#158: Amagami SS Plus (2012)

 

Director: Tomoki Kobayashi

Screenplay: Noboru Kimura

Based on the Visual Novel by Enterbrain

Voice Cast: Hiromi Konno as Sae Nakata; Kaori Nazuka as Tsukasa Ayatsuji; Rina Satou as Kaoru Tanamachi; Ryoko Shintani as Rihoko Sakurai; Shizuka Itou as Haruka Morishima; Tomoaki Maeno as Jun'ichi Tachibana; Yukana as Ai Nanasaki; Hitomi Harada as Manaka Hiba; Izumi Satou as Ruriko Yuzuki; Kana Asumi as Miya Tachibana; Mai Kadowaki as Keiko Tanaka/Risa Kamizaki

Let's start the meat bun convention!

Following on from Amagami SS (2010), this sequel series does feel like a bonus rather than a proper continuation. The original Amagami took a novel approach to its origins, as a visual novel romance story with multiple paths and multiple possible female love interests, by imagining six alternative stories where our lead, Junichi Tachibana, goes down the route of a romance between one of six possible women each time in his high school. This is not as extreme as, say, if it had fully embraced a sci-fi/metaphorical fantasy, as it never played to this reputation beyond an occasionally wink. Neither did it turn into School Days (2007), another visual novel adaption where it got around its multiple path format but taking the nastiest and more gruesome for a compelling and agonising trip that ripped the clichés of the genre to shreds. Instead, this franchise's first season was sweet, bearing in mind the potential issues at hand with its underlying tone of the ultimate fantasy girlfriend scenario it was trying to dodge, working as a one-off series with a fascinating form. Amagami Plus as a follow-on as instead two episode narratives for each female character than the original four for each, following the period after those narratives or at least their actual endings, as some did end with an epilogue set further in the future beyond high school.

These arches here are slight, and this definitely is a case where you need the original series to fully flesh them out in context, existing within the time where the romances were already kindled between Junichi and the characters. They being - Tsukasa Ayatsuji (deceptively layered, even ominous) taking part in an election for school representative; Rihoko Sakurai (a childhood friend) still trying to get Junichi to know she likes him; Kaoru Tanamachi (another close friend and a tomboy) and Junichi going on a bus trip vacation which goes south when the bus vanishes; Ai Nanasaki (first year and friend of his sister Miya), finding herself isolated when Junichi is stuck in a cramming class over even Christmas Eve which comes off as a secret cabal who kidnap failing students; Sae Nakata (another of Miya's friends, extremely shy) having developed more confidence but facing a bigger hurdle now she is head of running the Christmas fair; and Haruka Morishima (an eccentric but popular British-Japanese third year) in a melodrama around her possibly setting sail to Britain, with her English cousin Jessica introduced, her identical double with blonde hair.

Out of all of them, Rihoko's does have dramatic heft, as her arch originally ended with unrequited love, only for this to escalate when in this season's story she is invited over to cook dinner. My personal favourite is Kaoru's as, as a two episode comedy of a squabbling couple who clearly like each other, it plays as a farce with a dynamic change of locations, even involving a sinister looking inn in the middle of nowhere where the neighbouring monkeys will steal your underwear as you bath in the bathing pool. They are all interesting stories in a sense, honestly, I have a fondness for these characters after all the investment I have put in, but this is definitely a case of a show which is spinning on its wheels.

Here, the potential issue I raised last time, the hetero-fantasy at play in multiple love interests played at once, is here and an issue for other reasons. One of the show's best parts here is that, even in another girl's chapter, every female character gets scenes in the others, and even as archetypes, they are interesting. Even a figure like Jessica, a broad character who speaks perfect Japanese but with an accented form to it, is interesting that even a broad stereotype, once fleshed out, gains a personality. It helped considerably here still that Junichi is a much likable male protagonist; still shy and with sex on the brain, but someone who is kind and does his best to help people.

The sense of ill-ease comes from the fact that, whilst these characters are lovable, the production itself is stuck unable to really progress beyond its original structure, and that leads to these interesting stock figures being stuck in a really generic form of romance which plays to gendered stereotypes. Most of this is the issue that, for the idealised romantic interests to stay idealised, this show now cannot go anywhere unless they gain more personality and drastically change, which is where for these female characters, as for another here and there, after high school at a young age it is marriage and likely kids with no sense of their own personal growth awaiting them as characters beholden to their creator Gods.  

This is probably why a figure like Tsukasa now stands out more, frankly manipulative and with darkness to her personality in the first season and here, even when a female rival in the elections tries to get to her through Junichi, a potentially crass twist of her creating a fake seduction sense of campus romantic confession, only for Tsukasa not to bat an eyelid and only reprimand Junichi for falling into such a obvious trap. She grows more interesting as a result as, even if her arch in the first season did involve marriage and a daughter, she clearly wore the trousers in the relationship, their dynamic marriage life as an anime in itself would have been great, even as an entirely separate tale that could have woven their narrative between these two seasons in there.

The problem for a lot of female characters in anime is that, if the characterisation is good or they are given independence, even a character drawn for male fan service (insanely busty figures, even unnaturally proportioned, and skimpy costumes) can gain worth, and female fans who would even cosplay as her and find something to admire, but it takes the writing of the stories to trap them in prisons of generic male-centric narratives, as idealised images, to prevent this from happening. If the character is merely to be a fantasy of romance, then this prison is even more of an issue. Harem shows, not including the reverse ones of a male harem and one female suitor, are a subject I have yet to fully understand but in even that choice of sub-genre name - based on originally the separate part of a Muslim household reserved for wives, concubines, and female servants, but slanted towards the idea of the wives (or concubines) of a polygamous man that is a male sexual fantasy in the modern day - is problematic, alongside the issue of the women, despite always usually being far more interesting than the male leads, being merely in the shadow of the male protagonist, the stand in for a target viewer usually meant to be male, in examples I know of.  

Once established, the problem is worst when the characters cannot develop their own independent personalities. In the first series of Amagami, the arches were the attempts at romance when Junichi first met these women, and their personalities grew as he has to learn to know them. That made sense and less of an issue. Here, by now, not much progress transpires and you cannot say anyone in the female cast is helped by this. Haruka is particular, in the last arch, unfortunately even gets the soppy melodramatic ending where Junichi professes his love for her the third year graduation ceremony; at the time, I was engaged in the moment as drama, but now the eccentric figure who was far interesting in her flighty nature and that she had a really close relationship with her female best friend, which felt far more romantic in between the lines, is now less interesting as a character. There is also the sense, whilst not increased in amount from the first series, that the fan service becomes more pronounced, including for the sister Miya. It is never incestuous thankfully, but now the little sister who was fixated on meat buns is far more interested with her best friend Sae's pronouncedly large breasts, which goes beyond horseplay at points. Especially as the final episode, her own, is centred around a hot spring, including a pool designed to help increase bust size, one wonders if Japanese women actually are obsesses with bust size, as this is common in a lot of anime, or if this is a trope Japanese male anime writers came up with. Hell, in an alternative world, is Miya's horseplay with Sae able to be read with a gay reading, as she did in a bonus OVA in the first episode declined dating a boy who asked her out, or more likely just an excuse to tease male viewers with female on female fondling?

The final episode as mentioned is a fan service one, but ironically, I find virtue it is as it actually cuts Junichi out of the plot, of a new hot spring resort offering a free day for women only, by having the female cast by themselves interact and be themselves. It is all meant as an episode of pure cheesecake fan service, merely teased with no actual nudity or anything raunchy, but jokes and moments actually make it one of the best episodes, like the ramen pool or Tsukasa and Kaoru, in the pool for bust size, deciding (in a love-hate moment of bonding) to challenge each other to stay in the pool even the heat nearly knocks them both unconscious. There is actual characterisation of interest, even if it is not the most feminist of narratives where the cast could have had a lot more personality if their archetypes were allowed to be flexible even in bonding and conversing. It also has one final joke with Junichi, when he does have a moment in the episode, involving a bath powder that inadvertently encourages abstinence, which did end the show on a high.

Truthfully, in knowledge the original show was one that for anyone with a greater knowledge of visual novel and high school romance anime might have found more derivative than I did new to these tropes, this is a case of diminishing returns. It is, already mentioned, bonus material to a show that was inherently six feature length stories that were based on six possible relationships blossoming which could have existed by themselves, here with the exception of one only additional material that never raises the stakes or really pushes to new dynamically rich hijinks. Only a drastic tonal and/or structure shift would really take this show further, but as it was always at the back of my mind, the sense of the undercurrent of gender politics which I could get past in the first series became more apparent when characters here are stuck in the same patterns in the sequel. This was the time for a tale, in each time line, of the six relationships after high school or even older - what becomes the stagnant tone here unfortunately was the selling point in the first place and now it was the premise's biggest hindrance.