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Feb 14, 2020
In order to find out wether Koi to Uso is a good romance or not, perhaps it would be useful to define what a good romance is.
First let me ask you : what is love to you ?
Do you consider it something that is constructed, that has to be built over time ?
Does it require some kind of effort to be able to grow ?
Is it about gradually liking a person the more you learn about him/her ?
Would you say your loved one has to be a partner in life, sharing the best moments like the worst ?
Maybe you see it as
...
a long tranquil river, flowing quietly without getting out of its bed, until finally it calmly disappears with both of your lives in the sea.
This is the love of reason, the one that is compatible with duty, honor and other values, and exists in a harmony between mariage, family and society. You can find many love stories of this kind in novels, this is what is traditionnaly called romance in english speaking countries. Pride and Prejudice is a good example, but there are many others present in popular literature. These romances usually end well, the protagonists needing only to better understand each other to become a couple, and presumably living happy ever after.
Koi to Uso is not one of this romances.
It couldn't be, because what it is is romantic.
What is romanticism ?
Romanticism is choosing roman, the vulgar language of the people, over latin, the one of the scholars.
It's about making the choice of emotions and feelings such as love, over reason.
Have you ever read Romeo and Juliet ? It's pretty violent. More than that, if you try to make sense of the characters choices, they don't seem to have any. They appear to be irrational, and to a strict logical viewpoint they are.
But when you try to understand the emotions they are going through, it shines a new light on their actions. Being driven by intense feelings often makes you change your perspective of what trully matters. In both Shakespeare's play and this anime, the characters have the choice to pursue an honorable mariage, that's approved by their entourage and constitutes the obviously safer bet. Why don't they follow this path and opt for the choice that seems more logical ?
It's because it doesn't feel right. They function by a different kind of logic now, and their family duties ring hollow compared to the delight of spending a few moments with the object of their ardor. This love isn't a calm river, but a wild torrent sweeping everything in its path. When they're with eachother it takes hold of their entire body, whether they want it or not. It's a sweet madness, the kind that convices you you're the only one sane, and in these tales it might well be true.
Be it a mortal feud between two families or a government that arranges mariages, sometimes it's the reasonable society that looks insane, and your passion the single thing that makes sense. It's become something worth fighting for, and here lies, in my sense, the statement of Koi to Uso.
The show defends the idea that passion should be fully lived, however short it might be, the way fireflies are attracted to each other until their very last breath, shining all the more brightly, like a candle about to die out. It suggests us that going against societal norm might well be the right thing to do, which is a kind of subversion you don't often see in anime and especially risqué given the penchant for harmony and conformity in Japanese tradition.
There you have it, why in my opinion people enjoyed this anime or didn't : a romanticism that defies reason.
If you like stories about finding beauty in a doomed idyll, then go ahead and give Koi to Uso a try.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Sep 18, 2019
Almost everything you need to know about Berserk lies in the first lines of the show :
"In this world, is the destiny of mankind controlled by some transcendental entity or law...? Is it like the hand of God hovering above? At least it is true that man has no control, even over his own will."
It proceeds then to demonstrate this statement in a form of a tragedy, in the classical sense of the term.
It talks about the consequences characters bring upon themselves by their actions, and whether or not they were free to do otherwise. Spoilers.
Griffith personnifies the very idea of determinism. He believes
...
he has some place destined for him, the "dream" he talks about. Everything seems to come naturally to him, he's a stranger to the notion of effort. He has this calm confidence of a man knowing he will succeed no matter what, he's won the battle without fighting it, because it's his fate afterall.
Guts couldn't care less about fate. "You should be dead", that's what the entire world around him tells him, and he defies it since his birth. "The Struggler", putting his whole soul into every fight in order to survive.
He is the anthithesis of Griffith, that's why he is a mystery to him. "If I'm really bound by fate, how can this man be so free ?" You almost hear him ask. Guts' existence is a threat to his dream, that Casca understands well. He makes Griffith irrational, emotional, doubting about his destiny ("Do you think I'm a terrible person ?").
To oppose this notion, Griffith decides to make Guts his. By taking him as a part of his army, he believes he can control this unpredictable force of nature.
However Guts leaves, and for one day Griffith's fate is defeated by free will. Or so it seems.
The ending shows us otherwise. "The laws of causality" can't be avoided and the events unfold, predictible as the Eclipse.
Griffith's real nature is revealed to him, the one of a butcher who will rise to power, an ideal Nietzschean hero and he does nothing but to accept it by his words. He just couldn't do otherwise.
Is it to say that Griffith did nothing wrong ?
Comes the catharsis of the tragedy, in the form of the final scene. It shows the true face of Nietzschean heroes, which are nothing more than monsters that have lost all trace of humanity, and like in history it takes a traumatic event to fully understand it.
Even if free will is no more, this surely can't be the answer.
Berserk's answer is existentialism.
When troubled by Griffith's words by talking about the need to have a dream in life, Guts leaves in search for meaning. So he asks Godot about why he beacame a blacksmith. The old man aswers : "I didn't choose this. This is who I am". "But," he adds "there is still one thing I like about it : the sparks. I like seeing sparks. Breathtaking life, bursting before my eyes for just a moment... my life."
This is the message Miura delivers, that even without having a choice in your life, what's important is that you should experience it, feel it.
That's what Guts is all about. Though if it seems dark, cruel and hopeless and everything leagues against you, this is the only life you will ever get, so take it while you can.
The beauty is that it happens.
Also, the music was great, the animation a bit lazy at times and you should check out the outtakes of the english dub.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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