The road to hell is paved with good intentions, indeed…

I’m certainly on record that the school-based episodes of Youkai Apato don’t tend to be as good as the ones set mostly at Kotobuki-so.  And while one episode certainly isn’t going to change my mind, this was one of the best of the school episodes – perhaps because the themes it touched on are so universal (at least universal for me, if that makes any sense).  And it proudly continues the focus on teaching teenagers how to be adults – both how to do it and how not to do it.

I don’t know if I can say we’ve all known someone like Aoki-sensei, but it seems very likely that most of us have.  They’re common in many walks of life, and as with Yuushi-kun, they’ve royally pissed me off many times.  Part of it is simply a matter of butting your nose into what really isn’t your business.  Part of it is the presumption it takes to assume you know everything you need to know about a person when you really don’t know them at all.  And part of it is the actual damage you can do to people – both your victim and those around them – by trying to “help” them based on false assumptions.

For Yuushi it’s relatively harmless, really – but damn, is it infuriating.  Here’s a kid who works to support himself, keeps himself out of trouble and has a ridiculous(-ly elaborate) support system at home.  Aoki-sensei really demeans him with her treatment – in point of fact, it’s actually a form of bullying (which is certainly ironic).  But this could be quite serious for others – like Chiaki-sensei, for example, who she as much as accused of sexually harassing female students.  That kind of thing can get people fired, or worse – and all because Aoki decides she knows better than anyone what’s really going on.

The example Satou-san cites is a salient one for me, because I’ve seen many examples of it in the workplace.  “Leaders” who never teach their team members to do anything aren’t leaders at all, and they’re doing those people real harm.  The irony in this, of course, is that in illustrating for Yuushi the wrong way to go about guiding people they’re actually demonstrating the right way – using the benefit of their experience to help others avoid the same mistakes they did.  You have to have the courage to let people fail sometimes, even if it will make you look bad if they do – it’s damn hard to do, but that’s what real leadership is.

Their overall advice to turn the other cheek with Aoki-sensei is good, because people like her take any argument as evidence that their preconceptions about you are correct.  That said, it’s hard to allow yourself to be demeaned or to see lies spread about without fighting back.  Chiaki-sensei, who’s rather the opposite of Aoki-sensei in many ways, is of course in a position to tell her to fuck off – though he resists doing so until (in effect) doing so when she tells him to quit smoking (ironically again, as it was the first thing she was right about in the entire episode).  Chiaki-sensei’s creepy touching of Yuushi-kun is now explained and he seems like a decent guy, but there’s more to him than we’re seeing I think – he’s suspicious, but not necessarily in a bad way.