In a way I suppose Toumei na Yoru ni Kakeru Kimi to, Me ni Mienai Koi wo Shita. is the ultimate bubble series. I put it in the patron poll but it didn’t garner any support there, and it hasn’t generated a lot of commentary. If I keep covering it it’ll strictly be for my own edification, pretty much. That’s ultimately why I cover most things though. And I do like it. There’s a niche for college romances that anime rarely fills, and no matter what the source material is, Love Unseen Beneath the Clear Night Sky fills it pretty smartly. Sometimes primary colors make nice paintings and major keys make nice music.
I noted last week that “we only ever see Kakeru’s perspective of all this – everything about what Koharu is thinking we have to infer from her words and her face”. A fitting close, because we open this week with just that, Koharu’s perspective. Her point of view, if you will. How she sees the world both literally and figuratively. It’s a touchy subject for a sighted person (as I presume the writer Shima Naganishi is, though I have no idea) to tackle, but it’s done quite deftly, I thought. As I also noted last week this series is set at the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, and it turns out Shima is a graduate of that school.
Koharu’s insecurities seem pretty reasonable to me. She’s self-conscious about stuff like eating. She doesn’t like it when people are deferential around her, and even more when they exclude her from things because they think they’re too difficult for her. It seems to be that the world might be quite different for a blind person who could formerly see and one who’s always been visually impaired. Koharu has a context for things in her head, and I loved the way we saw her image of the world around her filling in as Kakeru described the surroundings to her.
Ultimately of course her biggest insecurity is Kakeru himself. For him, the intrusive thoughts are all about what it would actually be like to date a blind person. For her, it’s whether a sighted person could actually want to be with her. Whether her disability would seem like too much work for someone like Kakeru (or anyone else, I suppose). But it’s clear that Koharu can see (no pun intended) past the shell that Kakeru hides behind to the real person behind it. In a funny way he’s less guarded around her than he would be someone who wasn’t blind, and as a result lets her “see” his closely-guarded hidden self. Who’s a quietly kind and decent kid who doubts himself but goes out of his way not to make anyone else’s life worse.
Take the rowing thing for example (yeah, that was 100% written from personal experience). I don’t think Kakeru likes Yuuko all that much – she kind of annoys him. But he’s the one who notices that she’s getting seasick and asks the coxswain to give it a rest (not that he minded that, don’t get me wrong). Also part of the school festival is a fireworks display that’s KO’d by the rain – if only there were a backup option. And a yukata contest, which Koharu ruefully notes she’d like to have been a part of and then asks whether Kakeru would have voted for her. His breezy confirmation doesn’t satisfy her, so her gives her a more considered one but the answer itself is the same.
This is kind of an interesting exchange, and it’s more great work from the seiyuu (especially Irino). Out loud he says “What difference does being blind make in a yukata contest?”. Internally he thinks “Deep inside we all know, it isn’t possible for people to be completely unbiased”. Kakeru doesn’t think this stuff because he’s a bad person – he’s patently anything but. And Koharu thinks it too. Is there a way around this – can two perfectly nice and normal people get past all that? It seems like it should be easy but clearly, it’s not. For this series to acknowledge that is kind of interesting.
