AN ANIME EXPLANATION
XXX. (No, not that xxx, we’re barely approaching PG) The Amusement Park
Love is in the air, you can tell by the sounds of steel wheels rushing along tracks, joyful screams from the rides, and the scent of burning sugar and over-heated oil. Our couple is now able to hold hands without nervousness, and both are anticipating actual lip contact by the end of the day! Rides are ridden, haunted houses braved, cotton candy consumed, and the date is progressing, but trouble lurks in the topiary!
The boy with an unrequited love for our heroine, or possibly the girl who modeled lingerie for our hero back during the lead up to White Day a year ago, will be drawn by the demonic forces haunting our couple to the amusement park. A fateful moment will arise, probably set up by one of our couple making either a bathroom visit, or trip to a refreshment stand. This brief separation will inspire the crushing boy to approach our Heroine and confess his love, or the lingerie model to approach our Hero and try to make him blush by flirtatious touching!
This brief moment of embarrassment will coincide with the return from the bathroom, or food stand, of the other member and will immediately revive all of the prior doubts in their heart.
XXXI. The Amusement Park cont.
The rest of the afternoon passes with more rides, more snacks, and more walking around the park, but no longer are hands held, and the atmosphere is tense. Our couple has improved in understanding, and both know what is wrong, but they are still too bashful to directly address the issue. This may seem like a minor bitter note, possibly even the flaw that highlights the beauty of the relationship, but it is dangerous!
If the couple does not break through the pall and kiss on the Ferris wheel (also possible are an overlook watching the fireworks, or a boat floating on a lake inside the park) at the dramatic moment when the park is closing, they will most likely drift apart and enter University in another regression. This will eventually doom them to a future of solitary drinking as they sit in their (separate) tiny apartments gazing at a picture of their lost love from the Festival, which is the only decoration.
XXXII. The Stumble and Catch
This is titled the stumble and catch, but it can also take the form of a stumble into a wall slam. Either our delicate Heroine or manly Hero must lose their footing at this stage. If both are too agile the romance is doomed.
Fortunately clumsiness is common, and despite the abhorrence of litter and obsession with maintenance that Japan is justly famed for, a stumble is quite likely due to our couple being distracted by dark thoughts of jealousy. Our Heroine stumbles and starts to plummet to her doom (or possibly a mild ankle turn) and our brave Hero catches her and draws her close. Their eyes meet, and, after a very long flashback montage of every romantic moment on the preceding pages, they finally kiss! Should our Hero be the one who stumbles, he will catch himself by slamming his hand against a wall. His hand will pass over our Heroine’s shoulder, and close beside her head, bringing the pair face to face, with events again following nature’s course.
XXXIII. The Final Hurdle
Our couple is now home free. You might think that the convoluted path it required to actual get spit swapped indicates that their relationship will face similar perils and contortions in the future, but the intensity of Japanese higher education, and the corporate feudalism of their work life, render any possibility of developing romantic feelings post high school (and pre widow(er)hood) very unlikely. So you dance with the one you brung, or you don’t dance at all.
Yes, that kiss under the light of the standard Amusement Park firework show, is tantamount to a wedding ceremony, and our couple will now fast forward through University, 80 hour work weeks, an actual wedding, and find themselves 10 years in the future, meeting up with their high school friends, holding their baby!
Or will they?
There is one final obstacle, and it is not one that can be overcome, it either exists and dooms the love, or doesn’t exist.
XXXIV. Siscon
The go/no go question we have finally reached is this:
Does our Hero have a little sister?
An older sister is ok; this particular bit of depravity depends on the sister being the junior of the kids. Further, there is no risk of the Heroine having an older brother (if she had had an older brother we would not have progressed past I. far above.) But if the Hero has a little sister our journey is either at an end, or about to get disturbing.
It is an immutable law of anime Japan that all younger sisters are in love with their Onii-chan, and that while the older brother tries to deny his feelings, he returns that love. It is futile to list the laws and taboos this violates, and pointless to argue from non-Japanese experiences of sibling rivalry, dislike, ordinary affection, or outright hatred. One must simply note it as a somewhat distasteful aspect of the culture, like public defecation in urban California, or anti-Semitism in the Ivy League. This love is inevitable, fully romantic, and all conquering. If there is a younger sister, our Heroine will end up a spinster. Our Hero still has two possible paths.
XXXV. Siscon Journey’s End
If our hero has a younger sister, who was born to the same biological parent or parents, in other words a full sister or half-sister, he is doomed. We are not discussing various hentai possibilities here, because our topic involves marriage and offspring, not taboo pornography. If the sister shares a biological parent with our Hero, her love will be enough to perpetually prevent the Hero from marrying and having a family. He may complete the thirty-three steps above; he may reach first base, but he will be too conflicted to bring the relationship home.
Merely having a younger sister you believe is your biological sibling or half-sibling does not make it so. Anime Japan has many secrets, and you may well discover that your sister is actually your cousin1 or some random mystery chick your parents found wandering the streets as an infant.
XXXVI. Siscon Things Just Got Weird
If our Hero’s sister is a step sibling, or cousin, or an ethereal spirit made flesh in one of those mystical happenings the Gods of anime Japan delight in, who was found wandering the streets as an infant, and brought home by the Hero’s parents, all is not lost for our Hero. (sorry Heroine, you should start perfecting your solitary drinking game, you are single for life)
In fact, our Hero is about to embark on a socially questionable, deeply awkward, but paradoxically easy, courtship. In fact all that has to happen is for the siblings to learn the family secret about the aforementioned cousin, or ethereal spirit made flesh during a celestial fit of drunken mirth. The moment an older brother and younger sister learn that their union is legal under the Anime Statutes, they will steel themselves to confront their parents with the truth of their love.
Despite this being something any sane parent would find appalling and unimaginably perverse, those parents will greet the news with acceptance. In fact, the parents will immediately rent the quasi-incestuous (or outright if cousins) an apartment so the forbidden boinking can begin.
XXXVII. Conclusions
Obviously no society can long endure a courtship process with this many potential failure points, and virtually no possibility of a second courtship. A process which excludes the majority from even beginning a relationship, dooms most relationships to failure, and can only occur during a two year window, is not workable. I began this piece by saying that I would leave the task of coming up with solutions to those wiser than myself, but I will make one suggestion.
It is possible that the birthrate could be greatly increased by fostering! If each family with a boy were to foster a girl a year or two younger, or each family with a girl were to foster a boy a year or two older, the society could be saved. Whether such a society should be saved is another question.
- The author wishes to note that having sex with your first cousin, even if legal, is skeevy and you should NOT do that! ↩︎
I am beginning to think this love should remain unrequited, for the sake of future humanity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qdNAbCh6NM
I couldn’t find the clip with Nanami and Touga.
Don’t those married young men stay out all night with their boss (male or female) drinking. And after taking the drunken boss home HiJinks ensue?
/Curious in Podunkville
Honorable salarymen that stay out past the last train may find themselves asleep on the street, even without an angry wife.
What about 2nd cousins? The catholic church says this
Please allow me once again to introduce:
Oreimo
There are two ways to take this work. Either it is the perfect ironic criticism of the little sister genre or it is playing it straight. Either way works.
A high school harem comedy where the protagonist has every stereotypical type of Japanese girlfriend attracted to him and he chooses the flesh and blood little sister.
Really there is no need to explore the genre any further. The bonus was that the whole otaku community became enraged when they realized after several seasons what was going to happen.
My series was based on a lot of different anime I have watched over the last year. Oreimo is one of them, but I kind of deliberately didn’t draw from it much because it was… shall we say less restrained… about the more disturbing tropes. Probably the most influential series on this project was From Me to You, with Komi being a solid second place, because I found both of them charming.
I was WTF is that and I realized I only remember it by the Japanese title. That one is wonderful, but plays it straight as it is targeted at the ladies.
This season The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity on Netflix is a lady targeted series that has been surprisingly realistic. Manga is immensely popular in Japan.
One day if I ever can figure out to write it I should explore the Monogatari series which has all these tropes and so many more plus Japanese culture and history. I have no idea why it is so popular in the west because many of the layers are unknown to a western audience. The underlying stories are strong enough that it works here. I think that’s amazing.
I would love to read that. I loved the Story series. I loved it when I looked up what Monogatari meant and learned the whole series is just titled {Monstername} Story, so it is always just Story series to me now.
There is lots of wordplay in the series including the titles.
化け物 bakemono. Monster.
物語. Monogatari. Story
Combine them you get 化け物語 bakemonogatari. Monster stories. I believe that was a made up word from this work, but I could be wrong. The other titles all use the “mono” character and are made up for sure. “Mono” by itself means thing.
I was thinking of you today, because I learned オレンジジュース is a word.
Someday English and Japanese will completely overlap.
Just a skosh
Soft drinks are referred to as “juice” too.
For example in a bar or restaurant you’d ask
ジュースもありますか。
Is there “juice” as well?
The google translate pronunciations are something. The english version sounds like it has a southern drawl after listening to the japanese.
ドレッシング is apparently a word, too.
I’ve read linguists claim up to 20% of Japanese is loanwords mostly from English.
リテラチュア
Read that one for 30 seconds the first time I saw it before I figured WTF it was.
It’s very striking as a non-Japanese speaker how many English words I recognize watching subtitled anime. I am especially struck by the ones that were borrowed despite Japanese already having words for the meaning, and the oddly specific contexts for their use, sankyuu and baibai especially amuse me whenever they appear.
God, I really am a full fledged weeb
San kyu is a rank in go, a couple below shodan.
Others students in my class have the same problem. They are harder to learn initially than actual Japanese. It involves another step.
https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/katakanization/
Wasn’t inflicting baseball and a couple nuclear bombs on them damage enough??
Loan words via English is probably more accurate than from English given English’s word acquisition strategy. So in a sense this means that linguistically, English raids Germany, Holland and France and Japan fences the loot.
The guy who threw his perfectly good sub at a cop in DC yesterday – was (not any more) a DOJ employee. Damn that’s a lot of stupid.
https://x.com/AGPamBondi/status/1956010229348413694
Felony assault. Was it a deadly sandwich?
https://nypost.com/2025/08/13/us-news/dc-man-sean-charles-dunn-charged-with-felony-assault-after-hitting-federal-agent-with-subway-sandwich/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nypost
Even when the state does the right thing it makes me not want to support it.
Nobody needs a sandwich bigger than 5″
Maybe he was allergic to lowfat mayo?
The bread was stale.
Did it have the thing that goes up?
Team B is learning to play by the same rules as Team A instead of meekly rolling over.
It is what it is. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So his career is sunk?
His performance was substandard.
He wasn’t a hero.
No more daily grind for him.
He didn’t stack up. Couldn’t cut the mustard. Was a few slices short.
If they would charge this asshole with felony assault for hitting a stranger on the street with a sandwich, then fine.
But I am so fucking tied of the government treating LEOs as a special case — as untouchables.
Agreed.
Somehow I have a feeling this ex-DOJ employee favored throwing the book at the mostly peaceful J6 protesters.
Disappearing this guy into solitary confinement somewhere without access to an attorney would be rational payback.
But I don’t support it.
An assault on the King’s men is the same as an assault on the King himself!
I understand it, but I don’t support it.
Bodice-ripper on wheels
As the name implies, the Elevated Velocity concept literally takes the hyperspeedy all-electric capabilities of last year’s concept and physically raises the bodywork, fortifying the suspension for high-speed off-road terrain work. Inside, the experiential opulence is figuratively elevated. The customer type that inspired the Elevated Velocity concept is described as an elite desert polo athlete who thrives on adrenaline and mastery, or a devotee of the Dakar Rally and Extreme-E Racing (a unique blend of motorsport, environmental advocacy, and cutting-edge EV technology).
James Bond with a purse.
+ 1 F1 tech knowledge.
Disproportionately big wheels are just not a good look. And yeah, you’re going to do a lot of off-roading with low-profile tires.
The proper response to a guy who throws a sandwich at a cop is to laugh at him and make him clean the sidewalk and pay to have the uniform cleaned.
I’d be ok with some weekend trash pickup.
If I was hungry, and he ordered something good, just make him watch me eat his sandwich.
I’m ok with booking the guy and letting him sit in a cell overnight before paying a substantial fine. And I am totally OK with the guy being fired from DOJ.
But felony charges are bullshit.
If you want to lock someone away for the night, the felony charge is probably where you start.
When they let him out the next day — “next time could be a lot worse.”
Note that arrest record will follow him for the rest of his life.
kinnath:
The arrest record yes, but if he’s not charged, I don’t think it makes that much of a difference.
The arrest shows up on a background check even if there is no associated conviction.
I don’t think there should be any difference between assaulting a cop vs. anyone else, but it was assault, and he should be charged with it, as that is the law.
Heck, he worked at the DOJ, he knew what he did, fuck him. Ex-kings men get treated no better than anyone else.
You mean he’ll never get another job with the government?
Something from the “process is the punishment” part of dealing with the government.
AKA FAFO.
He WAS a DOJ employee, this one is still too big.
Right up until a friendly judge expunges the record.
make him clean the sidewalk and pay to have the uniform cleaned.
Before or after the ‘peace officer’ stomps him into a muddy blood hole?
Maybe it had some really hot peppers…
From Subway? Be serious…
Jared, Jussie, this guy…
I’m thinking Subway might be cursed.
Or, just maybe, Subway is the hero we need?
With nearly a quarter of the us population living on a couple of postage stamps I would think a smaller population would be a good thing. Also, dont they usually avoid all the stifling courtship rituals by just riding the train? I heard that’s a thing.
They have the same Ponzi scheme problem the U.S. does. Plus caring for the aging population.
Worse, they chose a very bad economic path when their growth peaked in the 90s and they have been gradually sliding backwards in terms of real GDP and wealth as a result, the aging population issues, and inheritance taxes are going to make Japan a lot poorer over the next decades unless they figure things out.
Maybe a poke in the ribs with a nightstick.
Is sandwich victim cop on six months’ paid PTSD rehab leave?
Imagine dreaming about hoagies flying at you all night.
Probably full disability.
“Every time I close my eyes, all I see is lettuce! Lettuce everywhere! I can’t go by a strip mall without having a panic attack!”
Lol. An IM from a team checking for helium leaks:
“Are we allowed to go in there? It’s dark.”
So if there voices get squeaky you can’t tell if it is the helium or fear.
their
I’m hearing a squeaky “help me!” in my head.
“Don’t get eaten by a grue!”
Obligatory!
“Are we allowed to go in there? It’s dark.”
For god’s sake don’t light a match.
Helium is far too aristocratic to join a commoner like oxygen.
+1 Zepplin
IT’S A RIGID AIRSHIP!
Oh! The humanity!
It’s probably a good thing I’m not on X. I’d be in that crybaby Connor Daly’s account telling him Santino Ferrucci would have made that pass.
My first question would be: it wasn’t always this way, so how did they do things in the past? My guess is arranged marriages; which frankly wouldn’t be a bad thing to return to worldwide given how big of a disaster “love marriage” is/has been for the past century and a half.
People can’t (won’t?) distinguish between love and lust, and it’s not something that gets better with age. Lust is the drug that compels humans to breed and it’s very opportunistic. In a restrictive society, males and females in close proximity with cultural blessing will focus their lust on each other simply because it’s the only option. However, we unshackled lust and it’s pretty much been a disaster for most cultural outcomes because it’s based in animal instinct, it’s completely amoral and it’s extremely fickle and capricious. Love is the adult choice that makes people happy to change their demented spouse’s diaper. Love that forms from initial lust is probably ideal, but I don’t think we’re there anywhere in the world outside of arranged marriages.
2 cents.
Love that forms from initial lust is probably ideal, but I don’t think we’re there anywhere in the world outside of arranged marriages.
My marriage was not arranged. We are approaching our 50th anniversary next year. So, there is one documented case that shows your assertion is wrong.
My parent’s marriage was not arranged. They have their 69th anniversary this month. There is another documented case.
Love as the basis for marriage is not the problem. Non-arranged marriages are not the problem. The destruction of marriage as an institution over the last 60 years is the problem.
My grandparents were married for 50 years as well which is an excellent result given that my grandfather was in his 40s when he got married. The marriage ended with his death.
So you are saying marriage is fatal?
terminal condition perhaps
Alright, who spoofed Q’s account? Isn’t today supposed to be THOT Thursday?
Arranged marriages were common most places, and I doubt very much that they averaged any less happy than ‘love’ matches. Maybe more people ended up with someone they found less than ideally attractive, but I’m not sure that outweighs ending up with the guy who is still trying to put together his rock band at 35, or the woman who is convinced that she is entitled to support, but any request that she do housework is sexist, or vice versa to be modern.
From what I’ve read, marriage in Japan was extremely informal and infidelity was the norm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi8LdIbUM5A
Arranged marriages were common most places, and I doubt very much that they averaged any less happy than ‘love’ matches.
I’m pretty sure a compelling case could be made in favor of clear eyed pragmatism as opposed to emotional “happily ever after” delusion.
“happily ever after” is one of the greatest lies ever told.
The idea of a wedding as a goal rather than the starting line is not one of the best ideas the modern world has come up with.
Yeah, I’ve always been kinda baffled by the “wedding as huge conspicuous consumption/status display” thing.
I mean, I get it, it’s a big deal, but c’mon. The amount of neurotic energy poured into some weddings is just bizarre.
Me, the wife, the JP, and a witness. I think it cost 50 bucks or so.
Y’all need to get with Elvis!
I find parody anime like Princess Robot Bubblegum to be more enjoyable:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-hAuDberJ0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3YiWwuqK9s
I understand arranged marriages as being business deals. For a lasting relationship, I imagine it’s similar to all others: The couple being committed to each other and the partnership is the biggest hurdle. Whether or not you actually *like* each other could venture into the ‘No, we really don’t’ territory, increasing adulterous motives. Korea had arranged marriages and many, probably *not* the majority, still occur. The complete acceptance of brothels, and that the man is likely cheating around, is a fascinating cultural difference.
Kinda makes sense. If they only sorta like each other (or he wants to itch some strange), might as well make a safe way for the horn-dogs to vent their seed. *shrug* I have no dog in this fight. Humans are weird creatures and our relationships multiply the madness. Ain’t no one’s “normal.” If one truly were, then *that* would be their flavor of insanity.