Konshuu Volume 60, Issue 1 by Cal Animage Alpha

Cal & Stanford Original Characters

Art By Willow Otaka

INTO THE OMEGAVERSE!

Editor-In-Chief

Devon Nguyen

4th Year, Anthropology

I’ve been a firm omega rights activist for five years now

Adorable and comedic family-oriented anime have become a positive norm for seasonal anime as of late. Spy x Family made a splash in 2022 with its captivating plot and heartwarming portrayal of found family. Then, Buddy Daddies added a refreshing queer twist, breaking away from the nuclear family model established by Spy x Family and exploring whether two male friends could successfully raise a child (spoiler: they can). Now comes Tadaima, Okaeri, trading action-packed drama for cozy domesticity and bringing the omegaverse genre to the TV screen for the first time.

One of the standout aspects of the series is its seamless portrayal of same-sex couples marrying and raising children. While many BL series in recent memory are set either in worlds free of discrimination or where overcoming prejudice is a main part of the narrative, Tadaima, Okaeri goes a step further by depicting a fully realized queer family. At the heart of this story is Masaki, a devoted stay-at-home father who cares for his son, Hikari, while his loving husband, Hiromu, works tirelessly as a salaryman to support their family and ensure their happiness. The prejudice that they face has more to do with Misaki’s status as an omega rather than their sexuality, which in itself adds another interesting layer of non-traditional gender roles and trans-identity. While the terms of one’s status in regards to their secondary sex may seem alien to those unfamiliar with the omegaverse, the introduction of these aspects through such a wholesome lens was a great decision on the studio’s end. It eases people into it, not shoving it into their face and expecting them to get it on the fly.

I think a big part of Tadaima, Okaeri's appeal lies in the fact that Masaki and Hiromu are significantly older than the typical BL couple, at least in the context of anime adaptations. They’re fully-fledged adults—well-established in their personal lives— raising a child together. This adds a layer of relatability, as it’s refreshing to see an adult BL couple navigating everyday life in a way many of us aspire to: simply living authentically with both love and support from the community around us. We also get to experience the story through Hikari's perspective. From the milestones he reaches to the way he navigates life in his parents' absence, these moments allow us to connect deeply with him as the very heart of this precious show.

Even if omegaverse media isn’t someone’s thing, the breakthrough presence of Tadaima, Okaeri is undeniable. With the door wide open for these stories to be told, one can only hope to see an influx of them down the line.

OUR CONNECTING LINES OF DESTINY

Writer

Anje Chimura 3rd Year, Philosophy & Media Studies

Whatever path you take, you must keep going forward.

SPOILERS FOR LIFE: SENJOU NO BOKURA

Life: Senjou no Bokura is a miracle. It was both written and drawn by a singular inexperienced mangaka, but it somehow manages to craft a poignant tale about identity, loss, and love. Reading through the manga myself, I found that there were several points where I had to stop and simply absorb the emotions being delivered to me from off the pages. If all you wanted to hear was a brief recommendation, here it is: go read Life: Senjou no Bokura; it’s good.

This emotional rollercoaster of a BL manga starts off by establishing two things: structural framing and tone. Its framing is done through each scene having the age of the main characters presented to the audience (ie. chapter one starts off with “17 - Seventeen”, with subsequent scenes continuing this progression of time). This works well because the broader narrative structure is able to use it to create heightened emotional strain in the later sections of the manga. By establishing this structure early, Life: Senjou no Bokura is able to show us the lives of our two main characters from a storybook-type perspective. This leads into tone, which the manga nails as well. For a majority of the time, Life: Senjou no Bokura’s tone is lighthearted, as is typical for the format its contemporaries in the genre use. However, this carefree feeling isn’t the exclusive tone of the manga either, despite its relatively short length. There are a few parts, especially in the middle of the manga, where the tone shifts gradually to communicate a sense of hopelessness and despair. The tonal shift feels quite natural given the events of the story leading up to that point, and as such, it creates a powerful contrast to the feeling readers would have been used to from the earlier chapters. By setting up both the framing and tone early on, Life: Senjou no Bokura is able to capitalize on them extremely effectively when it counts, and when it wants to make you cry.

The two main characters are really cute, both individually and as a couple. Nishi is a typical (but not derogatorily) deredere guy who always remains idealistic and optimistic. He serves as the boke to the other main character, Itou, who is very much a tsukkomi. Itou is more in line with the tsundere archetype, but he tends to make his emotions very apparent to the reader.

He is often the character with more emotional complications, such as his conflicting struggle with his identity and love for Nishi. In a way, apart from the central love story, Itou’s journey of self-discovery is the heart of the entire manga. He provides a groundedness in reality that the dreamy Nishi contrasts with well, and they really fit well together as a couple. Their dynamic feels natural, lighthearted, and sweet, especially given how they meet and fall in love over their games of make-believe. Before they get together, Nishi and Itou only ever meet during their fantasy games, where they each tread carefully along the white painted lines of the street. Even though they connect over the fact they do these silly imaginings, Itou especially wants to become closer with Nishi. This is pretty clever for the story to be set up this way, because as with the previous aspects I talked about, this dynamic influences the rest of the story, too. Particularly, Itou having a desire that is unable to be communicated goes on to seriously affect the central relationship, from their first kiss, to their more intimate moments, and to their breakup. If you couldn’t tell from what I’ve said already, everything in this manga fits together super well, and enhances its other aspects.

Needless to say, Life: Senjou no Bokura is masterfully crafted to ensure maximum emotional resonance. The breakup is heart-wrenching, only topped by the much more heart-wrenching reunion(s) present in the final chapters. For how beautiful Life: Senjou no Bokura is, it is criminally overlooked. Please go read it when you have the chance!

Aoba and Clear

DRAMAtical Murder

Art By Cas Geiger

Autumn Kiss

Tien Guan Ci Fu

Art By Tatum Ekstrom

ONE WEEK SQUANDERED

Writer

RAHM JETHANI 3rd Year, English

The character design is good though.

SPOILERS FOR SEVEN DAYS

Time is a difficult tool to make good use of, especially when it is at the forefront of a story’s concept. Certain shorter series - take for example slice-of-life anime like Angel Beats! and K-On! - use time to accentuate the emotions associated with brief windows of opportunity; for example, one’s precious few years in high school, or one’s conflicted and compartmentalized past. Often, this methodology is employed to show character growth, which is important for shorter stories to get correct due to the limited page or episode count. Many succeed, and many more fail. Unfortunately, the manga Seven Days fails in this regard, and does so by quite a large margin.

Seven Days has a very simple premise: one boy, Yuzuru Shino, must try his best to win the heart of another boy, Touji Seryou, within the span of one week. And to be clear, simplicity in this case is a good thing; Seven Days is only 13 chapters long, and as such should communicate its concept fairly transparently to its readers. The premise itself is not what I take issue with, but rather the means Seven Days uses in attempting to create and resolve tension. Going back to what I said earlier about short stories making the most of their time, Seven Days admittedly gets some crucial elements right. Firstly, it immediately introduces the mystery about why Seryou only dates people for a week. This allows for readers to more easily put themselves in Shino’s shoes, given both the audience’s and Shino’s own lack of information. As the story progresses and the mystery unravels, this theoretically should create a better connection between the readers and Shino as well. Secondly, Seven Days’s pacing is crafted very well. Regardless of whether or not this is the byproduct of its shorter scope and narrative, there were never moments of unnecessary or useless story beats getting in the way of the central relationship between Shino and Seryou.

However, Seven Days fails in arguably more crucial ways than it succeeds. For example, the “one week” premise is very arbitrary, even within the story itself. At the beginning of the story, and throughout the rest of it, time is always being counted down, creating a rising sense of tension that ultimately gets no payoff. The ending inadvertently emphasizes this especially, with Shino

immediately asking Seryou out again once the week’s time limit has passed, and readers are expected to believe that no one else has tried to do the same thing. This makes Shino’s relationship with Seryou less impactful, because it retroactively demeans the allure Seryou is supposed to have at the start. Granted, this allure is due to most people not knowing him for who he truly is, but the ending of the story doesn’t give any clearer answer to who he is than the beginning does.

This is another big problem I have with Seven Days: although they have a good enough dynamic, Shino and Seryou are not interesting characters. In fact, they are quite boring, and trying to create a character drama with boring characters has the effect of being grating. With Shino, I can forgive his inoffensive lack-of-character due to likely being meant to serve as an audience insert. However, Seryou is a different story. He is painted as a character with messy and inconsistent morals predicated upon his inner turmoil, which should set up well for development, even in a shorter story like this. But, the writing messes up on giving a reasonable justification for why Shino was able to connect with him, leaving this important plot point to be arbitrary as well. Regardless of Shino’s kindness or his pettiness, no explanation is given as to why he and Seryou become closer than normal, apart from one very specific point: Seryou had an ex who was also named “Shino.” Seryou’s mention and maintained contact with his “Shino” makes our Shino angry, due to it going against Seryou’s own arbitrary rules about contacting his exes. This then leads to two feelings: firstly, that Shino’s outbursts are childish and unwarranted, given the fact that he’s already aware of Seryou’s conflicting ideologies. Secondly, it makes Seryou seem apathetic about Shino, despite the entirety of the manga trying to redeem him as a character. As a result, the resolution and ending have no resonating impact, because there doesn’t seem to be any lesson learned, apart from Seryou deciding to cut off contact with his “Shino” because he’s moved on to our Shino.

Ultimately, Seven Days is a conflicting manga. One one hand, it’s a short story about two boys falling in love, made with good art and good pacing. On the other hand, its lack of character development or commitment to making things emotionally impactful leaves a lot to be desired. Seven Days’s mangaka, Venio Tachibana, does not have many writing credits, so perhaps the manga’s mix of quality can be attributed to this. Nevertheless, I can’t deny feeling disappointment towards this manga, especially considering what it could have been.

LOVE THAT GOES UNSEEN

RAHM JETHANI 3rd Year, English

When we say “slay,” we literally mean “murder.”

Writer

Umineko no Naku Koro ni is a complex, intricate multi-layered story. Using its extremely long runtime, the story delves into many complicated and nuanced subjects with attention, delicacy, and care. Standout themes that Umineko addresses include how parents treating their children poorly can lead to generational trauma, how processing loss and grief in conjunction with feelings of denial and revenge makes pain linger, and how deadset convictions can both break and heal the human spirit. Each of these kinds of philosophies are discussed in-depth, with arguments presented to readers on all the different angles of the topic. From there, readers are meant to take all the information they’ve been given and work out for themselves which viewpoint they choose to believe. As a result, reading Umineko can feel extremely philosophically rewarding. However, there’s one subject matter that doesn’t get elaborated on, and the lack of elaboration or discussion leads to a popular viewpoint and interpretation that can feel disturbing. This is the issue of sexuality, specifically with regards to the character(s) of Sayo/Lion. However, through love, I believe ‘it’ can be seen.

Ushiromiya Lion was born a man, and subsequently hid that fact from everyone, due to discomfort and shame surrounding the circumstances of their birth. Most characters in the story don’t even know Lion’s gender, and even when asked, Lion refuses to elaborate. Likewise, since Lion is an alternative version of Yasuda Sayo, the same nuance is given to that character as well,

with Sayo assuming two personalities of different genders, Shannon and Kanon. This presentation alone is not disturbing; Sayo’s and Lion’s choices to display non-conventionally raise no issues. However, the problem comes with how this non-conformity is portrayed to affect Sayo’s mental state.

Lion is the version of Sayo that was accepted by the Ushiromiya family, and as a result, is a stable and normal human being. However, Sayo was never originally accepted; not by the Ushiromiya family due to their illegitimacy, and not by Battler who forgot his promise to Shannon. As a result, Sayo goes mad when Battler returns to Rokkenjima, which is the crux of the myth of Beatrice and the Ushiromiya family murders. While emotional justification is given to the motivations of Sayo, there is still an uncomfortable insinuation made by some that their madness may be, in part, due to their repressed sexual identity and unrealized relationship with Battler. Umineko itself gives no philosophical implications one way or the other about this possibility, but the lack of elaboration, especially given other subjects presented in the story, is confusing. As a result, to make sense of Sayo’s condition, I think it’s necessary to extrapolate meaning from the alternative reality, where Ushiromiya Lion exists with someone who cares for them.

To start off, it is necessary to say this: Ushiromiya Lion and Willard H. Wright are a cute couple. While their romance isn’t at the forefront of any part of the story, their interactions are fun, sweet, and wholesome, despite the situations they find themselves in during Bernkastel’s game. Will and Lion are both reserved people, sharing many other similar personality traits as well. However, breaking the “opposites attract” mentality, their relationship of logical banter with each other builds over the course of the episode, and culminates at the end where Will selflessly fights life-and-limb to save Lion from Bernkastel’s cats. While they may have a simple relationship, it is still a solid, good one.

In this reality, Lion is given care and love, both by the Ushiromiya family and by a romantic interest. This contrasts with Sayo’s reality, where neither is able to be given. As a result, one may draw the relatively simple conclusion that the lack of a nurtured upbringing is more likely to have caused Sayo’s madness rather than any sort of sexual or romantic-repression-fueled outburst. The fact that Lion is able to exist and express in the ways they want to, with the support of Will and the Ushiromiya family, is a major testament to the power love has upon the human psyche. And so once again, as is often the case with Umineko, without love it cannot be seen.

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR UMINEKO NO NAKU KORO NI!