Anime

When you and your late mother’s best friend share one true love together:

This episode again focuses on the relationship and history between Shirase and expedition captain Tōdō Gin, her mother’s best friend. We first met her during episode four’s training exercise, where it became clear these two shared a history, then later in episode seven she revealed Shirase’s mother wish for an Antarctic observatory and how the new expedition was going to lay the foundation for this. Gin and Shirase had a moment together, but there’s still a distance between them, which this episode will shorten, but not before the girls have to help this asshole:

To be fair to this asshole, he does function as the catalyst for Shirase and Gin to get closer to each other, as it turns out this asshole, Zaizen Toshio, is in love with the captain. Having heard that Shirase is supposedly a friend of Gin, he’s looking for her to help him confess to Gin. Hearing him out, the girls are less than enthusiastic about this and wonder if he knows how much out of his league she is. It does however give Hinata an idea to spice up the ratings for their Antarctica reports. If they include the love lives of the crew, people might be more interested. And who better to start with than with “the beautiful, smart, determined” expedition captain? If she gets a bit embarassed about the whole thing it’s a bonus.

At first the other three want Shirase to talk to Gin, but she protests that there’s a distance between them. When Kimarin brings up that they seemed to get along well when they were talking on deck in episode seven, Shirase is surprised that they were watching. Hinata counters: “why would you ever think we weren’t”? Which perfectly captures the relationship between those three, with Yuzu on the sideline this time. Gin’s best friend Kanae meanwhile is trying to convice her to talk to Shirase, making the exact same remark about that conversation. So it’s no surprise she helps the girls get their interview with Gin, though in the end it doesn’t help much. Rather, it’s another coincidental meeting between Gin and Shirase that helps them connect again.

Throughout the episode there are flashbacks to when Shirase was still a smol Shirase and her mother left her alone with Gin, which tended to be awkward unless penguins were involved somehow. For Shirase, Gin was just her mother’s friend, somebody she didn’t know well. Gin herself meanwhile had no idea how to handle children at all. And of course, once Gin returned from Antarctica and Shirase’s mother didn’t, when she as leader of the expdition was responsible for ending the search for her once it was clear it was hopeless, there wasn’t any time or opportunity for them to build up a bond.

Gin is right: Takako is trying to leave her alone with her daughter, to build that bond. The question is why she did that. Obviously she isn’t around to ask anymore, nor is the episode interested in spelling out her reasons, but it makes me wonder. We haven’t seen any other of Shirase’s family members save for the grandmother she lives with; her father is nowhere to be seen, if there is one. Takako seems to have raised her on her own. As seen in episode seven, she and Gin were high school friends, with Takako dragging Gin along on their Antarctica adventure. Takako and Gin were best friends, or perhaps something more than friends? Might Takako been hoping to start a family with the three of them, or have Gin be there as surrogate mother if something happened to her? And did she succeed?

As the other three girls and Kanae watch, Gin confronts Shirase with how she really feels about her. She still carries the guilt of leaving Takoko behind and wonders if Shirase blames her for it. Shirase denies that, arguing that her mother’s death was not Gin’s fault, that she did everything she could. As Gin presses her further, she breaks down saying she didn’t want to talk about it because she doesn’t know how she feels. All she knows is that her mother isn’t coming home.

Three years is a short time to have to come to terms with the death of your mother, but we hadn’t seen Shirase talk about how much it hurts to know she isn’t coming back yet. It’s been easy to forget that she must still be hurting, that she started this whole Antarctica obsession because she wanted to go to the place where her mother is. Her grief is still raw, but she doesn’t want to show it because she doesn’t know what to do with it.

For Gin too that grief must still be raw. Having your best friend losing herself in a blizzard, powerless to save her, hearing her last words on the radio and unable to reach her… Gin must be hurting as well, but like Shirase, she hides it most of the time behind her stoic, sensible exterior. It’s only in this moment that we see her true feelings, a moment that she keeps returning to. After her heart to heart with Shirase, once the ship is moored in the Antarctic ice, she finally gets a moment where she can break down and cry, only to be spotted by the asshole who set it all in motion, who realises he can’t do anything for her, thus ending his crush.

After all those deep felt emotions, it’s nice to end the episode with the confirmation that Shirase can still be incredibly petty, as she and the other three finally set foot on Antarctica, jumping on the ice together. Shirase seems to be having an emotional moment, the other three comfort her and then the mood is completely shattered as she starts an epic rant against all the people who mocked her for her dream to go to Antarctica. At first stunned, the other three join in, followed by the entire crew:

In your face!

This is about the last time the girls will look healthy this episode.

Because this is the episode in which the ship finally sets sail from Fremantle and as the title –Howling, Maddening, Screaming— indicates, it will not be plain sailing. To get through Antarctica you have to pass the Southern Ocean, one of the largest stretches of unimpeded open ocean in the world, which means the ocean streams are unbroken by continents, which in turn means waves and storms have free reign. Which means our girls spend a lot of time this episode doing this:

I really feel for the poor girls here, having once had a truly miserable time crossing the Channel during a storm on a catamaran ferry while my friends were not bothered at all. The episode really manages to capture the misery of being seasick without being too graphic, the sheer exhaustion of not being able to keep anything in you, how the mere thought of food makes you ill. I actually felt a bit ill myself watching this. Not that scenes like this aren’t funny of course, even if you do sympathise with Shirase and co at the same time. Being that sick is miserable.

Even without being seasick all the time, the girls have some difficulty adjusting to the realities of life onboard the ship as they’re put to work as members of the expedition. They had been warned they would be treated as adults and they are. It’s not like they have a problem with this either, it’s just that the differences in skill and stamina between them and the adult expedition members becomes clear. The latter after all have been there before, are used to the extreme conditions of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica, have trained themselves to be able to deal with them. For the girls, at their worst as the weather conditions worsen and the ship starts moving even more, they might as well be a different species altogether. Yuzu especially gets a bit despairing, wonder if they can actually be useful in Antarctica, to which Shirase replies that they have no choice. Kimari disagrees:

I really like this scene. You got Yuzu, usually the unflappable, professional one voicing her doubts of not being good enough, to which Shirase offers the conventional answer of just having to try and do it because they have no choice. Hinata, already established as more comfortable withdrawing in herself rather than seeking a confrontation, remains silent. Kimari meanwhile gets to be serious for a chance and reminds everybody that they’re here by choice, that they’ve made their choice to be here. It doesn’t solve their sickness, but it breaks through the fears. And ultimately they get through it.

Crisis passed, gotten used to the rolling and swaying of the ship, storms over for the moment, they are rewarded with their first evidence that Antarctica is just ahead, as they see the first icebergs floating past. It’s a good moment to end the episode on. Next time: Antarctica!

It’s episode seven of Sora yori mo Tooi Basho and the four girls have finally caught up to the expedition at Fremantle, Australia only to discover the adult members of the crew are bigger goofballs than they are.

This series has such good comedic timing it surprises me every time I watch another episode. Probably because the dramatic elements stick in my head more. This episode is a case in point. If you ask what it’s about, it’s about the four girls finding their way around the ship. In the process they learn that the expedition may not be as well funded or crewed as it might have liked to be, as well as that there are secret plans for when the expedition will arrive in Antarctica. Finally, there’s also the ongoing subplot involving Shirase and expedition captain Tōdō Gin, who was there when her mother disappeared on the expedition three years ago. All rather serious.

And yet. This is the first scene after the opening song and it’s Shirase screwing up her video report again because she’s so stiff and embarassed. It’s funny because seeing somebody this stiff in front of the camera is always funny, but especially so because it fits Shirase’s character so well. Throughout the series she has shown to be incredibly driven, but often awkward and clumsy and embarassed about it and this has been shown mostly through scenes like this. That’s what I like about the humour in this show, it’s largely character driven, it isn’t your average anime comedy and much of it is the characters joking with each other, just like real people do with friends or co-workers.

Even in a still shot like this you can see each girl’s character shining through. Kimari on the left and Hinata next to her are the more goofy of the four, but Hinata is a bit more sensible than her. Shirase at the back is serious but confident, while Yuzuki is serious and a bit anxious. She’s the youngest but also the most professional of the four thanks to her idol career. Sora yori mo Tooi Basho keeps using gags like this to flesh out each girl’s character, whether a recurring one like this, or a background joke like Shirase stealing Kimari’s penguin plushie.

As the girls catch wind of how understaffed and underfunded the expedition seems to be in comparison to others, they also hear about mysterious plans for what to do in Antarctica, having listened in to a few conversations among other crew members. When they get back to their cabin and wonder what those plans might be, this happens. Again a brilliant bit of comedic timing, showing how much Kimari and Hinata are on the same wave length, as opposed to the more serious and easily startled Shirase and Yuzuki.

One of the delights of this episode is getting more flashbacks to when Shirase’s mother Takako, together with Gin and Kanae set up the first private Antarctica expedition. It’s so nice to see them have the same rapport and comradery among themselves as Shirase has with her friends and so sad to know how it will all end, with Gin and Kanae in that snowcat as Takako gets lost in a snowstorm. This sadness is not very far from the surface throughout the series, but it’s never content to remain sad. After the emotional scene with Gin talking to Shirase about Takako and the expedition’s determination to go back to where she was, we therefore immediately switch to comedy again, with Kanae introducing the four girls to the rest of the ship.

It’s another example of using humour to reveal character and it leads in to the climax of the episode, with the four of them introducing themselves. With a helping hand by Hinata, Shirase comes out of her shell enough to share her dream with the crew, of wanting to go to the Antarctica her mother wrote about. It’s a poignant scene only made possible by the buildup over this episode and the ones before it.