As I noted last week, I can in no way be impartial when it comes to Doukyonin wa Hiza, Tokidoki, Atama no Ue..  This series pushes too many of my buttons for that.  In some ways in fact it’s the cat anime I’ve been waiting for my entire anime life, which is surprising considering how often cats feature in manga and anime.  But most of them are shorts, or pure fantasy, or feature cats in peripheral roles.  Doukyonin wa Hiza is a serious look at the emotional fabric of the human-cat relationship, and even though it indulges the fancy of showing us Haru’s perspective, it tries to do so (very effectively I would argue) in a way that seems realistic and isn’t too mannered and self-aware.

In addition to that, Doukyonin is also a fairly unsparing look at the plight of stray cats in Japan.  I’ve always been bereft at the plight of strays – wanting to help all of them and not being able to is heartbreaking for me.  That’s gotten much worse since I moved to Japan, because there are so many strays here despite (or perhaps because) the country’s general obsession with cats.  Nagasaki has actually organized its neighborhoods into efficient stray social service providers, which has improved their lot dramatically, but that’s a rarity.  What I see a lot more often is akin to the B-part of this episode.

Before we get to that though, there are developments in the present and on the human side of the ledger.  As I more or less surmised the dude who showed up at the end of last week’s episode wasn’t Nana’s boyfriend in fact it’s her younger brother Yuugo (Nakashima Yoshiki).  And while he initially gets rough with Subaru on the grounds that he thinks he’s a “freak”, once she explains the facts Yuugo turns out to be a thoroughly decent guy.  In fact despite his kyoujin-like stature he’s a kid, a 2nd-year high schooler.

A couple things in this interchange stood out to me.  First, Subaru’s amazement that different people can have such diverse reactions to Haru (welcome to cat obsession).  Second, the way he zeroed in on the fact that Yuugo had to be a decent person because the cats – especially Hachi – like him so much (and vice-versa).  But mostly this is a reminder of the fact that Subaru remains quite a troubled individual, most definitely wrestling with social anxiety.  And this is made worse when he finds out that both siblings (Yuugo especially) are fans of his novel (he sees the magazine, Polaris, in Yuugo’s bag).

I was really hoping either he’d own up or Yuugo would make the connection but it was not to be for now.  Instead, what happens is that Subaru is so freaked out at the idea of sitting across from two people that read his work that he grabs a startled Haru and flees the scene.  I’m sure that imagining the conversation that might have followed was terrifying for Subaru, but at the same time, this is really the first time he’s considered that what he writes doesn’t simply disappear into the ether in a trade for grocery deliveries and Amazon – it’s a living thing and it impacts people’s lives.  That may seem obvious to some, but Subaru is so distanced from other people’s emotions that the idea is genuinely game-changing for him.

If it seems as if Haru’s parts of the narrative have been getting longer, I’m pretty sure it’s because they have.  In fact she got more than half the episode this week, and she had quite a story to tell.  First there’s Roku, whose territory she instantly recognizes that she’s in.  As a street cat she knows the importance of this, but Roku is chill – he’s a former stray himself, but he knows when he has it good (the Dude abides).  And now that he knows the bond between Haru and Hachi, Roku is even more unfazed at her intrusion.  He even subjects himself to being manhandled by Yuugo to prove to Haru that despite his stature he’s harmless.

As for Haru’s backstory, well…  What chance do I have, really?  It’s none too far-fetched, any of it.  This country is overrun with crows, especially the cities – huge, loud, smart and scary crows who feast on garbage and make an unending racket and surely do terrorize many cats (none of which I hold against them – they’re just highly adaptive).  Apparently Haru is the same age as her siblings, just the giant of the litter – a litter that was stuffed into a box and abandoned (again, not unusual here).  Fortunately she and her siblings run into Tora (Toyoguchi Megumi) and Kuro (Ono Daisuke) who offer some much-needed if hard-edged survival advice.  And yes, cats do seem to gravitate to shrines and temples – a combination, I suppose, of the lure of shelter and the higher likelihood of decent treatment from humans.  I was relieved, frankly, that two of Haru’s siblings lucked into being adopted – all in all, things could have been worse (though what happened was still pretty bad).

You have to feel for Haru, being whisked away from Hachi almost as soon as she was reunited with him.  How could she possibly understand the reason behind that?  But she’s torn because she’s already transferred her protective instincts to Subaru, sensing that he’s a pretty helpless specimen himself.  This is all headed somewhere – Haru is Subaru’s bridge to the world, and she’s already forced him out of his safety zone both physically and emotionally.  He’s learning empathy – one need look no further than the way he unthinkingly wrapped Haru in his jacket when the wind kicked up (which was a beautiful moment, by the way).  And through Yuugo and now the fan letters Kawase-san delivers (any excuse for a Haru visit), Subaru is realizing that he was already connected through his literary voice.  This is a bumpy road he’s on, but it leads to a better place.