The long evenings of summer are perfect for horror movies. After the constant bustle of a day in the sun, I find little more satisfying than curling up with a spooky movie, and letting someone else deal with All The Problems for once. It’s a feeling much like sitting by a fire and looking out the window at a storm; a “grass is greener” in reverse, with only the stark alternative revealed by some window or screen allowing us to truly appreciate the security of our home. It’s perhaps not the noblest instinct to only feel secure when we see how we could have it worse, but that’s human nature for you – our first instincts are often more petty than we’d prefer, making both self-reflection and forgiveness all the more essential.
Rilakkuma and Kaoru’s fifth episode opens with the crew enjoying just such an evening, with the horror film in question conveyed through a totally distinct, traditionally drawn animation style. Not only is this style nothing like Rilakkuma’s usual stop-motion animation, it’s also nothing like a conventional anime aesthetic, either. The more realistic character designs and rotoscoped movements create a greater sense of immediacy than stylized characters would, making it easy to believe in the reality, and thus the danger, of this horror movie sequence. The brightly saturated colors and roughly scratched shading further amplify the menace of the sequence, presenting its heroine as trapped within neon lights, with even the shadows promising violence. Within one brief interlude here, Rilakkuma expresses a keen understanding of the aesthetics of horror.
Which, in turn, says something about the show’s usual visual aesthetic. Just as the art design of this opening sequence is intended to heighten and alarm us, so are the soft pastels and rounded shapes of the show proper designed to soothe us, to lessen the sting of the show’s painful lessons, and make us more amenable to its truths. Rilakkuma is inherently a work of aesthetic misdirection, but it’s not really being dishonest; the harsh things in life don’t necessarily come in harsh-looking packages, and getting through our days involves constantly negotiating disconnects between the ways the world is presented and the way we feel within it.
This mastery of mood-setting aesthetics is made clear in contrast, as we pan out from the horror film to Kaoru’s comforting apartment. Even this slight jump in framing, from the film’s world consuming the frame to it being expressed as a TV screen within the larger world, immediately creates a sense of distance and security. And as the sun rises on a dark and stormy tomorrow, we see this world again contort its colors and cuts towards an all-consuming atmosphere. With the rain pouring down outside, Kaoru’s office is all desaturated and blue, the cool light of monitor screens and the newspaper gray of a clouded sky.
As we learned back during her ill-conceived mushroom adventures, the rain tends to bring out Kaoru’s melancholy, as it does for many of us. Some people, or so I have heard, possess such a profound internal will and sense of optimism that they can actually bring light into the world, and brighten even the cloudiest days with their own sunny disposition. I am not such a person; emotionally I am a cold-blooded reptile, and thus need a heavy dose of sunshine to brighten my days and convince me the world is not a cold dark place. To say nothing of Kaoru also overhearing her coworker’s casual “my boyfriend is picking me up,” emphasizing the personal ties that might cheer others in such a time of gloom.
At home, all of Kaoru’s companions are cowering in fear of the thunder, presumably still troubled by the horror movie from the night before. To be honest, I have to admit I envy them. The fear of a monster getting you is such a pure and visceral thing, both thrilling and yet somehow comforting, as bracing yet fundamentally unthreatening as a rollercoaster ride. To scream in fear is a great release, much like laughter or sex, as art’s countless fusions of these instincts readily attests. It is a way of feeling greatly in a safe context, and in a world where so many of our actual horrors seem designed to still us into numbness, even feeling greatly scared can be a wonderful, vitalizing experience. To be afraid of a monster is to be young again in an uncertain world; as an adult, it sometimes feels the most actually frightening thing is certainty, is knowing tomorrow will be roughly the same as today.
Mundanity, stagnancy, being casually disregarded; these are the indigestible fears that hang over Kaoru, as she is first betrayed by her umbrella, then splashed by her coworker’s passing boyfriend. And after she’d just committed to getting that new umbrella, and even embraced it as a sign of her personal momentum! Unfortunately, like the rain itself, our commitment to and success with self-improvement often comes and goes with the seasons. Sometimes you’ll surpass your self-image in a blinding flurry of personal reinvention, but most of the time, you have to learn to laugh at yourself.
Kaoru at least sees the humor in the situation, briefly playing up her bedraggled, ghostlike appearance before getting cleaned up. And in the end, it only takes a few light switches and a couple minutes of cooking to dispel the gloom cast by the outside world, and make a cozy, brightly lit sanctuary of her apartment. This swift transformation is essentially the heart of Rilakkuma, a contrast that embodies its perspective on life: the incidental yet overwhelming disappointments that define modern living, and the equally incidental yet faith-restoring experiences that carry us past them. Learning to appreciate the beauty of the everyday, and finding something heartening, rather than fatiguing, in accepting the small failures and victories of an ordinary life.
Of course, sometimes it offers just a touch of embellishment as well (anthropomorphic stuffed bears aside). When the power goes out, the gang gather around a candlelit table, and their plans to share ghost stories are interrupted by the intrusion of an actual ghost. Her tragic tale of love cut short just before a first date is rendered in yet another unique design style, shifting to characters sketched on rough paper. The rounded, simplified character designs and rough-scratched linework offer an impression of nostalgia, innocence, and inexperience, as if we’re watching an animated version of our ghost girl’s diary entries, adapted with designs evoking the skills of an adolescent artist. And in spite of her story’s bleak ending, the telling is softened by another aesthetic choice: Rilakkuma’s preference for naturalistic vocal performances, which here undercuts our ghost’s fanciful origins via her matter-of-fact speaking tone. Hearing her tale, Kaoru can’t help but relate, and reflect that “sometimes we can’t let go of our anger until we take it out on someone.”
Fortunately, Kaoru is an adult, and not so solipsistic as to merely see her own disappointments reflected in this tale. Having learned of this girl who died before love could ever bloom, Kaoru is reminded that her own problems maybe aren’t so bad, and that there are certainly worse troubles in the world. On our own, we are very adept at spinning the injustices of incidental experience into some grand tragedy or malevolent project, as if all the world is collaborating in our ruin. Spending time and sharing our sadness with others grants perspective, and sometimes even relief. It is hard to feel that the whole world is against you when you’re hearing about someone who has it worse, and hard to feel anger at someone who allegedly wronged you when you have the context to understand that “crime.” The healthier counterpoint of “sometimes we can’t let go of our anger until we take it out on someone” is “sometimes hearing of another’s pain soothes the ache of our own” – rather than fostering further injury and anger, we should work to allay the pain of others, and thereby perhaps sooth our own.
By setting aside the heat of her own anger, Kaoru is also able to recognize the beauty of this girl’s tale. She reflects that “as you get older, you’ll forget that pure sense of excitement,” the rush of emotions attendant in first love (or first terror, as the horror movie made clear). We experience everything as poignant or thrilling or heartbreaking in adolescence, but we eventually lose the ability to conjure such purity of emotion, laden as we are with decades of similar experiences. The thrill of pure excitement, whether it’s regarding love or horror or what have you, is a gift to be savored.
Hearing of this gift offers some comfort to our ghost girl, who admits she was glad to experience that excitement, and no longer blames her boyfriend for moving on. And rather than taking out her anger on Rilakkuma, she ends up hugging him, and realizes she’s missed the feeling of hugging something so warm. It is possible to turn our personal injustices into sources of strength and opportunities for new happiness, if we only learn to express them earnestly, rather than carrying our anger forward and inflicting it on others. The world causes so much friction and anger that there’s no way it could all be “addressed,” and the doing of such would only provoke an even larger swell of resentment. Only by sharing, commiserating, and letting go can we hope to live happily.
The lights flicker on and our ghost is nowhere to be seen, her anger sated by Kaoru’s sympathy. Looking to the sky, Kaoru sees that the rain has stopped, and the sun is breaking through the clouds. It’s almost aggravating to see how easily the world shifts in its nature, trading temperamental stormfronts for sunshine without a thought for our plans or opinions. But there is a lesson in that: if the world itself can move on from each sorrowful storm, then surely we can learn to follow suit, and bear injustice with the certainty that every cloudbank eventually breaks.
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