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.
Tag Archives: Rilakkuma and Kaoru
Rilakkuma and Kaoru – Episode 4
July debuts in Rilakkuma and Kaoru with an explosion of color, as cut-paper illustrations extol all of Kaoru’s summertime fantasies. Stop motion is such a laborious mode of animation that its aesthetic boundaries are even less fully explored than hand-drawn animation; in scenes like this parade of dreams, we are presented with new horizons of mixed media animation. Felt and clay characters stand atop layered cut-paper compositions, with thick pieces of painted wood or cardboard creating an illusion of depth, as if we’re watching an animated pop-up book. In Kaoru’s dreams, hunks prostrate themselves before her, offering both whirlwind romances and tasty snacks.
Rilakkuma and Kaoru – Episode 3
June arrives in Rilakkuma and Kaoru, heralded by a torrent of cool, unending rain. Though most narratives are guided by the course of their protagonists’ journeys, Rilakkuma and Kaoru instead follows a month-by-month schedule, a choice that can feel either comforting or anxiety-inducing, depending on your perspective. Adult lives don’t necessarily follow “protagonist’s journeys,” or really clear narrative arcs in general. After a first act defined by the guiding trajectory and lofty promises of education, we are thrust out into the world, and forced to accept that we are no longer main characters.
Rilakkuma and Kaoru – Episode 2
You wouldn’t think a bright, stop-motion story about a young woman and her three stuffed animal friends would offer such consistently piercing meditations on aging and purpose, but here we are. Rilakkuma and Kaoru’s first episode offered a direct and familiar punch to the jaw, centered on the difficulty of maintaining contact with friends as you move into adulthood, and the fear of being left behind by the people you love. In the end, Kaoru’s friends didn’t all suddenly reappear in a glorious refutation of those fears; after all, that process of separation is an inescapable fact of adulthood. It’s not all sunshine and roses – in fact, it’s more often about coming to terms with imperfect circumstances, and finding the joy in what you can. Kaoru can’t rekindle her college friendships, but she can sit and watch the stars by the riverbank, and maybe that’s enough.
Rilakkuma and Kaoru – Episode 1
I don’t think anyone really warned me how stressful and tiring adult life would be. Perhaps some of that might come from having unwisely turned so many of my hobbies into sources of income, but on the whole, I think most of us are unprepared for the compromises, disappointments, and general fatigue of adult living. At a certain point some time in your twenties, the natural energy with which you used to greet the day seems to dry up, with responsible living somehow no longer feeling like enough to keep you moving, and extravagances like excessive drinking leaving you flat-out exhausted. Days start to feel shorter and shorter, filled up with mundane tasks that are so reliable and unending that there’s no real sense of accomplishment in completing them. Your relationships with others begin to shift, forced to accommodate increasingly demanding personal schedules, and often maintained in spite of your actual desire to simply get more sleep. And beyond that, the future doesn’t necessarily offer any call for optimism – our planet and economy have been crumbling for all of my adult life, and it seems naive to imagine things might ever improve.