In Japan, there’s a veery popular item called “Ukon no Chikara” (it has many competitors too). It comes in little bottles and it’s a sort of tonic against self-abuse, at least purportedly. Generally it consists of a foul-tasting liquid infused with turmeric and liver enzymes, the idea being to fortify the body against heavy drinking and other similarly self-abusive activity. They say it mitigates hangovers and reduces fatigue. I have no idea if it works but I have popped one before the two whisky festivals I’ve attended here.

Well – I should have chugged two before this episode of Ikoku Nikki, which ripped my heart out and said “you don’t need this any more, do you?” while stomping it to pulp. “Less is more” is such a thing with great jousei, and this is a great one. Let the essential truthiness speak for itself and it’s a hundred times more impactful than emotional manipulation. I was in awe of the truthiness of this episode, though I’ve come to expect it of this series. It just gets it. It’s so natural and so real and so authentic. Even if the events of my life are very different in detail to what I’m seeing, I still feel over and over as if I’ve lived what I see playing out on screen.

Truth be told, I think this was one of the saddest anime episodes I’ve ever seen. While I think the writing is extremely empathetic towards both Asa and Makio I’m pretty sure the mangaka is Makio, because her storytelling reflects her personal ethos. It refuses to lie to us to cushion the blow, just as Makio does with Asa. One of the most penetrating things about Ikoku Nikki in fact is just how thoroughly it grasps the differences with introverts and extroverts. Not just the obvious ones – though they certainly assert themselves – but the subtler ones.

For example, this notion of sharing our sadness. I mean, Makio is so on-point in her view that our personal grief is so singular that no one else could ever understand it, and her resolve to keep it personal makes perfect sense to me. But it makes absolutely no sense to Asa, nor should it. She’s completely justified in feeling the way she feels. She wants someone to emotionally comfort her, to heal her and be a balm to the burning pain she feels. To lie to her if that’s what it takes. Not to generalize, but I do think people like Asa want to be lied to when that’s what’s needed to deal with pain, and people like Makio want to be true to themselves and to the truth itself even if it’s painful.

I also think that introverts much more than extroverts – generally – are able to accept imperfect things as they are. Asa sees something that’s wrong, in the mirror or otherwise, and wants to fix it. Makio isn’t wired that way. And that’s one of the things about this ep and indeed this premise that’s most heartbreaking to me – these are two people ill-suited to be in the relationship they’re in. Makio should never have become Asa’s guardian, as she’s totally incapable of giving Asa what she needs. If she were just the weird, awkward aunt it would be no big. Asa could look at her with puzzled affection and find her fascinating, and they’d both be fine with it.

But that’s not how it is. Asa is a child who’s ripped apart by anger and grief over her support team being ripped away from her for no reason whatsoever. Makio did the right thing by coming to her rescue when she was all alone, and Asa is still probably better off that she did. But it’s still quite a fix they’re in. Makio can never be what Asa wants her to be, and Asa can’t accept that she can’t. She can’t accept that Makio has never really grieved anyone she’s lost. Or that Makio refuses to seek her comfort over the one “very sad” thing that she says happened to her – the details of which she declines to share.

That ties into another thing I find incredibly sad about this story. Makio not grieving her father is one thing – that’s kind of how things are with her. But Asa – by nature an emotionally effusive kid – seems to have virtually no feelings about her father. Indeed, he appears to have lived an anonymous life in every sense by his own design, even in his own house. She lost two parents, not one, and both of them were a physical anchor point in her life. But these deep emotions she’s feeling seem to be directed at only one of them.

Asa cutting school and disappearing to drink boba tea is very much in-line with where she is emotionally. She’s desperate for Makio to get angry at her, to yell at her, to ground her – to do something to show she’s invested. At her age and with her nature, Asa railing against the injustice of life is as on-point as it gets. And she has damn good reason to feel aggrieved by fate. And she just wants attention, plain and simple. So disappear, knowing full well the school will contact Makio and a fuss will be raised. As indeed it is – Makio recruits not just Shingo but Touno-san to help her search, and with some help from Emiri is able to track Asa down at the boba tea shop where the two of them hang out.

That scene provided the one light-hearted moment of the episode, and I’m with the adults here – that stuff is revolting, like drinking snot balls. But the truthiness is never far away with this show. And there’s another gulf that divides these two people – Asa is an only child and Makio the youngest. Sibling dynamics are an extremely powerful influence on our natures, far more so than most people realize. And onlys and youngests are at opposite poles on the personality spectrum. Asa wants to be number one – like she always was to her mother. But for Makio, for whom the truth that we can never really understand another person is absolute and eternal, that’s an impossible ask. If she were a better actor she could fake it, but she can’t even do that.

One reason so many introverts are writers (or artists), I think, is that it allows us to express our emotional depths in a way we can’t in direct interaction with other people. That Makio is able to capture those emotional depths so profoundly in her novels just irritates Asa that much more, for good reason. But that irritation doesn’t invalidate the truthiness of those words on the page. It’s both the power of those words and the pain of being reminded what she can never get from Makio directly that finally breaks Asa down, and forces her to let her rage and grief flow out of her.  And even if Makio can’t be everything Asa needs – perhaps not even love her – she can be a compassionate arm around the shoulder and a warm presence in the terrifyingly cold night of loneliness.