Hello friends and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I suppose we’re in for another brutal emotional beatdown, as we return to the painfully well-observed drama of Journal With Witch. So far, the show has offered a couple of intimate and moving character studies, observing an unlikely duo who seem to be united less by their tangential genetic link than by their fellow pilgrim through a vast, forbidding emotional desert. For Asa, this desert represents the pain she cannot yet name, a feeling too immense to look at directly, but which nevertheless sets her apart from the carefree high school students and trusting adults around her. For Makio, this desert is her personal fortress, the barricade of sand and stone that has protected her from the unhappy truths of an isolated adulthood.
When Makio first suggested Asa start a journal, it seemed like that might have simply been the vain and thoughtless advice of someone who was in no position to offer true comfort. But it now seems more likely that Makio was sharing his own survival strategy: transmuting onto the page that which is intolerable to the mind, and thereby exorcising his demons through the alchemy of fiction. We all develop our own strategies for dealing with life’s disappointments, but Asa’s presence is forcing Makio to reexamine the routines of his life and ask himself once again if he is happy settling for what is simply comfortable. Let’s see how our desert wanderers continue to shape each other as we return to Journal With Witch!
Episode 5
We open with a musical performance playing on the apartment’s TV, our supposed introduction to Asa’s singing thread promised by the OP. I suppose singing will be her outlet for the feelings she struggles to express, whether as a compliment or as an alternative to her journal. It’s funny how it can be easier to shout out feelings in a song than to simply admit them in your own voice; Art has a way of freeing us from “taking responsibility” for our feelings, from abstracting them so that we can almost engage with them as a third party.
Personally, I can’t imagine not having artistic outlets for my thoughts and feelings. I know it is a privilege to be able to dedicate time to these types of passions, but for me that is life. for – all other things, all tasks, jobs and responsibilities, are accepted simply because they give me the opportunity to explore and create art. I never really had much uncertainty about what I wanted to do with my life; creating and celebrating stories is who I am
This scene is actually a flashback of Asa in his house before the accident. Her mother lightly reprimands her, saying “so that’s the kind of boy you like”, when Asa actually felt compelled by the performance itself. It feels aligned with what we’ve learned from Asa’s mother so far: she sees art as trivial and therefore assumes Asa’s interest is in artists’ appearances.
“Do you know I like girls more? Like idols.” Emiri is quick to qualify her own feelings.
Looking back from the present moment, Asa can only envy how quickly his younger self dismissed his mother’s advice and support. All these encounters seem so infinite and inconsequential until the moment you realize there will never be another. The best things in life can often only be recognized in retrospect.
Still, this is progress, a moment of genuine engagement with your pain.
Apparently, Makio and Asa’s mother stay at the door in the same way, a detail that Makio assumes he inherited from his own mother. What strange and fragmentary legacies we leave behind!
Asa plans to dye her hair, at Emiri’s suggestion.
At school, he runs into a tall classmate named Mori while inspecting the various club brochures.
Apparently Asa was in choir in high school, so he already had some vocal training.
We gracefully return to the moment when Asa’s mother decided to join the choir. I love how this episode so elegantly expresses the resilience of memory; We don’t have to actively evoke some memories, they simply arrive spontaneously in the moment, sharing space with our present experience.
It also seems clear that Asa really appreciated the direction his mother gave him, in contrast to Makio’s lackadaisical “do what you think is best.”
“You have to learn to make decisions for yourself.” “My God, what did you do to your hair?” Of course, eventually her mother’s contradictions made it impossible to please her. Thus, just as her love of singing serves as a bond with her mother, her short haircut serves as an icon of her rebellion. Even the way we challenge those we’ve lost ends up serving as a tribute to her memory, a sentiment Makio embodies in every reflection on her sister’s disdain for fiction.
“During spring break, I…” A future that seemed endless, cut short in an instant. He had infinite time to convince his mother until it was too late.
This is also our first return to the moment of the accident, something she probably hasn’t been able to deal with until now.
“I’m irritated. But why?” Her frustration at no longer even having her mother’s adversarial sounding board is interpreted as aimless irritation. Who can she blame for these contradictory feelings, for feeling almost upset by her newfound freedom?
Emiri, ignoring his call, instantly covers his world in shadows. she is alone with her feelings
She can’t help but blame her mother for leaving her alone.
Nice composition rich in depth as we return to Asa on the train. Good stills for the passengers behind her, whose well-illustrated ways of dressing their clothes give them an inherent sense of vitality.
A clear distinction between Asa and Makio when Asa talks about visiting his grandmother’s house. The visit seems perfectly normal to Asa, while Makio absentmindedly reveals that he hasn’t been home in about five years. Well, at least that’s one aspect of my life that I maintain better than Makio.
Arriving at his mother’s house, Makio instantly excuses himself to put his things away. Rejecting the offer of tea, he says that “that cup of tea will last forever,” which, of course, is the point, since tea is just an excuse for family members to catch up. But Makio doesn’t want to be caught talking about her life, so she seeks to minimize all the moments in which she will be forced to socialize without a clear goal in mind.
Returning to her childhood room evokes memories of Makio’s sister, scolding her as always for her seemingly childish tastes.
But there are also happier memories. They once enjoyed playing together.
“Have you already decided on college?” “Grandma, I just started high school!” As patterns repeat, details are lost. And as we get older, time compresses, and a child’s high school years feel like a brief turn in the road.
“Minori was always my best listener. We used to chat all the time. Unlike, you know…” No wonder Makio hasn’t returned.
But at this point, Asa feels more kinship with the outsider Makio than with this confidant of the mother he lost.
“But I have to admit… she’s become boring and sarcastic.” Makio as ruthlessly precise as ever
“Before, she used to compliment us. She said that Minori was loving and that I was self-sufficient. But at some point, it became that Minori lacked independence and I was cold.” The same contradictions that frustrated Asa regarding his own mother. Have we changed or simply the observer’s perspective on us? Why do the qualities for which we are admired end up becoming intolerable defects? Is it wrong to keep holding on to a dream?
“I thought she really cared about Mom.” “If you felt that, that’s what matters.” In the end, that’s all we can do: believe in the interpretations that give us hope.
“Remember her as the mother you love. I don’t share my subjective view of her for that reason.” In Makio’s distance, there is actually a form of compassion. She knows she has sharp edges and doesn’t want to cut the people she cares about.
Thus, Makio agrees to have tea with her mother and Asa decides to believe in the happy memories that can guide her forward. Even in our own minds, we can choose how to remember the people we have lost and what of their presence we carry with us.
Lovely conclusion to their visit, as Makio awkwardly offers to give her attention if her mother needs it, and her mother knowingly tells her to pull herself together before considering something like that.
Makio’s mother’s gift bags form a visual barricade between them as they drive home, a barrier that echoes their unique interpretations of this supposedly mutual bond.
Brief moments at school emphasize Asa’s growing recognition of the social distance between her and Emiri as each adjusts to their own class dynamics. Japan’s insistence on keeping classes together has some interesting social side effects
Makio’s completely reasonable policy of ignoring unknown phone numbers ends up backfiring on her, when Tono, the man overseeing her guardianship, confronts her at her apartment.
Apparently there was a withdrawal of three hundred thousand yen from Asa’s family account.
Nice effect of Makio’s own voice trailing off as all these accusations and responsibilities start to overwhelm her.
Asa reveals that the withdrawal was to buy a laptop, so he could make music on his own. He feared that Makio would object to him joining the band club; or rather, he reassigned that fear from his mother to his guardian. And yet even this is a way to keep his mother alive; Even the unhappy things, like his mother’s contradictory restrictions on his behavior, still feel like a fragment of home.
It’s an almost impossible situation: Asa is trying to overcome her own feelings of resentment towards her mother, but Makio is actually even less She sympathizes with Minori’s choices, so she’s not really a useful confidant in these discussions.
“Allow me to help you from now on.” Tono actually seems like a charming man, understandably defensive of Asa in the context of a potentially exploitative caretaker.
Then we come full circle, with Kasamachi’s side hug offering another demonstration of our inherited gestures as the song Asa enjoyed plays on the television. We cannot avoid suffering changes, but we cannot avoid carrying fragments of the past either.
and ready
God, this show looks so elegant and effortless. The formal parallels here were not only natural and elegant, but basically offered a side conversation of their own, framing the ways in which we carry out the expectations, habits, and beliefs of those we have left behind from every possible angle. And our central theme this time was already incredibly rich in its own right: the ways we internalize and hopefully overcome the grudges and regrets instilled in us by our parents, feelings we can never fully extract from our happiest memories. Pain is an infinite sea and inheritance a puzzle without a solution; The best we can hope for is to internalize the advice Makio offered and embrace the memories that we believe will truly move us forward. There is no honesty or dishonesty when it comes to remembering the people important to us; The past is the past, and what we are left with is to carry that heritage forward and hopefully do a little better for the next generation. We are only human.
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