I spoke of suspension of disbelief with Super no Ura de Yani Suu Futari. And that’s definitely a constant companion for me with this series. An additional element is that the concept of watching two people bond over a habit I find absolutely revolting is a stretch, too. There is some little part of me that’s always imaging how terrible both these people smell and how just being in their vicinity would give me a pounding headache and nausea. It wasn’t so bad with the manga but it’s somehow more visceral in anime form.
In the end, none of these things have ever been enough to tip the balance against the series. I don’t love it, but I do stick around. There’s something about Sasaki’s forlorn decency and Yamada’s pathetic need for acceptance that feels very universal. Japan is a country with a seriously fucked up workplace culture, and a current government intent on dismantling any reforms that attempted to change it. It’s also one where not showing your true self to most people has been elevated to a religion. This series speaks to something deeply rooted in this country, and in the end I suspect that’s why it’s been such a regular in the critics awards circuit.
“Dense”? You don’t know the half of it, Sister. That’s the core conceit of Smoking Behind the Supermarket With You and yeah, I suppose it’s better that the narrative acknowledges it. That still doesn’t justify Sasaki-san being unable to spot something so comically obvious, though. Even with “Tayama” commenting on it I never got the idea that we were supposed to find this as ludicrous as it is. The flipside of that is that it’s that quality in Sasaki that Yamada-san is drawn too as much as anything, I suppose.
It’s also worth noting that Sasaki is abused at work every day, and Yamada is always able to cheer him up. But when he’s the one who’s accused of doing the abusing, not even her luminescence can brighten his outlook. This is Sasaki to the core. He’s so beaten down that he accepts being mistreated as the natural order of things. Considers it justified, even. But the idea that he could be responsible for making someone else’s workplace as miserable as his makes him inconsolable. Of course he was innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever, as the “victim” told him the next day (I doubt she said that to their boss, though).
Yup, it’s a sweatshop all right, as Tayama calls it. By contrast Supermarket S appears to be relatively humane. Even so, there’s a reminder here of the dehumanizing effect of working retail as Tayama describes the “smiling lessons” employees must endure. She also shares that she was the subject of a customer complaint for smelling like smoke. That’s also a reminder that even for a smoker whose sense of smell is trashed, it should be easy for Sasaki to realize that Yamada-san smells like smoke. But that’s all part of the suspension.
Context is everything. So for Sasaki and Yamada, meeting in the smoke pit is a karmic earthquake. That’s not where she’s supposed to be for him. And he’s not supposed to be there in the light of day for her. This is especially interesting from her perspective – you can really see her grinding over this. Hoping on some level that he’ll figure it out and she can drop the pretense. The woman who tenderly picks the sakura petal out of his hair is some hybrid of those two halves – as indeed the real Yamada-san is. It’s kind of deep when you think about it that way, and worth a little suspension of disbelief (and nausea).
