided us back up from whatever hole the show looked to be digging for itself.

Ah yes, the narrator. He was not just the most influential factor in turning this terrible romantic comedy into a satire, he was the one and only factor. From the very beginning of the first episode, when he made a small dig at Junichi (to which Junichi actually responded) he showed us that this arc wasn’t going to be like the others. He was there to provide balance to the ridiculous things that would go down, to laugh at them along with us, to affirm our disbelief and awe.

Another very nice, self-aware touch, from episode 9. Again, it told us that this arc wouldn't be like the others.

Yet he was not a cynic. His voice was always warm, and he spoke of the destined love story between our two protagonists without irony. He successfully portrayed the wise old man looking at kids experiencing the follies and adventures of youth, appreciating it for what it was, but also fully aware of how silly it was. He rooted for Junichi and Sae, but he wasn’t above making fun of them. In short, he was the proper companion with whom to watch this story unfold.

And again, he kept turning up at just the right times. He wasn’t overbearing or omnipresent like the narrator of Ookami-san and Seven Companions. He didn’t overstay his welcome. There were times when he would disappear for perhaps a bit too long, letting the tension build as the show started to go south. But that made the release during his return all the more satisfying. Prime example being the climax at episode 12, when Junichi and Sae were at the movie theater. The gothic lolita costume, combined with the movie director’s appearance and the tipping chair cliche threatened to put a cringe-inducing cap to the whole thing, but the narrator came back to describe in detail how the cuteness overload “killed” Junichi, putting a decidedly comedic spin on things.

The talking vending machines from episode 10 provided one of my favorite comedic moments.

And that really was all that was needed. Tragedy and comedy are two concepts separated by a hair’s breadth. Whereas first two arcs of Amagami SS were tragically bad – the first one was comedically so – Sae’s arc took that tragedy and spun it around to create a full-on self aware comedy. That is why it was successful.

Going forward, can AIC replicate this success with the second half of the show? There is the worry that this self deprecating approach to the storytelling may have been just a one-off thing, and we’ll go right back to the facepalm of Haruka’s and Kaoru’s arcs again. The cynic in me says to expect that. But the optimist in me says to hope for AIC to build on what they’ve done with Sae’s arc. Throw us a narrator who is more cynical, more ironic, more critical. Do that for the next arc, and then use the final 1/3 of the arcs to really throw the fans in for a loop by presenting complete deconstructions of the stories. In other words, instead of merely transferring the source material to a new medium, adapt it while also injecting its own criticisms of the original work. I know I’m hoping for too much. But it’s nice to want things. And the mere fact that I’m entertaining these thoughts is a testament to AIC’s cleverness and nimbleness when it comes to creating Amagami SS.