#I get the festival arc isn’t popular and regarded as filler but it’s actually important to her | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

everythingsinred · 3 years ago

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Let's Talk About NatsuMikan: The Anime (pt. 3)

The anime is a different species than the manga, something that frequently happens during the adaptation from page to screen. Since they’re so different, I’ll analyze them separately.

In the last two sections, we explored how the anime treated the start of NatsuMikan's relataionship, as well as how different the story can be with some added elements and feelings. In this part, I'll talk about some more manga divergence, with perhaps more of an emphasis on Natsume because there's some new themes added in regard to his story.

Episode 12 vs. Chapter 11

Another “filler” episode, filler in that the events are completely different than in the manga, is the 12th episode. Just like in the manga, Mikan finds out that her ability class is uninterested in participating in the culture fest, much to her dismay. She ends up spending the whole episode wandering around campus, watching her peers prepare but struggling to come up with something for her class to do. In the manga, she comes up with the idea for the culture fest on her own, but in the anime it’s a journey and it couldn’t have happened without Natsume. Whereas at this part of the manga, he can barely tolerate her, in the anime he already likes her and he helps her out in his own way.

“‘Tis but a flesh wound.”

She finds Natsume in the classroom by himself, reading his manga. She vents to him her frustration and admits her jealousy: his amazing alice has many uses at a culture fest while hers does not. He burns the tips of her hair but confesses that he’s not allowed to participate beyond being a spectator. When Sumire’s brother shows up looking for Hotaru, he finds Natsume and Mikan, insulting both of them but especially Mikan. Natsume sets his hair on fire and then tells her to go back and talk to her class. The back of his manga gives her the idea of the RPG, much to his chagrin since he winces when she thanks him for the help. He talks to her the whole scene, defending her from Permy’s brother and even helps her (indirectly) come up with what to do with the SA class.

They have so much in common, specifically about the culture festival, and Mikan realizes this and it’s part of the reason why Natsume sticks up for her here. Just like her, he knows how it feels to be excluded because of your ability class. The manga’s version of events seems a bit darker, but it’s hard to be depressed after the counterpart’s version, where Natsume and Mikan bond together over their shared struggles.

Although the class is on board with her idea, Jinno (again…) doesn’t let them participate, claiming that he wishes they couldn’t participate at all just like the DA class. The SA class gives up and Mikan blows up on them and runs away, running into Natsume, this time under a tree. She tells him she’s convinced that he’s lonely and wants friends, and she obviously doesn’t have any qualms with being a friend to him. She proposes the two of them spend the culture fest together, surprising him.

For all of their differences, after all, they’re more alike than they seem. Two outcasts befriending each other despite the school’s efforts to suppress their fun is empowering and uplifting and sweet. After all, despite how popular Natsume is, his worshippers mostly go along with whatever he’s doing and saying, rather than trying to find ways for him to have fun. For them, it’s more about getting Natsume to like them. For Mikan, it’s about getting him to smile, and that’s what sets her apart. She knows what he’s like, that he could easily tease her or insult her or cruelly reject her and yet she asks him anyway. She wants to include him in ways nobody else has, other than Ruka. You could easily see Mochu or one of his fan club members saying “Let’s ditch this anyway! Who cares! It’s lame anyway!” while Mikan gets to the heart of it. Natsume doesn’t actually think the festival is lame or boring. He just can’t participate and it hurts his feelings. “Let’s participate anyway,” Mikan says. “We’ll do it together because we’re both not allowed.” It’s what he actually wants someone to say to him, even if he won’t admit it.

If you look close enough, you can see Natsume’s little blush.

She says they’re both on their own, unable to participate. He tells her to go talk to her class instead and reconcile with them. Despite Mikan giving him an offer that he wants to accept, he tells her to do what’s best for her. She is upset about her argument with her class, and just hanging around with him won’t make her as happy as she would be if she made up with them. He’s not selfish at all--he doesn’t want her company if it comes at the price of her happiness. Furthermore, he’s not upset in the slightest that after the episode they no longer have “we’re not allowed to participate” in common. It’s still something they bonded over and it’s enough that she can have fun, even if he can’t. She is impressed by his ability to know what’s wrong and help her in his own way. There’s a growing affection between them, where Natsume values her optimism and cheerfulness, and she values his secret and subtle kindness. She’s learning to see his hidden acts of kindness for what they are and appreciating them when she recognizes them. And no, he won’t tell her anything about the DA class except that it’s different than the other classes, but he doesn’t get mad at her for asking. He wishes he could tell her. It’s just not an option. The crow disrupting the songbirds on the streetlamp is so metaphoric, it’s kinda obvious. But is the crow Natsume, who can’t have fun like the songbirds, or is the crow Persona, who ruins the fun he sees?

Genuinely I’m shocked that Natsume survived this emotional ordeal. How did he not go into cardiac arrest.

Right after Mikan’s departure an onlooking Hotaru asks Ruka if he's glad nothing happened, as if something would’ve happened. Their connection and softness is something perceptible, even from a distance. He’s different with her, and both Hotaru and Ruka can see it.

Then Natsume passes out, implying that he felt poorly during his conversation with Mikan but didn’t let it show, probably so she wouldn’t worry. Knowing that Natsume had earlier gone on a mission where he presumably gets shot in the side adds a new layer to their interactions. After all, he hadn’t told Persona what was wrong when he’d asked and Ruka was surprised too, so it can be assumed that Natsume went back to his dorm after the mission and then patched himself up. Seeing as he is only ten years old, it couldn’t have been that good of a patch-up, and he is still injured. Natsume was grouchy because of the culture fest and because he was dealing with agonizing pain all day.

Kitty, you better not be dead.

In any case, Mikan asking Natsume to hang out is a sign of Mikan warming up to him, and wanting to spend time with him. This can be contrasted with an event that happens around this same time in the manga, though Manga!Natsumikan still hate each other by the time the Culture Fest is announced. He likes her in the anime though, at this point in time, and his rejecting her invitation is not because he doesn’t want to hang out with her, but because she still has a chance to make things right with her class and have a fun Culture Fest without him.

The Reo Arc (Episodes 13, 14, & 15 vs. Chapters 13, 14, 15, & 16)

The Reo Arc (the arc that turns Natsume’s image of Mikan completely around in the manga) is a bit pointless in the grand scheme of things in the anime. Don’t get me wrong, it’s more or less the same story and it’s still fun to watch, but it holds a different weight in the manga. In the anime, he already likes her at this point, so his feelings don’t change much, though they might have gotten stronger and possibly even softer (he seems very angry at himself for liking her before this arc, probably to keep his character in line with the manga, and after the arc he is much less upset about his feelings... or maybe just as upset but for different reasons). The Reo Arc was much better done in the manga. It served two purposes: to make Sumire one of Mikan’s friends and, most importantly, to have Natsume start liking Mikan.

If he already likes Mikan, then the anime should’ve focused more on the purpose of having Sumire and Mikan become friends but the emphasis does not change. It stays focused on Mikan and Natsume, attempting to serve a purpose that has already been served. Plus, the intervention of Narumi and the SA class seems very silly and was done to fill up time in the episodes. I also don’t understand why the culture fest started while Mikan, Natsume, and Sumire were in Reo’s custody, since that wasn’t the case in the manga and it seemed like they changed things for no reason, not even revealing the impact of that change. Furthermore, they were forced by this arc to then include Reo in the Circus Arc, which was undoubtedly the worst mistake of the anime. After all, including a potential big bad who just disappears after he kidnaps three kids isn’t satisfying at all. Narratively, they had to bring him back again as a villain, but the way they did it was lackluster.

Of course, not everything has to have some thematic significance and not everything has to be finely tuned to still be good, but there’s little for me to analyze if it’s so unchanged.

Though there is one scene, before anyone gets kidnapped, that has plenty of stuff to analyze and is thematically important. Natsume has a nightmare of himself entirely shrouded in darkness and surrounded by people whispering about him. He runs, because it’s all he can do, begging people to leave him alone. It’s almost sad that in many ways, Natsume acts so cold because all he wants is for people to leave him alone and yet this behavior is for some quite appealing (hence he has a fan club he couldn’t care less about) or so repulsive that his upperclassmen bully him even more. The dream then shifts to Persona telling him he has a mission, so on top of bullying and ostracization and exclusion, he is also forced into the position of child soldier, doing unspeakable things for an organization that does not care about his safety in the slightest. That’s how he feels, really, like there’s just too much for him to handle, and not enough good to make up for it. He’s shouldering so much pain and has nobody to talk to about it. But then there’s a light! And Mikan’s voice calling for him! And he reaches for her, because it’s the first brightness we’ve seen in this dream, and the first he’s seen in a while.

Unfortunately, that’s not where the dream ends. Natsume can’t reach her. Persona’s grasp is too strong, and he gets pushed right back down into the darkness. This is the most important part of the dream, really, but the part that gets most overlooked. Mikan is Natsume’s light, but he’s not allowed to have her. Natsume’s particular brand of coldness and cruelty to Mikan is to protect her. His life is nothing but darkness and her being his light only illuminates him, while it would bring her darkness and possibly even dim her light. You can’t mix black and white without getting grey--his life would brighten and hers would fade. Moreover, Natsume is dying. He won’t get to be with Mikan, even if he wanted to, even if it wouldn’t ruin her. He doesn’t have time. By the time he gets close enough, he’ll be dead, and it would all have been a moot point.

So much misunderstanding about Natsume’s behavior stems here, from the mistaken belief that he is cold and cruel and mean and distant from Mikan because that’s just the way he is, rather than the way he has to be in order to protect people from himself. From his back story in the manga we see that Natsume was always a snarky, unsmiling kid, but he wasn’t like he was when Mikan met him. He had warmth, passion, life, and the school snuffed that out of him. If Natsume’s head weren’t held constantly under cold water, he’d have a much easier time making friends, having fun, and being happy. He might even give wooing Mikan a shot, because as it stands now, he is not even close to considering it.

Anyhow, the rest of the arc is very similar to the manga, so we’ll focus on that for the next essay. I will discuss this more when I analyze the manga, because those events stay the same but matter way more in terms of the manga.

Episode 16 vs. Chapter 18 & 19

Mikan and her SA class have a labyrinthian Aladdin activity, accomplishable only because of their unique alices, but at first no one wants to play. It takes Mikan’s friends--Ruka, Sumire, and Narumi--to make the attraction popular. I’ll talk more about this in the manga section because it means more in the manga and the anime adaptation didn’t change the original much. The analysis will be much more satisfying in context of the manga, anyway.

Episode 17 vs. Chapter 20 & 22

In the seventeenth episode, Mikan and co. visit Hotaru’s attraction--featuring Pigula from the manga and a little competition attraction featuring chickens. The one noteworthy Natsumikan moment is Natsume conceding that “everyone has to be good at something” when it turns out Mikan is pretty good at the game.

That seems like it could be a compliment, but considering that Mikan is athletically talented and cheerful, she is good at things beyond a chicken game. It just so happens that this game plays on her strengths. Silly Natsume. Later on, Mikan shows her compassion for the little boy who screws up his chicken and Hotaru’s backstory is unlocked. In this episode, the emphasis is on Hotaru and her brother. The manga explores different themes, including Mikan’s insecurity about her alice and not knowing what she wants to do with it, as well as Ruka’s feelings about his triple-star status.

There is one thing that really stands out in the anime that doesn’t have the same meaning in the manga. Earlier, Natsume and Mikan bonded before the culture fest about not being allowed to participate and when she asked if he wanted to hang out with her during it, he helped inspire her to make up with her friends instead. After beating the labyrinth, Natsume got three wishes from Mikan and one of them was to spend time together during the festival. He doesn’t exactly put it that way, in the manga or the anime, instead opting to wish that she’d carry his stuff around, but ultimately he wanted what she had offered: to spend time together during the culture fest. It makes him happy and makes his festival experience so much better, even if she is a downer for some of it.

Summary

This part of the anime, we discover some more information about Natsume. This new information adds new layers to his relationship with Mikan. The scenes the anime adds give the story some extra richness, like the dream he has at the start of the Reo Arc. Because of the addition of Natsume's perspective, we can see more clearly why he acts the way he does, but also why despite all his acting cool, he's still just a kid that wants to have fun and be happy, and why it crushes him that he's not allowed to be a child.

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