swaggahsaurus said:You know, this entire time I've thought of Naru as very outgoing and definitely one of the major sources of the lightheartedness in this anime, yet I've never stopped to consider what her personal life is like. It's apparent that she seeks others, but for some reason I never realized that her real family is pretty much absent. She never talks about her parents, and I imagine she would, so I'm thinking there must be some sort of bad experience there. But even so, the townsfolk are her family of sorts. All of them seem like a giant family, with how close they are to each other; each person is familiar with everyone else and I never sense any animosity between people in this anime.
But Naru, Naru. We know so much and so little about her. All of what we've seen of Naru in Barakmon is just a surface appearance; we know she's cheerful, but what stood out to me most is that it's a mystery even to Handa what she really likes. It's also a question about what her family is like, and where she goes home to sleep at night. Does she miss her parents, or do the friendships of all the people in her village fill that gap? Even though she has so many people who adore her, I doubt it can still be the same thing as having parents would be. In essence, she's really just a child of the town. Her behaviour reflects that of everyone- outgoing, playful, always with a smile on her face, very welcoming, open-minded. Perhaps, since it appears as though she's indeed been raised by the people of the island, Naru is that way because that's all she's ever known. It's quite often that children come to, at least partially, reflect the outlooks of their parents and family, isn't it?
Handa provides another perspective. Because of his calligraphy, he missed out on being able to have fun and be outside. It's not saying that calligraphy isn't fun, but it's also something that detracts from the other experiences that he could have gone through in his life. Now, as a young adult, he's experiencing his rightful childhood. And that's nothing to be sneezed at; there's no rule that dictates when you can have those experiences. The problem is, in a childhood, the viewpoint of most children is clear, innocent, unmarred by the experiences of later life and the negative things in this world. The older you get, the more paranoid you get, expressed as simply as when Handa fears touching the bug. Now that he's going through childhood experiences, he can't really experience it the same way as the children do because he's already seen much of the world. I've noticed adults tend to see the more negative things in life. Knowledge is good, but there's also many instances where it can detract from happiness.
Take Charlie Gordon from the novel Flowers for Algernon. A mentally disabled young adult, he undergoes an operation to make him more intelligent, which should, ideally, contribute to his happiness. But it does quite the opposite. He discovers that his friends only hung around him because they liked to make fun of him, he discovers that love is much more complex than even him, as a now intelligent being, can understand; he is fired from his company because everyone fears his intelligence, and for that same reason many people stop associating with him. With his intelligence, he gains an awareness of this world. So in a sense, he might be more mature, but he can also realize what terrible things happen in our society.
It's not as severe with Handa, of course, but the idea of trying to be too conscious of what's going on in the world and then becoming more and more distraught certainly applies. On the island, he learns that it's better just to do things, and take things as they come and go. Life changes; there's no such thing as something being truly routine. If Handa had continued to be wary of everyone, he wouldn't have made friends with the people of the village. So he embraced the more easygoing view of the world, didn't focus on trying to intelligently analyze everything as though they were algorithms, because really, even though math can play a big part in nature, it doesn't truly account for how humans function and socialize. A mathematical equation or an instruction booklet can only do a poor job at best of telling you how to socialize with others.
This is a good segue into my other point. The problem with Handa and his calligraphy is that he consciously tries to be creative. I mean, trying new things is fine, but it seems like he's just forcing himself to be creative. Creativity is an unconscious process most of the time; you don't develop an art style by setting rules and trying to form it out of your own will, it kind of just evolves over time. I can't describe how my art has progressed to where it is now. I didn't consciously try to make many of the changes that I've seen occur in my art style, yet nevertheless, they continued and still do appear. It's not something that you can manipulate and force into happening; yes, you can stimulate creativity, but it doesn't really have a definite shape. It can't be molded into the desired product, and quite often the products of creativity aren't really what you had envisioned, but they are unique to you. This is something difficult for me to explain especially since it's an unconscious process, but I tried my best to make it as clear as possible. So Handa needs to just let his unconscious do the work, and someday, he'll find something that he can call his own.
And as a last note, what the dog said was very interesting. Handa has only ever been completely accepted in this island town. When he lived back in the urban areas, there were always people who would criticize him because he didn't conform to societal expectations. On the other hand, in the village, there are many different types of people with many different personalities, but one factor unifies them all- they're all welcoming and tolerant of everyone. It matters not if Handa's attitude and upbringing is very different from that of everyone else's. I actually find that it's rarely mentioned, how much he stands apart from everyone else, and that's because the townspeople consider him to be one of their own. Yes, they do make comments about how life is different here, but they've never spoken about the city-dwellers in a derogatory way. What's sad is that people living in urban areas will often make offensive comments about people living in the countryside or rural areas. But I guess that's a difference in attitudes...