But I digress…

As I was puttering around this morning, knowing I was going to be watching Nami yo Kiite Kure eventually today, for some reason Golden Kamuy kept popping into my head.  At first I had no idea why – I like that series a lot obviously, but it’s not like I randomly obsess over it.  Then it finally hit me, and I realized it’d been nagging at me for weeks – Nami reminds me of Golden Kamuy.  It seems like an odd comparison in some ways, but as soon as it clicked I realized I’d known it all along.

It’s a nice symmetry that both series are set in Hokkaido.  And even more that both had bad bear sequences in their adaptations.  But the nut of the matter for me ties back to something I said about Golden Kamuy (which, if I may immodestly say, sums up its appeal very well): “The real genius of Noda-sensei as a storyteller is that he writes every major character as if they’re the protagonist of their own story.”  And that, to be sure, is a quality of Nami yo Kiite Kure.  Maybe Immortal to an extent too – it’s hard to tell because the adaptation was so truncated – but  Samura definitely displays it here.

It so happens that in that same writeup of GK (the 2018 Top 10 list) I noted the “Python-esque” quality of Noda’s humor – and while it seems coincidental given that Samura mentions Monty Python here (in Mado-san’s flashback), it’s not.  Both mangaka clearly share the same comic sensibility – a wonderful dexterity for the absurd and random.  As well, it’s a quality of Monty Python (and of much great comedy) that it’s extremely highbrow and lowbrow at the same time, and can make you laugh equally well at either level.  Those of us who love Python can almost recognize each other on sight – we share something in that sensibility that links us in a not insignificant way.

This episode was quite brilliant on so many levels, comic certainly but not limited to that.  I loved the family theme and how Minamikawa-sensei (and Samura, presumably) daisy-chained it together.  Minare accidentally calls her dad, giving us our first look at him.  We meet Nakahara’s sister (and her son), who’s staying with him after walking out on her husband for visiting a hostess club.  She points out to Makie that her presence is the only reason he allowed Makie to stay over, thus confirming his fealty to Minare.  Makie confides in the sister that her older brother is a psycho who’s kept her locked away after their parents’ death, and how she used the accident as a means to escape.  And Minare calls her mother to complain about her dad sending her huge salmon (and Chekov’s mutton makes an appearance).

I can’t overstate how much this writing style makes a series more impactful.  Every character has their own story, and to them their story is the most important.  They act like protagonists in their own lives.  We sense the tension between Minare’s parents, how different they are.  Mado’s reasons for mentoring Minare are based on his own past.  Nakahara is driven by his love for Minare, Makie by her desperate need to escape, Nakahara’s sister by her anger at her husband.  God damn, this is good writing – and the adaptation really does it justice this week.

This is all really interesting stuff, seemingly loosely related – the radio Dad sends, the salmon, the mutton – but it’s all going to come together.  And Oki-san is going to be a big part of that.  He’s been the subject of his own Python-like, seemingly random appearances – but here we get to the payoff.  Oki is weird, twisted – hell, the fax (because, Japan) he sends the radio station alone would be proof of that.  Mado immediately noses out a good dramatic sequence in this.  But I don’t think Oki is a killer, and Minare and Mizuho (in costume) are about to find that out.

There’s one more thing I want to make note of, and that’s Mado-san’s fascinating observation that “TV viewers are customers, and radio listeners are participants”.  This, I think, sums up Mado’s (and probably Samura’s) love for radio very well – there’s so much freedom and possibility in it.  Even screwing up is full of possibility.  In this small universe Mado can experiment, he can fail, and he can know he’s having a real impact through his work – even if it’s on a comparatively tiny number of people.  There may even be a bit of that in the appeal of working in anime, as opposed to the broader visual media – but that’s something that seems to be fading away as it becomes more mainstream with each passing year…