Suzuka is not the only one haunted by the recent past. Emotions can't be turned on or off like a spigot. Although Yamato has ostensibly committed himself to Honoka, it's clear that both he and Suzuka have some "unresolved issues" and lingering desire; though to her credit, Suzuka is more aware consciously aware of it. Unfortunately Honoka has walked into the middle of an emotional mine field...and is about to find out how much torture love triangles produce for all parties.
Suzuka Volume 4 is where the emotional roller coaster dives off the first big hurdle and really picks up speed. As we last left the track team in Volume 3, both Suzuka and Yamato have been left stranded on the train platform in Hiroshima as the last bullet train for the night pulls out of the station. Like an idiot, Yamato also left his cellphone on the train, and Suzuka left her purse behind as well. This puts Honoka through an emotional wringer, since she can't understand why her new boyfriend is stuck in his old hometown with his old flame (or old wanna-be flame, for him) Suzuka. Suzuka is understandably pissed at Yamato. Yamato makes arrangements with his parents, who live in Hiroshima's suburbs, for them to spend the night with them. Suzuka gets to meet Yamato's family, and they like her. And all of them blame Yamato for their predicament. Suzuka remains prickly and stand-offish around Yamato whenever they're alone...in fact she tells him to leave her alone. Yamato is bored, takes the dog for a walk, etc. He wants to show Suzuka around his hometown but she declines. Impulsively, he asks her if she wants to stay one more night to see the fireflies near the bridge? Suzuka declines, then unexpectedly decides yes, she would like to see the fireflies....*after* Yamato has already promised Honoka they would return to Tokyo that night.
Yamato takes Suzuka to the bridge, revealing that it has special meaning for him, as it was on this bridge that he declared his love to a special girl in junior high, who also rejected him. Unfortunately, the fireflies are a no show at first, just like years ago, and what's worse, says Yamato, it began to rain, and to top it off the girl rejected him then also. Suzuka, we will see, is very skilled at playing head-games. She says she wants to see how he would have declared his love to the girl if things had gone right and it had not rained and if the fireflies had been out. Yamato is unsure of himself, but goes to the riverbank and finds a flower and a single firefly. He goes back up to the bridge and asks Suzuka if she's ever seen a bell flower? He puts the firefly gently inside the flower and it glows, then, presenting the flower to Suzuka, who's somewhat awe struck by the beauty of the scene before her, and Yamato says aloud "I've liked you ever since you've been at our school, would you please go out with me?"...then pauses and says "...or something like that; is how I would have done it."
"Okay, I'll go out with you.", Suzuka says, entranced. The fireflies begin to appear all around them. Yamato blurts out at Suzuka to stop making fun of him..."I'm not making fun of you; I'm serious.", says Suzuka honestly. She catches herself then turns around, turning her face away from Yamato. Recovered, she turns her head back, sticks out her tongue at Yamato and passes off her moment of painful sincerity as nothing but a joke.
Yamato is greeted at the train station by a nervous Honoka. He tries to reassure her, and says the girl he likes is right here with him now. Honoka falls into his arms, blissfully happy, because it's the first time Yamato has actually said he likes her. Yamato kisses her in the train station...she's a little embarrassed but also very happy. Alas, trouble is already brewing. Suzuka had left the couple in a huff once Honoka walked up. It becomes increasingly evident that Suzuka is rent by jealousy towards Honoka, though she never admits it aloud.
As the episodes of this volume progress, we see Suzuka increasingly depressed, even despondent...spending a long time standing alone, overwhelmed by her inner thoughts and emotions and longings. She waits after school for Yamato on a rainy day, just to give him her umbrella. Not to walk with him, but just for him to carry something that belongs to her. Her best friend notices and asks her if she still has feelings for him, which Suzuka denies. I was a little surprised by the way the question was done in the script. I would've expected the writers to do it as a statement followed by a tag question...which is a noted female verbal technique....something like..."You still have feelings for him, don't you?"; The "don't you?" is the tag question.
Yamato gets bad advice from his friends and is too physically aggressive with Honoka, who is confused and frightened by his actions, and resists him. He's compensating for his inner guilt, the fact that he still can't get Suzuka off his mind, nor can he speak of it openly with Honoka, since it would undermine their relationship and cause her emotional pain. Honoka's best friend, the pop celebrity Nana, calls Yamato out on his bullshit, notes that he doesn't really know Honoka very well at all and needs to; He doesn't even know when her birthday is, Nana chides him. When he finds out he is pressed to get her a birthday present in time for her birthday...but like a clueless idiot winds up asking Suzuka to help him pick something out...to which she reluctantly agrees. Suzuka does try to mitigate Yamato's cluelessness, taking them to a shopping district far from home, on the other side of town. She also cautions Yamato not to say too much about the shopping trip to Honoka. Yamato decides to buy some jewelry, a simple necklace, but asks Suzuka to model it for him. Suzuka is uncomfortable but agrees to, reluctantly. It looks beautiful on her, but Suzuka says "who cares if it looks good on me, the question is will it look good on Honoka."
Yamato decides it will and buys the necklace from a street vendor. Unfortunately Honoka has been out shopping for Yamato in the same remote district and spots the two together. She's able to contain her jealousy for the moment but it still eats away at her. Yamato presents the gift to Honoka on her birthday and at first she's delighted, but when Yamato goes on and on talking about his day out shopping with Suzuka, she notices how animated Yamato becomes, and her jealously spills over again. She finally tells him to shut up and refuses his gift, saying she doesn't want it anymore, then runs off crying. Yamato is dumbfounded and clueless (been there, done that, sad to say).
He slinks back to his apartment where he encounters Suzuka standing outside her apartment on the terrace, looking very wistful and lonely. He confesses his screw-up with Honoka, and Suzuka gets angry and chews him out for being stupid.
This volume is so, so good. All of these episodes have an emotional depth and complexity that is just amazing. Suzuka is definitely the star of the show. Her subtle actions and expressions...beautiful. She's becoming aware that although she rejected Yamato, her old boyfriend is dead and gone and not coming back, and the truth is she still does have feelings for Yamato, too. She has jealousy for Honoka. She's conflicted because she wants Yamato to be happy with Honoka, wants him to be a good boyfriend to her...but she can't shake her own desires for him, which are mostly subconscious but starting to rise to the surface...return of the repressed. Likewise, Yamato is still bewitched by Suzuka. Turns out "settling for silver" isn't as easy as Yamato thought it might be. He's using Honoka as an escape, as a way not to think about Suzuka, which is painful, but he can't help thinking of her anyway, which produces guilt and causes him to be insensitive and inappropriate with Honoka, beyond what she's comfortable with. Yamato's biggest fault is his lack of honesty and lack of awareness of his emotions. Suzuka is more aware than he is of her inner emotional turmoil, though she, too, has a problem with honesty, at least when confronted by others...but when she's alone, by herself, she can be honest. Just like she was honest and sincere on the bridge in Hiroshima, surrounded by fireflies, giving Yamato the answer she wishes she could have brought herself to give at the Parade.
As a person with Asperger's syndrome, I wish that Anime in English had been this good, and this widely available when I was growing up as a teenager. I think it would have helped me understand and cope with teen angst and emotions much better. Anime stories like this one are very expressive of human emotion, very instructive as well.
We "Aspies" have to often intellectually process such human interactions, cues, etc, because we don't know them intuitively, through empathy. Also, it is said that Asperger's syndrome people have difficulty reading emotion in people's faces. It's not that we *can't* read people's faces, it's that it's more of a challenge for us to do so. NT's pick up on things much faster and more readily than we do. I've seen among other "Aspies" an affinity for Japanese Anime, not the least because the animators in Japan are very good at conveying deep human emotion through the expressions of their characters. Sometimes they're slightly exaggerated; but even when subtle (by anime standards) they're detectable even to us "Aspies", often by the music, the way a shot is framed, etc. It allows us to vicariously participate in this emotive realm that too often we're not really in tune with in the real NT world around us. Anime is instructive to us on so many levels, which is why we love it. If only NTs were as expressive as Anime characters in everyday life. Alas, it's something we have to learn to infer intellectually, I'm afraid. It can be done, but it's a longer learning curve for us "Aspies". I was, in my teenage years, ruled by black-or-white, extremely romantic notions of love that left me an emotional cripple. I believed that unless I found my one true love in High School, I was doomed to a life of lonely solitude. Thus I was always afraid to pursue or commit to relationships unless I believed with an impossibly high degree of certainty that this was the girl I wanted to potentially marry someday. I was unable--back then--to view relationships as often transitory phenomena...that you could just live for the moment and enjoy the time you have, with the understanding it might not last forever and that was ok. I do understand that now, but I wasted a lot of years of my life believing very silly, overly romantic notions about what love and relationships ought to be like instead of just jumping in and having relationships and learning by trial and error. I'm glad I didn't knock up my High School sweetheart(s), but on the other hand, I do wish that I'd been able to loose my virginity with someone I genuinely loved back in High School rather than anonymously with a cute, blonde North Texas girl in the back of my sedan my freshman year of college. The women I have been lucky to be with have always been beautiful. I always find myself amazed that such a pretty woman, each and every time, would want to be with someone like me. Although I'm divorced, I do affirm that I did love my wife when I married her, and before I married her, when we first started making love. I recall that when I worked in Denton last, she did actually ask me on a date, which was awkward as hell. I turned her down but I think her biological clock was ticking and she wanted one last chance to have a child by me. She ended up shacking up with her next door neighbor instead. Their relationship failed, but she still had his baby. I have no other explanation as to why she asked me, her ex-husband, out, before she finally got pregnant by another man.
Suzuka reminds me of an old flame of mine in particular, a very passionate Latina whom I used to date from work. We, too, were involved in a love triangle, but unlike Yamato's story, where it's a F-M-F love triangle, this was, for Yaz and me, a M-F-M triangle, which is equally painful if not more so. Yaz already had a boyfriend but was dissatisfied with him. I declared my interest in Yaz, and she told me about her boyfriend. I accepted the rejection calmly and forgot about it. But then Yaz kept flirting with me shamelessly, relentlessly. I'd reject her but she wouldn't give up. We finally went on a date together and spent the day together and really enjoyed ourselves, but then guilt got the better of her and she rejected me again at the end of the day. I accepted the 2nd rejection ostensibly, but then kissed Yaz impulsively. She cried out "why did you have to kiss me!?", then kissed me back.
I won't go into details but it didn't end well, though the denouement was unexpectedly nice, if brief and fleeting. But the emotional wringer I went through resonates within me, and reminds me a lot of the oncreen action at the heart of not only Suzuka, but also Rumbling Hearts and to a lesser degree Peach Girl. I only had a "normal" dating relationship with a woman, yet another co-worker, a few years after my first divorce. We dated for several months and broke things off only when I moved away. I've since moved back but don't have the heart to face her again. I'm hoping she has a new boyfriend and is happy now and will just forget about me.
Anyway, like I said, I wish stories like Suzuka had been around when I was growing up. I so wish I could get an informed "do over" of my teenage years and early-to-late 20s. But life is not a dress rehearsal but one continuous improve routine. The stage lights are always on, and the show must go on, through highs and lows, and when the final curtain falls, there is no encore, there is no repeat performance.
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