With episode 12 we reach our destination, the end point the series has been working towards since Kimari met Shirase for the first time, the place where Shirase’s mother was last seen alive and you’re not crying, I’m crying.
When an episode foregoes the normal opening and ending theme, you know it’s going to be something special, that it needs all the space it can get in its twentythree minute runtime so even the three minutes spent on them is begrudged. And starting with a flashback to Shirase in middle school, you know exactly what this episode is going to be about. For most of the series the fact that Shirase’s mother had died on the previous expedition had been easy to ignore as anything other than the motivation driving her to go to Antarctica herself. It’s only when she was talking to Gin, her mother’s best friend, that some of the reality of what her death meant to Shirase slipped out. But now the expedition is going back to the last place where Shirase’s mother was seen alive and Shirase is unsure whether she wants to go there.
When Shirase only response to Gin’s offer to take her to the place where her mother died is that she’ll think about it, her friends start worrying about her again. But they’re not quite sure how to talk about it. Finally, as they’re preparing dinner together, Shirase starts to explains how she’s feeling. That’s she’s not particularly sad or upset like she thought she would be if she went to Antarctica.That she feels too normal even, the only things she can think of being that, ah, it sure does look a lot like the pictures. In fiction grief is always shown as this incredibly emotional process, full of crying and huge emotional outburst, but the reality is that it can often leave you feeling numb, as Shirase is here, unsure of what to do.
It’s not surprising that it’s Kimari who keeps pressing Shirase; she’s still the closest to her and certainly the most tactless, blunt of the four. She reminds her of the sacrifices she made to come here, how hard she worked to get on the expedition. How she talked about how her mother was waiting for her in Antarctica. She’s so blunt that both Hinata and Yuzu feel compelled to stop her.
Shirase knows all that, she knows that it would be strange to stop now she has come so far in search of her mother. But. But once they get there, there’s nowhere left to go. That it will be the end and if nothing changes, she’s afraid she’ll keep feeling the way she does right now. Still waiting for her mother, still unable to process her grief and get closure. This was the first time I felt the tears threatening to come out, just as Shirase’s friends felt hearing that. We’ve seen it in flashbacks, we’ve heard her talk obliquely about it with Gin, but this is the first time that Shirase admitted to her friends how difficult she has found it to cope with the death of her mother.
What I really appreciate about Sora yori mo Tooi Basho is that even in this episode the mood is not kept unrelentlessly sombre. There’s still room for humour. When Shirase doesn’t show up for the barbecue to celebrate the upcoming trip to the observatory site, one of the adult expedition members asks the other three if they don’t feel the need to talk to her about it. Hinata replies that sometimes you need to give somebody the space to decide for herself. To which the woman replies that it’s a sign of a good friendship that you can give each other space like this. Cue a happily beaming Yuzu: “We’re good friends!”
After another heart to heart with Gin, where they both share their sorrow about Takako’s death and how you can talk about dying wishes and doing what she wanted, but you can never be sure, Shirase has a sleepless night thinking about what to do the next day, if she’s going or not. She takes out her treasure, that one million yen that set everything in motion back in episode one and lies the bank notes down. “Cleaning. Cashier. Moving. Newspaper delivery.” Each not laid down is testament to Shirase’s efforts to go to where her mother is, knowing full well she won’t be seeing her alive. In doing so, she regains the determination to take that final step and she joins the expedition to the observatory site. Again a scene which I felt tears threatening.
Speaking of humour: Hinata and that bloody frozen banana. With Shirase’s indecision resolved, the trip to the observatory site is relatively free of the tension of the rest of the episode. Instead we get a bit of a respite, as the girls’ usual routines restablish themselves during the trip, hours of slow travel during which they have nothing better to do than play cards. Inbetween reminders of how deadly Antarctica can be, as the expedition crew explain how easy it would be to never get back during a blizzard. They also spot a sun pillar, which looks a bit familiar.
As the expedition settles in for the night and a blizzard rages around them, Shirase asks Gin how this is how it was like when her mother disappeared. Gin then tells her the story of how her mother was walking behind her, she suddenly realised she was gone and how they searched for her to no avail. It’s another emotional conversation between the two, but it’s clear to see how much they’ve both grown towards each other in these, how much more at ease they are with each other even during such a heavy conversation. The same goes for the chat Shirase has with Kimari later that night, who thanks her for taking her to Antarctica. Thanks to her, Kimari got the most out of her youth. It confirms to Shirase that she’s no longer alone, that she no longer needs to be alone, but has friends who can she can share her burdens and her joy with.
And when they finally arrive at the observatory, it’s her friends that don’t take no for an answer, who go looking for something, anything as proof that Shirase’s mother, that Takako had been there. Shirase herself says it’s unnecessary, that it’s okay but they persist. Kimari is the most insistent, but it’s Hinata who finds what they’re looking for: a completely frozen over laptop. She hands it to Kimari, who wipes off the ice to find a picture on the laptop lid, a picture of Takako and Shirase, one that must’ve been taken by Gin. They hand it over to Shirase, smiling and tearing up at the same time and so am I.
And then they’re back at base and Shirase is in her room, trying to start up her mother’s laptop and it boots. After one failed attempt, she enters her own birthday as the password and it opens, the email programme starts up and it starts receiving mails. And it’s all the mail she had sent to her mother, starting from when she was still alive and they keep on coming, a hundred, two hundred, five hundred, well over a thousand. And Shirase let’s out a strangled sob and starts crying, as do her three friends waiting for her in the hallway. As did I, the moment I saw that first mail being received. That’s grief in the digital age. Click back in your own mail archives far enough and see the (unread) mails of a loved one that had died, or check their own mail account and see the spam and mailing list messages still come in years after she died. It’s heartbreaking, one of the most emotional moments in anime I’ve ever seen.
This episode could’ve so easily been smaltzy or overtly dramatic, but it completely succeeds in both showing Shirase’s grief, her friends compassion as well as the more subdued sorrow of Gin and Kanae, coming back to the place where they lost their best friend. In writing this post, I’ve rewatched this three-four times and the feelings it stirs are still the same. As good as the rest of the series had already been, had this gone wrong it would’ve doomed it entirely. But it stuck the landing and the last episode can be the victory lap. This is already a 10/10 anime, anime of the season, a modern classic.
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