Behind The Nihon Review

Seems like I’m taking over, doesn’t it? This week, I had the extreme displeasure of watching SHAFT butcher what I thought was one of the most moving moments I’ve ever experienced playing a visual novel. As there were no real linguistic problems with this episode, this will be the aforementioned “Yuuko Rant” I aluded to in my last post. Read on to see how, where and how badly SHAFT destroyed my favorite character. If in the miniscule chance that ef ~the latter tale~ becomes translated around six years in the future, stop here if you don’t wish to spoil the game for yourself. But seriously, by the time the game comes out, you won’t remember any of this anyways.

Amamiya Yuuko. Oh boy. Arguably the main heroine of the series, she begins the ef saga in the opening moments of ef ~the first tale~. Says she:

I believe everyone has prayed to God at least once. Even if one doesn’t believe in Him, there will come a time in every person’s life when he get down on his knees and prays from the bottom of his heart.

This is important, of course, as we all know about Yuuko’s staunch athiesm. What could she be alluding to? During much of ~the first tale~, Yuuko serves as the old, wise advice-giver and friend of Miyako, Hiro, Kei and Kyosukei. All four of them are puzzled by her past, shrouded in mystery. Why is she always at the church? Who is she waiting for? Why doesn’t she want to talk about her past? These are all questions that players had during the course of ~the first tale.~ Yuuko doesn’t serve as a deus ex machina in the game, unlike her appearance as a quasi-supernatural being in the anime. (Which I thought was rather lame and unexplained.)

Then came ~the latter tale~. Finally, I thought, I could understand who this enigmatic lady really was. Her story, as we all know now, is a sad one. Abandoned, orphaned, rejected by Yuu, raped and abused by Akira; it’s no wonder she doesn’t believe in God. She had been abandoned by Him, or so she thought. Hell-bent on seeking revenge on Yuu, the man who hurt her so deeply, she gets close to him in order to destroy him, but ends up falling in love with him.

This is where the story begins to deviate, and it is also where SHAFT’s rendition begins to take a sharp downturn. Akira dies by fire; Yuu and Yuuko begin their life together. Two poor, young, star-crossed lovers, trying to scrape together a living. Yuuko becomes pregnant, and is staunchly opposed to having the baby. She understands that the addition of a third member to Yuu and her family would lead to a total financial collapse. She doesn’t want their baby to experience the same hopelessness and sense of loss that she experienced as a girl. She doesn’t want to give birth to a baby when both Yuu and herself are in no position to love or care adequately for their child. In one particularly moving scene, in desperation to Yuu’s staunch opposition to her abortion, she grabs the knife that Akira gave her and attempted to kill herself.

A child born out of accident is a pitiful thing… with this act, I can take care of two things that get in your way, Yuu-kun.

Yuu, in desperation, grabs the knife from Yuuko, severely injuring himself.

A short while after this incident, the two of them meet Miki, the orphaned girl at the church. Yuuko develops a beautiful friendship with Miki.

Then comes Christmas morning. This is where I believe SHAFT screwed up the worst. According to episode 10, Yuuko was waiting for Yuu when she got hit by a car in a seeming freak accident.

In the game, Yuuko and Miki are together, talking outside the steps of the church while Yuuko waits for Yuu. Miki, seeing one of her friends, runs across the street, and almost gets hit by a car. Yuuko, in a stunning move of selflessness, throws herself on Miki, saving her life while ending her own.

As she dies, she crawls, inch by painful inch, into the church, and literally drags herself up to the altar. There, with tears in her eyes and blood gushing from her wounds, she says:

Look… it seems I don’t believe in you after all. But, if you’re there… please. I beg you… I don’t want to die! There are… so many things I want to talk about… I want him to know me even better… I want my thoughts to reach him… so please, I beg you, I’ll do anything, just let me meet him again!

Text alone can’t really express the emotional impact of those few lines. The visuals, plus the background music, plus the flawless voice acting from Yamada Yuna AND the text blended together… I cried.

Yuu comes to the church, and realizes something is amiss when he sees the trail of blood leading up the stairs. Inside, he finds his lover, the mother of his child, dead; weeping, sobbing, he begs her to not leave him.

I feel that the death scene would have meant much more were it done the original way. :/ For one, I think a little kid running out into the street is a lot more plausible than a grown, competent woman running out in the middle of the street. I think that had the death scene been done the way the game did it, it would have had a great impact on the viewers, especially Yuuko’s act of prayer, which totally goes against her own personal paradigms. I don’t know, the death scene in the anime just seemed a bit too muted, a bit too random, a bit too insiginificant for my tastes.

Disagree? Drop me a line.