Articles with the Tag Sora yori mo Tooi Basho

The girls finally set foot on Antarctic soil, in time for Yuzu to learn an important lesson about friendship.

It only took them ten episodes, but now the hard work begins for real. The supplies have to be brought in, equipment to be refurbished, the base to be made liveable. And the girls have to do their share too. The good news is that they’re going to sleep in the “Lakeside Hotel” and they’ll have a room of their own each. Which comes as a relief to Shirase, Yuzu and Hinata, no longer having to share a room with Kimarin and her annoying habit of talking in her sleep. Something I can relate to, as I allegedly do so myself. They also get their first encounter with a real live penguin, which causes Shirase to flip out in excitement to the extend they have to physically restrain her. Through all this tomfoolery Yuzu has been a bit distant, the reason for which is soon revealed.

She’s gotten a text from her mother and agent that she’s been accepted for a part in a television drama, but worries that this means she won’t be able to hang out with the other three anymore. Hinata, ever the most practical of the girls, points out that they’ll be living separately again after the expedition returns home anyway. Yuzu protests and Kimarin tries to reassure her by stating they’re all best friends anyway. When Yuzu doubts this, Kimarin seems at the verge of crying until Hinata stops her. As Yuzu continues to wonder when they became best friends, when they weren’t when she first them, she becomes convinced it was when she was in Hokkaido and starts sulking about it.

As her friends talk her out of it and tell her they didn’t do anything without her, she wonders when they knew they were friends and why they never asked her to be theirs. Their friendship might be obvious to Hinata, Kimari and Shirase, but Yuzu needs more formal assurances. It makes sense. Before she first met the other three after all, she had never had had real friends, her one attempt in high school a failure. There had also been hints that she’s a bit more, eh logical than the others, less able perhaps to understand these sort of things without formal declarations.

In any case, it leaves her friends somewhat bewildered on how to handle her. When Hinata wonders if Yuzu was waiting for them to ask her, Shirase suggest just doing so, to which Hinata replies as above. But no fear, Kimari has a plan. If she’s up to it. In the meantime, they still have work to do, as Christmas approaches and preparations for the Christmas party are being made. Yuzu has some doubts about the importance of Christmas, but meeting a fan of hers at the base puts her at ease and she decides to take the role.

But she’s still anxious about her friendship with the other three girls, something that all their reassurances haven’t been able to assuage. Therefore she asks them for a favour, to sign a formal friendship contract so she can be at ease that they are friend. This time Kimari does start crying, running up to Yuzu and hugging her. Most people would know that something like a friendship contract is doomed to failure, so it says something about Yuzu that she thinks this could be a solution, something that goes beyond her isolation as a child idol. Rather, her seeming inability to read this sort of social clue. her anxiety about not having a message replied to immediately, it may be that she’s on the spectrum, is somewhat neuroatypical.

In any case, her friends care enough for her to prepare a surprise birthday party after the Christmas party has run its course, all organised by Kimari. It turns out that Yuzu’s birthday took place during that part of their trip they were all too busy puking their guts out. So they decided to celebrate it once they were in Antarctica and baked her a cake.

Seeing Yuzu tear up out of gratitude and talking about how this is the first time friends had actually celebrated her birthday made me choke a bit as well. She’s such a pure cinnamon bun and she deserves this happiness. Ultimately the efforts of Kimari, Shirase and Hinata are not in vain and Yuzu accepts they are really friends. In a lesser series this could’ve come over as sappy and trite, but the way Sora yori mo Tooi Basho does it is so well done because it comes straight from the characters themselves, isn’t forced on them and importantly, it’s done with humour.

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.

Episode six of Sora yori mo Tooi Basho is one of the most frustrating –but funny– episodes of anime I’ve ever watched.

It all started relatively peacefully, with the four finally leaving for Antarctica, by first flying to Singapore, where they will be taking a plane to Fremantle, Australia to meet up with the expedition there and actually board the ship. Mari is really enthusiastic at getting to fly for the first time, Shirase gets emotional at watching March of the Penguins and the other two are slightly embarassed by it. Once they arrive, there’s a short scene of all of them save the much more experienced Yuzuki getting distracted by all the touristy crap on their way to their hotel, followed by the other three frantically playing rock paper scissors to not have to sleep in the same bed as Mari (because well, see episode four). It’s only when they’re ready to go out again and Hinata looks in her purse with a worried look I got a bad feeling about this episode.

You see, I really, really can’t deal with cringe comedy, where all the humour is in seeing people make easily avoidable mistakes and making fools of themselves in the process. The moment I saw Hinata looking in her purse I got anxious: it was clear she had lost something important but her first instinct was to not worry her friends, just ignore it and hope it’ll turn up later. Which is something I could’ve done myself in this sort of situation. I found myself itching forward in my seat, almost crawling into the television to demand the girls drop everything and start looking for whatever it was Hinata had lost. So it was hard to get into their touristy antics as they went out to explore Singapore. Even though it was hilarious.

Interestingly it’s Yuzuki, the youngest of the four who finally figures out Hinata is hiding something and gets her to confess she lost her passport. Generally more level headed than the other three, despite being a year younger, she also has extensive travel experience due to her idol work, having been in Singapore before. It’s she who takes the lead to resolve the situation, looking up on what to do if you lose your passport and discussing options. Unfortunately the Japanese embassy is closed because it’s a Sunday, so even though it would only take half a day to get a new one, there isn’t the time to get it before their flight is due. As they discuss getting a later flight, Shirase’s anxieties about not being allowed on the expedition makes her wonder if this would even be allowed.

It’s when Shirase and Hinata are alone in their room that the latter decides that it’s okay, the other three can go ahead and she’ll sort out a new passport by herself. Shirase immediately asks if it is because of her doubts earlier, explaining that she knows full well how she reacts to disappointments. Hinata however is adamant this isn’t the case, that she just doesn’t want people to be considerate of her. Their anxieties are on full display in this scene, as they each try to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the other, Hinata especially. I can so sympathise with her, keeping up her facade of not caring, not wanting to hurt her friends through her own stupidity. Shirase too, anxious about this added complexity, but not wanting to leave her friend behind, not wanting to accept Hinata’s sacrifice as even if it meant she could go to Antarctica, it wouldn’t be the same, she too I can relate to.

In the end it’s Shirase that wins the argument, not through convincing Hinata, but by leaving her behind to go to the airport with the other two and try and exchange the tickets for a later flight. Again it’s Yuzuki who takes the lead in talking to the airline, probably the only one with English decent enough to do it. When that doesn’t work out, Shirase takes out her ultimate trump card and slams down her one million yen on the counter, buying business class tickets when cheaper tickets aren’t available. When Hinata objects again, Shirase lets out a tirade saying that she doesn’t want to have the kind of shallow relationship with her where she can be happy to go on without her, that she wants all four of them to go to Antarctica together. In the face ot this Hinata has no choice but to let go of her anxieties and accept Shirase’s consideration, just as Shirase let go of her worries to help her out.

It’s at this moment, when Shirase opens her purse and finds Hinata’s passport in it, that the Jaws music starts to play. As Shirase goes through the same sort of denial as Hinata did earlier, the music swells, as a flashback shows how she got the passport in her purse in the first place. On their way from the Singapore airport Hinata had to tie her shoelaces, asked her to hold onto it for her and Shirase put it in her purse for safekeeping. As she gets more and more flustered and the music hits a crescendo just as Yuzuki asks the same question she asked Hinata earlier: are you hiding something…

With all the worries Hinata and Shirase have put the other two –and me!– through, their punishment is no more than deserved: having to eat a whole durian fruit together. Durians, as you know Bob, being a rather pungent sort of fruit and with an acquired taste. It was only at this moment I could relax, having suffered throughout the episode from the desire to shout at them all to goddammit look in their own luggage for the damn passport, as this was exactly what I thought had happened. To be honest, after Shirase had bought the airline tickets I didn’t it would happen anymore, but the comedic timing of this show is impeccable. Rewatching the episode for this post, without that anxiety riding me, I could finally appreciate that timing.