Apr 28, 2021
Death is anime's favorite method of pushing forward a topic.
In a shonen anime and you need an easy way to make the main character have a rough period? Kill off one of his friends.
In a romcom and you need an easy way for the main character to go through a tough time so that his/her love interest can swoop in and save the day? Kill off one of their friends.
But sometimes, you watch something like 'I Want to Eat Your Pancreas' that shows the nuances of death. Simply put, death is someone not living any more. But what does that really mean?
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If we go by 'I Want to Eat Your Pancreas', in my mind one of the golden standards for a story surrounding death', death is the act of which you lose time. You lose time to do the things you love, to spend time with the people you love, and you understand the commodity that life is.
Similar media can be seen in a ton of other examples, such as the Japanese film 'Ikiru' in which a character begins to truly live given the knowledge they will die.
In the case of 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich', death is the freeing act from the increasingly difficult and more homogenous demands of bureaucracy. To die is to have the freedom to go against the societal requirements of marriage, home ownership, and having a family.
When any type of media is released with death at its core, it cannot afford to take the typical formulaic approach with death as a motivator and nothing else. In some ways, Onnanoko ga Shinu Hanashi understand this, but in other ways, it shows a gross misinterpretation of why death is impactful to begin with.
Only 8 chapters, the manga is practically doomed to begin with. The story begins with Seto, a sickly girl, as indicated by the color of her hair, meeting a girl named Chiho. At first, she is quick to demean her and call her ugly, but as she sees her blowing bubbles on the ceiling, she flips a complete 360. This the first issue with what the manga presents; The relationships that are happening are not explained as to how they begin or why they begin.
So she sees Chiho blowing bubbles on the ceiling, why does this prompt her to become her friend? Sure, it can be implied that maybe she empathizes with her or is just apologetic about the earlier confrontation, but from this point onward, the only other female Seto really interacts with is Chiho. They become best friends on the basis of nothing.
Even the characters with whom she has a relationship with from the past don't get their relationship substantiated in the slightest. Why does Kazuya and her have such a tight knitted companionship, and why does Chiho seem to fit right in despite having talked to her for just one day?
When relationships materialize out of nothing, they fall apart like nothing. When Seto's death inevitably arrives, none of the scenes of the two other deuteragonists crying and breaking down really make me feel anything.
Honestly, the only word fitting enough to describe the fact Seto died after 2 chapters is just pathetic. The fact that the most important character, of whom has thus far not had anything explained about her, relationships or otherwise, has died so briefly into the manga, following some other non-emotional scenes which purposely play on your heart strings, is poor story writing first, and kind of embarrassing second. Not only do none of the scenes in this manga seem to give me any type of emotion, but they are also so obviously framed as such with melodramatic language such as "Treat that one as me and take good care of it please."
Makoto Shinkai often employs this type of melodramatic language in his works to carry a mood across (often the language doesn't help), but the difference is that his works have awe-inspiring visuals that make declarations as or even grander than the dialogue. In Onnanoko ga Shinu Hanashi, though, the presentation is below average, and the dialogue ends up falling flat and feeling cheesy.
Once this manga got through the motions of introducing the characters and killing Seto off though, is when it finally takes its interpretation of what death means.
In Chapter 7, the importance of memories is stressed by the dying Seto. It's in Chapter 7 that we see why Seto didn't want to be seen by Chiho and Kazuya while she was dying. Even though she was soon to perish, she didn't want to be treated as such and she definitely didn't want her companions to see her in a state unbefitting of their memories.
And her dreams of having a family with Kazuya hit much harder following the chapter in which we learn Chiho ended up having children with him. Even as Kazuya is by Chiho's side, there is a good chance he is continuously haunted by the ghost of Seto, of which he loves.
Ultimately, the question, "who does he love more?" is begged. But in a true showing of pessimism, it's never said, and with the fact that chapter 6 precedes 7, it can be assumed that he loves Seto more.
For Onnanoko ga Shinu Hanashi, death is the moment of which memories are cemented. And for someone like Seto, who is so sickly that she is practically only skin and bone at the end, death is a moment that shouldn't take away from memory. And if it does, then perhaps its better not to witness the moment of passing at all.
In the end, Onnanoko ga Shinu Hanashi does understand what it means and what it takes to be a good death-oriented story. It expresses the nuances of death and also forms a stance on what death is, past the most simple definition. But unfortunately, its hindered by its less than subpar early and middle chapters, as well as any nuance the manga does take is projected onto characters who still were never all that fleshed out. There's only so much you can do for characters as dehumanized as Chiho and Kazuya, and its more than obvious at the epilogue.
Feeling a strong 3 to a light 4.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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