It’s an odd feeling to be back with Hyouge Mono, no question about it.  I’m pretty sure seven years and six months is the longest inter-episodic break I’ve taken in covering a series, but then, Hyouge Mono isn’t remotely like any other series I’ve ever covered.  I could laugh at the sheer ludicrousness of the idea that it would ever be produced now, but hell – I think it’s almost a miracle that it was produced then.  Hyouge Mono may be the most uncommercial mainstream anime ever made.

There were a lot of reasons behind my decision to stop covering it back in 2013, though to be honest I don’t recall ever literally making the decision to do so.  My blogging schedule was a lot busier for starters, as anime was so much better and deeper than it is now.  It was never streamed (well, duh) and the fansubs (by the great Doremi, one of the true noble legends of the fansubbing world and still active after 15 years) ran way behind the broadcast.  What with working and studying in Tokyo and keeping up with anime in its prime, it just became too difficult to force myself to make time for this show.

So why now?  In the first place, I’ve certainly never forgotten about Hyouge Mono and always thought about finishing it.  In the second, well- you’ve seen this season, and I’ve seen the schedule for fall.  It’s not looking bountiful for me, let’s put it that way.  And in the third, Skidda mentioned this show in the comments a couple weeks ago and that sort of planted a bee in my bonnet.  If not now, when?  If not me, then who?

Yes, I admit that I like the idea of blogging series no other anime site seems to know exist.  Ginga e Kickoff, R-15, Youkai Apato, Kabukibu, Nana Maru San Batsu – it’s easier to make a splash in a small pond than the ocean.  That was true when I was covering Hyouge Mono even when it was airing – seven years later?  I think that’s a pretty safe bet.  None of that would matter to me if it weren’t a good show, but my goodness, it certainly is that.  This is anime at its most idiosyncratic and challenging, and as much as it stuck out like a sore thumb in 2012-13 it does so even more now.

Getting back on-board seven years later wasn’t as difficult as I imagined, and I didn’t do any re-watches – just read through my last couple of episode posts.  We’re in the aftermath of Hideyoshi’s assassination of Oda Nobunaga (which as far as we know is a bit of dramatic license) and Sasuke is feeling his oats as a power broker in the new era.  He’s building a great mansion at Jurakudai, intended to be new the headquarters of the “Chief Advisor” (certainly an ironic title now).  To that end he enlists the aid of Hasegawa Touhaku, a great painter whose aesthetic matches Sasuke’s own but has been pushed out of fashion by the powerful Kanou School.

You’ll hear a lot about wabi-sabi in Hyouge Mono – the beauty of imperfection.  It remains a dominant aesthetic theme in Japanese high culture and art even today, and it was the central pillar of Sen no Rikyu’s aesthetic sense.  He’s grown to be a hugely powerful figure in this new political environment, which has not gone unnoticed by an increasingly resentful Hideyoshi, who nevertheless knows he needs Sen as an ally for the moment.  Hideyoshi in engaged in the early stages of a long struggle with Tokugawa Ieyasu (to whom he’s just married off his sister, in a failed attempt to get Ieyasu to join his clan).  For all that he’s a commoner and a monkey in his own assessment, Hideyoshi sees himself as a bulwark against the bumpkin Philistinism of the Easterner Tokugawa.

The conflicts within all these men – indeed, all men and some women – are the heart of Hyouge Mono.  Hideyoshi’s relentless drive to prove he’s as good as the highborn is forever at war with his urge to be accepted as one of then.  Sen preaches pure aesthetics even as he greedily amasses wealth and power.  And Sasuke is forever chasing artistic divinity, even as his greed to capture it continues to keep him from achieving real refinement.  It’s a fascinating and strange alchemy, so unlike anything else in anime and even manga (where it originates), and I’m looking forward to immersing myself in its world again after all this time.