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Information

• Member: Rorschach
• Studio: Shoestring Films Inc.
• Title: You'll Leave Me
• Premiered: 2008-06-24
• Categories:
  • Drama
  • Serious
  • Horror
  • Romance
• Song:
  • Lisa Loeb Waiting For Wednesday
• Anime:
  • Koi Kaze
• Comments: While the actual production of this video took only three days, coming up with the concept for it took a very long time. Back when I'd first seen Koi Kaze and determined to make an AMV of it, I'd been unable to think of a song for the project that hadn't been done to death on other animes and would adequately fit the mood and message of the series. Moreover, the DivX codecs I was using were proving increasingly inadequate to the task. Thus, I decided to leave this project on the back burner for other projects, trusting that something would turn up eventually. The eventual arrival of a fitting song and a most effective new codec eventually vindicated my decision, so I am proud to announce this new AMV.
  
  To say that Koi Kaze has been an incredibly misunderstood series is to make a mild understatement. One reviewer wrote about this series as if it were pushing some kind of sexual libertinism, claiming that it was demonstrating even a sexual deviancy as extreme as incest could be morally acceptable within certain social contexts. Nothing could be further from the truth: while the series does very admirably demonstrate how an extremely improbable situation could arise from otherwise common everyday circumstances, it by no means offers any encouragement to incest or jailbait chasing. In fact, the entire series is about guilt and the adverse consequences that almost inevitably arise from yielding to one's perverse desires.
  
  These themes are very subtly handled, to be sure: while the guilt Koshiro feels over his shameful passion for his little sister Nanoka is made explicit at every opportunity, the anime only allowed the story to hint through symbolism at what originally drove the two into this incestuous relationship and what the ultimate consequences are likely to be. The eighth episode, missing from the original television broadcast, is particularly revealing in this regard, but even it only provides a general overview. For a better explanation, one must turn to the manga on which this anime was based. In fact, I had originally been thinking to include some pages from the manga in this video, since it provides several crucial details that the anime does not. Had the song's pacing not proved too quick to allow for the captions to be read, perhaps I would have.
  
  What prevents most biological brothers and sisters from having any romantic interest--let alone sexual desire--for each other is a biological safeguard known as the Westermarck effect, named after the anthropologist who discovered it, Edvard Westermarck. What Westermarck discovered was that any children raised together for roughly the first seven years of their life, regardless of their genetic relationship, would later be rendered incapable of any sexual interest in each other. While the Koi Kaze anime never makes any reference to this, the author seems at the very least to have done his homework in providing an explanation of how Koshiro and Nanoka happened to be apart for those crucial first few years of their lives.
  
  One thing the manga tells us that the anime does not (although it hints very strongly at it in that eighth episode) is what Koshiro knows of why his parents got divorced: that one of them (probably his father) had an affair. While this point relieves neither Koshiro nor Nanoka of moral responsibility for their own decisions, we can see that although the parents managed to restrain their enmity during the divorce, they must ultimately bear some of the blame for the havoc it wreaked on their children. Thus, Koi Kaze reminds us that while divorce may sometimes be necessary, it is never good for the family.
  
  Another moral lesson the anime almost entirely omits that is made quite clear in the manga is that perversion leads to the abdication of natural responsibilities. Whereas love and marriage were intended to ensure that we humans continue to propagate our species, this incestuous relationship ultimately must end in the death of Koshiro and Nanoka's family line. The manga makes this point near the end of the series when Koshiro announces to his parents that he has decided never to marry and have any children. Although Nanoka declines to follow suit, she does privately tell Koshiro that she has likewise given up on her own childhood dream of marrying and having lots of children.
  
  At the very least, however, both the anime and the manga make clear that Koshiro and Nanoka's relationship has alienated them from everyone they have ever known and they have nowhere to go from where they are. Even leaving aside the eternal consequences, which are beyond the scope of this story to examine, any moral viewer with an eye to the future can hardly see how their relationship is likely to end in anything but disaster. Thus, the author Yoshida Motoi brilliantly leaves us with an ending to the story that is both happy and horrific: happy because our sympathies with the characters have made us glad that they got what they wanted, and horrific because what they have achieved puts them in so much moral discord with everyone else, including us.
  
  In my case, this moral conflict was also what made finding an appropriate musical piece for this AMV so difficult: what song could be romantic enough without implying that the romance was morally acceptable? Of course, I know of many songs about forbidden love and even some in which the singer is properly pained with guilt, but none of them quite seemed to fit this story. What finally brought my attention to "Waiting For Wednesday" by Lisa Loeb was another one of my projects in which I determined to find a theme song for every day of the week. Many singers have sung about the beginning and the ending days of the week, the Moody Blues did a song about Tuesday, and I found some obscure singer from India had done a reasonably good song about Thursday. For Wednesday, this song was the only one I ever found worth hearing.
  
  While examining what others had to say about what the song means, I came to see that the upbeat tempo of it produces a conflict with its obsessive repetitions of certain phrases in the lyrics very similar to the moral conflict Koi Kaze produces in its viewer's mind. Also, under the friendly mainstream sound, Lisa actually sings quite extensively about pain, guilt, and indecision. While "Waiting For Wednesday" never caught fire with general audiences the way her song "Stay" did, it's an excellent work to which she must have applied her talents very well.
  
  From the works of two very talented writers, therefore, I now proudly present to you this tribute to both. Enjoy!
  
  Important note:
  Although this video includes many significant occurrences, I don't believe anything I've included in this video qualifies as a spoiler for the series. By the same qualification, however, this video is unlikely to make very much sense to anyone who hasn't actually seen the series. I therefore heartily recommend viewing it first before watching this AMV.