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Having already written about aesthetics and hair color in Days With My Stepsister, I figured that I may as well review the whole season.

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Days With My Stepsister (Gimai Seikatsu in Japanese) is a Japanese anime series that aired for 12 episodes in the summer 2024 season. I previously wrote about the series in an article addressing whether I believe an otherwise middling anime can be “carried” by its animation. In that article, I also covered the show’s treatment of hair color. I wrote that article after 6 of 12 episodes had aired.

Saki Ayase in the opening scene of the anime.

While I did not originally plan to actually review Days With My Stepsister, I figured that I may as well given that I have already taken the time to collect screenshots and write an article introducing its first half.

Review Format

I wrote about an old, now-defunct anime review site called The Nihon Review in an article on my views on anime review scoring systems (the site still exists on the internet archive). I decided to write my review of Days With My Stepsister following the old Nihon Review format, with a few additions. You can see an example of the format in The Nihion Review’s review of Asatte no Houkou (later localized as Living for the Day After Tomorrow).

Spoiler Note

Although I do not explicitly say what happens or how plot points are resolved (I notably leave out many specifics about what the characters do throughout the show), I do sometimes imply things that happen at the end of the show in broad strokes. This review is intended for all audiences (people who watched the show, who may watch the show, or who are just curious), but those of you who already have the show on your to-watch list may use your best judgment on reading my review first.

Days With My Stepsister Information

Days With My Stepsister is the official English language title of Gimai Seikatsu. The anime was produced by Studio Deen and directed by Mr. Souta Ueno. It is based on a webnovel series of the same name by Ghost Mikawa. It aired for 12 episodes from June 23, 2024 through September 19, 2024.

You can find more information in the Anime News Network encyclopedia, AniDB, My Anime List, and Wikipedia. I also recommend reading my article on aesthetics in the show and other coverage of its animation by Sakuga Blog.

Show Synopsis

Yuuta Asamura and Saki Ayase are both 16-year old second-year high school students who, unbeknownst to them, attend the same high school. Their parents, both of whom are single at the very beginning of the story, decide to get married – making Yuuta and Saki stepbrother and stepsister.

Saki sits across from her Mom and Yuta sits across from his Dad.

Yuuta is a serious young man who is an excellent student and works part-time at a bookstore. While he is prefectly nice, he is not very social, and his best friend appears to be his energetic college-aged co-worker at the bookstore, Shiori Yomiuri. Saki is a young woman with bleach-blonde hair who sometimes dresses provocatively but is perhaps even more subdued than Yuuta. Her sole friend at the beginning of the story appears to the popular Maaya Narasaka, whose vivacity is so alien to the show that I suspected she might actually be a space alien (or at least an alien from a different production).

Maaya (maybe alien) looking up at Yuuta.

Yuuta and Saki initially agree to be civil to one another but not expect anything from each other. However, Yuuta shows kindness to to the lonely Saki, who is more touched by someone, especially a boy, being nice to her than one would expect. Both of the step siblings come to appreciate knowing that someone will be home after a long day of school and, in Yuuta’s case initially, at the end of his workday. Yuuta helps Saki study for a test in her weakest subject and find a job. In return, Saki cooks for Yuuta, who shares his father’s limitations as a chef.

An example of one of the show's favorite ways to shoot Saki's and Yuuta's dinners.

It does not take long for Saki to develop feelings for Yuuta that may not be entirely accord with sibling feelings, and Yuuta may be coming to care for Saki in a similar way. Of course, beyond the fact that step siblings are not supposed to become lovers (at least outside of anime or certain unsavory cinema), Yuuta and Saki care deeply for their father and mother respectively, both of whom had bad experiences in their prior marriages, and they do not want to do anything that may create problems for their newly blended family.

The struggle of Yuuta and Saki to understand their feelings and decide how to move forward lurks in the background during the first half of the series before becoming the major plot issue in the second.

The Highlights

Aesthetics: Days With My Stepsister has some of the finest anime cinematography I have seen. It is not a high-budget show, but its quality is consistent from beginning to end and its attention to detail and camera-work consistently impress. Its only aesthetic short-coming, besides the lack of high-end production values, is that the character acting tops out as good rather than exceptional.

Saki and Yuuta in the rain.

Characters: A subdued character drama needs to give viewers a reason to be invested in its characters. Days With My Stepsister never entirely succeeds here. Neither Yuta nor Saki show much interest in the world around them, and the story does not give viewers much to latch onto before Yuta and Saki start struggling with their feelings for one another. Saki is relatively better developed in that the show does more to show why she is how she is than it does for Yuta. However, thsy said it still does not do enough to fully make credible how quickly she falls for someone for simply being a decent human being. I would have liked to see a little bit more about their relationship with their parents given that it is one central reason why they feel uneasy about their feelings for one another. Yuta’s co-worker, Yoshimura, is the only dose of fun but she is criminally underused after the first half of the show.

Mood: The show tries to imagine what would really happen if two moody-and-intelligent 16-year olds became step siblings and fell in love with each other. Whether it succeeds in being realistic is debatable, but it certainly goes for slow-burn drama; slapstick comedy is mercifully absent and there is little comedy of any sort to be found. It makes a good effort but there are a few cringe worthy anime stepsister show moments in there, most notably in episode 3 along with the occasional efforts of people around Yuuta and Saki to try to push them into becoming a couple for some unknown reason (speaking of which…).

Gimmicks: The show generally tries to develop Yuuta and Saki naturally through their interactions with one another and their tendencies to over-intellectualize every feeling and sentiment. There are cases, however, when the show finds itself in a corner and resorts to using another character – most often Yomiuri or Maaya but sometimes Ayase’s mother – to behave unnaturally to make the step siblings think of each other romantically. There is a particularly bad example of this in episode 11 wherein both Yuuta and Saki bear their souls to characters who had not previously had any role in the show (or in Saki’s case, had not yet appeared). The show may have benefited from making Yuta and Saki more of a part of the world around them from the start.

Pacing: Pacing was a strong-point here. It has a definite sense of time and while nothing of great significance happens, every little event pushes the characters slightly forward in some way or another.

Ending: I would describe the ending as the end of the beginning. It finally addresses the central point of tension head-on, but how the tension is resolved is left for future seasons or, perhaps more likely, for people who want to buy and read the source material. I will note the final episode oddly dumpsters a few interesting character points that were awkwardly established in the penultimate episode.

Review

Step siblings and cousins dealing with feelings for one another is not an uncommon plot in anime and visual novels, although I will submit it is uncommon in good anime. It was probably more common back when adapting every mediocre eroge visual novel was in vogue in the latter half of the 2000s, but it never went away (granting some of those veered into non-stepsibling-sibling love territory). Because I try to stick to anime that have at least some redeeming values, I avoid the taboo love pieces. Days With My Stepsister does not aspire to be a taboo piece, however. Firstly, both the source material and anime have designs on being more than the cliched and often fetishized premise. I understand from reading accounts of the source that the goal was to write what it would really be like for two 16-year olds to suddenly become step siblings, get along, and then develop non-sibling feelings for one another. The anime was created with a surprising amount of care and thought for something that was almost certainly not a big budget priority. Moreover, the anime’s set-up, bringing together two single 16-year olds with no prior relationship who lack close friends or confidants and who have some residual trauma from the dissolution of their parents’ prior marriages, effectively makes the idea of them possibly becoming a couple as inoffensive as possible under the circumstances.

Days With My Stepsister had to get over one hurdle for me: Why? I am not necessarily opposed to every permutation of media depicting a potentially eyebrow-raising relationship. For example, I liked May Sky, a visual novel which features a budding relationship between a 22-year old office worker and a 16-year old high school girl, enough to write four analysis articles on it. Moreover, a 2022 step sibling anime romantic comedy and drama, My Stepmom’s Daughter is My Ex, would have been a realistic candidate for my year-end top six had it thrown most of its side characters overboard (keep that thought in mind here). The question is not whether you can make a genuinely good show about step siblings in the scenario presented here, but why you would go through the trouble given the vast universe of things you can write about. While I have not done a survey – I do not think the step sibling to lovers path is very common in the real-world, regardless of how and when the step sibling relationship is established.

Days With My Stepsister never decisively answered my why question.

To be sure, it is not a bad anime. The cinematography and super attention to audio-visual detail in Days With My Stepsister are enough that it only needs a non-rage inducing script to be on the right side of average, and it does that much. But pretensions at being a serious take subject not often portrayed seriously and good cinematography can only take a piece so far.

You can just barely see Yuuta and Saki exiting stage right.

To its credit, Days With My Stepsister does make a distinct effort to develop Saki’s character and explain why she is how she is, separate and apart from her growing feelings for Yuta. This is significant in that Saki is presented as the first of the two to develop feelings and the one who has a more difficult time with her feelings for much of the show. (We can add that Saki and her Mom had a more difficult go of things than Yuta and his father). But good intentions, like good aesthetics, only go so far.

This scene is seen through Saki's perspective. The show likes to use a film-reel aesthetic for Saki-centric flashbacks.

I can see the effort made with Saki, but I still did not find her particularly interesting. Saki is a fairly typical smart teenager who overthinks and cannot help but outsmart herself, and she , says some cringe-inducing things when she is actively trying to be insightful. I suppose one issue is that, unlike some other characters with Saki’s particular brand of teenage intelligence, I cannot think back to one moment when she said something that was interesting or that really made me think. I just reviewed May Sky which featured Minori, a 16-year old part-time shrine maiden with some eerily similar character issues to Saki, and it makes clear Saki’s problem. It was always possible to see through Minori’s teenage obfuscation, but Minori had internal and external dialogue that was interesting and could occasionally transcend her inherent limitations, which in turn helped make her a compelling heroine. I cannot say the same for Saki.

The second issue with Saki is how and why she falls in love with Yuta. There is a tendency in anime for female characters to fall for boys who meet the minimum threshold of human decency, and that certainly happens with Saki. The show is smart enough to be aware of the fact that Saki falls for the least bit of kindness and it eventually acknowledges the point head-on. Moreover, her relationship with Yuta develops to the point where she has other reasons for being fond of him beyond his not being a cad. But awareness is not a substitute for genuinely grappling with the matter. One of the best and worst moments of the show comes in its penultimate episode, when a hitherto unseen character perfectly explains to Saki why she fell in love with Yuta. This was good in that the show actually engaged with Saki’s issue but awful in that it could not find a way to do so without relying on some random character to confront her with the truth in an impossibly unnatural scenario. This is an example of having an idea before a story.

I have not talked much about Yuta and that is for good reason – there is not much to say. Yuta and Saki are effectively co-main characters. In the final analysis, although we spend more time in Yuta’s head than in Saki’s, more thought went into Saki. Yuta is a nice guy. He is book-smart, studious, and very responsible. He does not seem to have many friends – although we do not have a clear reason other than that he is focused on his studies and part-time job and is naturally introverted. He initially takes the most initiative in his step sibling relationship by being helpful to Saki. His romantic feelings develop more slowly than Saki’s, although by the end of the show they are of similar intensity. It is less clear to me why Yuta falls for Saki than the other way around. The show makes a small effort with him to connect the process to issues stemming from his mother leaving his father, but that effort at providing an explanation came late and was never a central focus. While I can at least grant how Saki’s existential crisis came to be, I could not shake the feeling that Yuta’s more-than-sibling feelings came about largely because the premise demanded it. One can see how Saki would have had trouble having a normal romantic relationship because she was deliberately standoffish and cultivated her appearance in a way that made her look, for lack of a better term, easy. But for Yuta the why of this critical plot development is not at all clear. He is perfectly normal and presentable, civil toward everyone, and even works with a pretty college student who clearly has a crush on him. Speaking of said college student…

Yuuta and Yoimuri.

There are six significant side characters – four if we exclude the two who suddenly appear in the penultimate episode to push the plot forward when the script could not think of another way to break Yuta and Saki out of their holding pattern. Yuta’s father and Saki’s mother are inadvertently responsible for our awkward courtship, and I would have liked to see a little bit more of them since Yuta’s and Saki’s affection for their respective non-stepparent lies at the root of their internal tumult. My favorite character in the entire show is Yuta’s co-worker, Shiori Yomiuri, a pretty and energetic college student who enjoys teasing her junior co-worker. She has the most charisma and stage presence of the cast and injects some color into an otherwise dreary show. Yomiuri gets to star in one episode which turns out to be one of the best of the 12 – despite, or because of, its focusing on something else that Yuta’s and Saki’s brooding. Unfortunately, despite the obvious (as a matter of character-logic, not shipping-logic) conclusion that Yomiuri would actually be a good match for Yuta, nothing comes of it and the show turns her into a cheerleader for Yuta and Saki. Saki’s friend Maaya Narasaka is a bundle of energy who simply does not fit in the show and serves little purpose other than trying to prod Yuta and Saki into dating.

Yuuta and Yoimuri at work.

Yomiuri – before she is reduced from being a somewhat significant character to another Yuta-Saki cheerleader, brings up another point, and an arguable issue, with this show’s set-up. It is obvious that Yomiuri has some more-than-friendly feelings for Yuta and, as I opined, they would be a good match. She would certainly be better for him than Saki and all of the baggage that potential relationship entails. You get the feeling that the show realizes this too and has to prevent it from happening in order to see its initial concept all the way through. While Yuta and Saki do end up getting along well separate and apart from their uncomfortable feelings, their basic friendship is entirely dependent on their being step siblings. There is no real chemistry there – they are simply nice and respectful toward one another, occasionally going the extra mile. They had not previously even noticed each other despite going to the same school, and there is no realistic scenario where they would have been able to carry out a conversation beyond “you dropped this” and “thank you.” As I noted, Saki’s isolation is different than Yuta’s, and it never gets all the way to explaining how Yuta thinks himself into an uncomfortable situation.

The show seems to like mirrors.

Now we can really come full circle – what was the point of this step sibling quasi-love story? If we strip away the step sibling part of it, the basic set-up is oddly similar to a 2023 anime I reviewed, The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten. There we had a nondescript male high school student, Amane Fujimiya, who kept people at a distance and lived on his own and his seemingly perfect classmate, Mahiru Shiina, who was loved by all but had no close friends and also lived alone. The main difference is that Yuta is much more well-put together than his Angel Next Door counterpart, and while Saki stands out, her peers seem to have a negative impression of her based on her appearance and standoffishness. The Angel Next Door duo were brought together largely because they happened to be next-door neighbors. They initially became close through each showing the other a little bit of kindness and things slowly escalated from there. Like Yuta and Saki, they also had a tendency to over-think things and the show utilized nosy side-characters to advance the plot. Like the pair Days With Our Stepsister, Amane and Mahiru finally gave voice to most of their feelings by the end of the season. I will submit for the record that despite the fact Days With Our Stepsister runs circles around Angel Next Door as an overall production, Angel Next Door is nevertheless the overall better anime. One reason this is the case is because with Angel Next Door we get to focus on the development of the main couple’s relationship and their relatively normal insecurities about their feelings. The focus, however imperfect it sometimes is, is on the characters rather than simply on the premise. I can see enough ways that Days With My Stepsister could have been better – one being perhaps to have the courage to deviate from the premise – to grant that the concept it centers on could be done well. But try as it may, Days With My Stepsister never quite transcends its basic set-up.

Conclusion

Nihon Review gave all of its anime 0-10 scores. I am not into anime scoring because I would need to actually carefully define a scale and seed it with sample scores for it to be of any use. But were one to make me grade this one with 5 being firmly average, Days With My Stepsister seems to be a 5-6 show. Its aesthetics and cinematography are genuinely impressive and worth the price of admission – and the rest of it is enough to give it an average baseline. I could grant a slightly above average evaluation depending on how much patience one has for the writing and set-up.

The ending song is good and comes with some suitably unique animation (see full video).

While I had my issues with the piece, I think that Days With My Stepsister is an encouraging work in one respect. It goes to show that a director and studio can handle inherently limited material with great care. It is proof that low-to-medium budget anime can be very visually interesting. The cinematography was good enough that it lowers my subjective evaluation of lazier or more pedestrian visual efforts such as the aforementioned The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten season one or another show I reviewed, Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki-kun (see season one and season two reviews). Mr. Ueno likely did about as much with the material as one could in an anime adaptation without fundamentally changing some parts of it – and for that alone this show should be commended. I would be very interested in seeing what this team could do with stronger material.

I subjectively doubt that Days with My Stepsister will get a second anime season, but I suppose anything is possible. Provided the second season ccomes with the same baseline production values, I would tune in. While the first season took some unfortunate story-telling short-cuts in the final episodes and oddly used the final episode to effectively discard some viable plot points raised in the penultimate episode, the final episode does not signal that the end one would typically expect from a step sibling romance set-up is inevitable, and it leaves open the distinct possibility that the source material could do something unexpected or against the grain with the main characters. Like many novel adaptations, the anime reflects a still-unfinished work that could, depending on how it finishes, be better or worse than what was adapted for the 2024 anime series in the true final analysis.

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I invite you as my guest to read about Google seeing how far it can push its luck with YouTube ads before "users" start finding other ways to spend their internet time.

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I read a report titled YouTube is now forcing Ads when videos are paused, sparking outrage among users. I was not aware of this change and for whatever it is worth, it does not affect my life. Despite not having a horse in this internet advertising race to the bottom, there were two quotes in the report which caught my attention because they touched on some of my pet writing subjects.

The first quote:

Google had begun testing these pause ads in 2023 with a select group of advertisers, finding them to be highly profitable and generally well-received.

Now the second quote:

Despite initial concerns, the ads were not considered intrusive enough to drive users away from the platform.

AlternativeTo distinguishes between “advertisers” and “users” in explaining that Google’s goal was to satisfy advertisers while not not annoying YouTube “users” to such an extent that said “users” looked for alternatives.

As a threshold matter, I do not like the term users. It makes people watching YouTube videos or engaging with writing or other media on the internet sound like alcoholics or drug addicts. Of course, I then go outside and see people stumbling down the sidewalk while watching videos or swiping through social media on their phones (sometimes under the influence of something – there is this one dude who frequents a nearby street and who camps out in the middle of the sidewalk making everything around him smell like an angry skunk while he stares at his phone, but I digress), so perhaps its accurate in many cases. I may not like the term, but it does seem apt for consuming content on, say, TikTok (which should be banned). In any event, because I encourage people to actively engage with good writing and media on the internet, I avoid describing my small audience as users and have taken to not thinking in terms of consumption. You, my fair reader, are a fair reader.

But let us set aside my squeemishness about describing people who read and watch things on the internet in language which suggests they need a 12-step program, even if it is often accurate. Is AlternativeTo making the correct distinction here? Why are the advertisers not the users? The advertisers are, after all, using YouTube to monetize the people who AlternativeTo describes as users. With the exception of YouTube Premium subscribers, it is the advertisers, not the users, who are giving money to Google (not to mention YouTube Premium only reliably spares people from one kind of advertising). What are they paying for? I suppose it is the users. Are the users really users or products? Maybe the users in AlternativeTo’s formulation are hostages – it is not as if there is a comprehensive YouTube alternative.

Again, the point of this article is not to weigh in on YouTube pause screen ads. Running YouTube is extraordinarily expensive, and, for whatever it is worth, I think YouTube provides something more valuable (video hosting with RSS feeds) than the vast majority of social media platforms and services.. A fair compromise may be tiered YouTube Premium offerings and ads on YouTube for everyone else without then tracking the YouTube users across the entire internet.

I don't think I'll sign in but thank you for the offer.

This would be more like how TV worked and probably still works (not that I have checked in recently – maybe network and cable television are watching people too) . What was the point of the article again? Oh right, now I remember – I was not really writing this to ponder whether the advertiser/user distinction in the article was correctly conceived. I was inspired for a different reason. Allow me to quote the key passage of the article for the second time:

Despite initial concerns, the ads were not considered intrusive enough to drive users away from the platform.

This line made me chuckle. The entire purpose of testing the lock screen ads was to see how annoying Google and the advertisers could make things while still accruing more benefit than loss. It is I’m not touching you: Focus Group Edition. Here I am running a website wherein I try to make things as pleasant as possible for my guests – going so far as to spend time making the site pretty while also keeping it lightweight and free of third party dependencies. Meanwhile my betters are out there seeing how annoying they can be while ensuring that their users, or products, do not get any bright ideas. Of course my betters are making a ton of money while I am running a site as a hobby, so what do I know?

(To Google's credit, it is at least not touting pause screen ads as a pro-user (I prefer viewer) feature like EA is with its vague plan to add ads to AAA games.)

Despite my thinly veiled critiques of the entire enterprise being reported on by AlternativeTo, I do not think that being outraged at Google is particularly productive. I dare say that is something of a user or consumer response. One is far better off directing his or her internet energies (I say internet energies because people should also do goal oriented things like attend to their steps on a walk or take a journey to look at funny statues) toward being active web surfers. If you follow people on YouTube, by all means follow those people – but be active in doing so and think about what you are watching and why and how you are interacting with YouTube. You could, for example, subscribe to your favorite channel’s RSS feeds and watch the videos you enjoy without the algorithms (at least until too many people do that and Google sends YouTube RSS feeds to its ever-growing dustbin, of course). If you prefer to be treated as a guest than a product for sale to someone else, make a point of also patronizing sites that have writing or media you enjoy and that respect you as a visitor. The internet is a big place – if you dislike the big tech portals, take some initiative and find the internet that you actually enjoy.

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When you see an odd-looking bug inside your building for about five consecutive days, there is only one thing to do (after repeatedly forgetting). It's time to be a hero.

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I noticed something on the wall adjacent to the stairwell leading up to my apartment on one September evening: An unidentified bug just standing there, doing nothing in particular.

My photograph of the bug.

I assumed that the big was just resting. I left it be. However, I happened to notice the next day, and the day after, that the bug was still standing in the exact same spot. It was so still I wondered whether it was dead, but upon close inspection I could see that its antennae were moving and its legs occasionally twitched.

I took the above photograph about three days after first seeing the bug. By this point I told myself that I would “rescue” it since I was beginning to think that some combination of being indoors, the color of the wall, and or the lighting had disoriented our six-legged friend. However, I forgot about rescuing the bug for another two days or so until I was walking out one evening. I noticed that the bug was still there and that its antennae were still moving. At this rate, I figured the thing could not be far off from dropping dead from starvation or something, so I decided it was then or never.

It was time to be a hero.

I returned to my apartment and retrieved about three ply of toilet paper. Then I went to the wall and used the toilet paper to gently pull the bug from the wall, maintaining just enough grip to keep it from going anywhere but hopefully not so much as to squeeze it into a grim demise. I took the bug downstairs and exited the building. Then, I released my light pressure on the tissue and the bug, which had stood in the exact same spot on a wall, almost un-flinching, for close to an entire week, immediately flew away. While it did not stop to say thank you, I like to think that it was thanking me from the bottom of its little bug heart.

As I explained nearly four years ago, one of the most important parts of being a hero is telling everyone that you did something heroic. With that task accomplished, I decided to investigate what the bug was. Perhaps I should have done that before returning it to nature – but that ship had sailed (or flown the coop). I had a decent photo of the bug (see my photo near the top of the article), so I sent the photo to Google to see what Google came up with.

Google returned a good number of images that almost exactly matched my bug – so all that was left to do was to get the name. All the sources were in accord: I had rescued an Ailanthus Webworm Moth. See BugGuide (to-the-point sitename) for a good collection of photos.

Knowing what it is is not the same as knowing about it. To learn more, let us turn to pages about it at WhatsThatBug.com and Moth Identification.

WhatsThatBug tells us that the bugs technical name is the Atteva aurea, and Ailanthus Webworm Moth is an alternative name. My photo shows it at rest – and the article notes that it “often holds its wings tight against its body when not in flight.” Its tightly-held wings are colorful, as you can see in my photo, and have “a wingspan of around 1/2 inch.” While I did not photograph it in flight and only saw it flying for about a second, that sounds about right. Moth Identification opined that “[t]hese colorful moths look like a beetle or bug when not flying and a wasp in flight.” To be sure, I had not realized it was a moth when it was at rest.

WhatsThatBug explains that our moth had already gone through four life stages (unsurprising as it is a moth): Egg, Caterpillar, Pupa, and then Adult Moth. Adult moths emerge in the summer, so we can infer that it had popped out of its pupa not too long before it found itself lost in my building (Moth Identification lists its season as June-August). Moth Identification noted a moth fact that made me feel even better about my small act of heroism: Adult moths have a “long lifespan.” Apparently, I did not save the moth equivalent of a cicada, but instead a little bug that may have a long (very relative), happy (so long as it stays outdoors) life ahead of it. Well – not too long in New York City: The Missouri Department of Conservation reports that notwithstanding their “very long life-span,” they “cannot survive cold winters, so when it freezes, northern populations are wiped out.” I suppose it may have a few months ahead of it, at least. Also according to Moth Identification, “[t]he female lays eggs within the webs mostly during the evening that overwinter and finally hatch by late spring.”

The common name of the moth betrays its primary food source. Quoting WhatsThatBug:

The Ailanthus Webworm Moth is primarily associated with the Tree of Heaven, an invasive species from China. This moth also feeds on other trees such as the Paradise Tree (Simarouba glauca), and Simarouba amara.

WhatsThatBug notes that it is “native to tropical areas,” including Costa Rica and Southern Florida as examples. New York City is definitely not a tropical area. Why was it here? Quoting WhatsThatBug: “[I]t has expanded its range in response to the spread of its primary host, the Tree of Heaven.” But how has the Tree of Heaven spread? “Urban areas and nurseries with Ailanthus trees are hotspots for Ailanthus Webworm Moth populations.”

WhatsThatBug indicates that while our friend is not native to New York City, it is not especially harmful. In fact, the site suggests that the moth may help control the spread of the Tree of Heaven, with the caveat that it may also inadvertently spread it. However, in good news, the moth has a “[l]imited impact on tree populations” generally. Moreover, “[t]he Ailanthus Webworm Moth also plays a key role in polinization” and is “[a]ttracted to pale or white flowers with flagrance.” The Missouri Department of Conservation did caution that while the moth can hardly be called a “pest” since its primary food source is an invasive species, “in regions where other host plants grow, such as avocado, this species may be a pest on them.” I have not seen many avocado trees in Brooklyn – so perhaps it is all good here.

All-in-all, it seems like my good deed may be a small net positive for nature in Brooklyn. But there is one un-solved mystery. Why did this moth, which according to WhatsThatBug is “active during the day and night,” stand still on a wall, completely inactive for slight antennae twitch, for nearly one entire week (it may have been more thana week – it is possible it was there for a couple of days before I noticed it). I occasionally get moths in my apartment and they tend to fly around randomly. Yet this moth was apparently going to stand horizontally on that wall until life left it. Unfortunately, none of our sources answer this question. I suspect that my original theory that it became disoriented indoors – both for being indoors and also because of the color of the wall and the lighting – caused it to become sedentary. Fortunately, it was hardy enough to hang in there until a humble hero (cough, cough) came to the rescue.

I leave you with a video of the moth on goldenrod courtesy of Bug News so you can see it in action (something I was barely able to do myself). I wish my rescuee the best of luck this autumn (come to think of it, would it have preferred to be indoors for the winter?).

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My four part May Sky analysis concludes with a trip to the mountains and, apparently, snow in the hot month of August.

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This is part three of my four part series analyzing May Sky, the 2008 official English language localization of an impressive 2005 freeware Japanese visual novel called Gogatsu no Sora. This article covers the in-game period transpiring in August, 15 months after the May in the main game (and almost certainly August of 2006). Everything in this article presupposes you have read parts one, two, and three of my project and, ideally, my spoiler-free review of May Sky (I recommend starting with the review if you are not familiar with May Sky).

This is the second title screen for May Sky. It is unlocked after reading through the non-August Snow part of the novel at least once. Compare to the the first title screen.

With that brief introduction out of the way, I pick up where I left off in part 3 of this series.

Note on Quotes

There are no itallics in May Sky. For ensuring clarity, I am using itallics in quoation blocks when the block includes a character's (always Haruki's in this analysis piece) internal monologue. I am doing this to distinguish the internal monologue quotes from spoken quotes. These rules do not apply to the final section of this article when I am quoting Ms. Irene Ying, the lead English translator for the novel.

August 20, 2006

(See my evidence for August Snow being set in 2006.)

We pick up the story in August, 15 months after the initial May chapter. Haruki and Minori are again hanging out at the shrine like they had before they became a couple after more than a year apart.

Humanitarian Minori ensures that her boyfriend does not suffer from dehydration.

Minori then sprang a question on Haruki: Would he be free that weekend? When Haruki confirmed that he would be free, Minori offered an invitation:

… wanna go and see some snow?
Minori Kamiake

Haruki was understandably confused in light of the fact it was August. (Unlike one half of Ef - a fairy tale of two, this novel does not take place in Australia.)

August 26, 2006

But he evidently agreed, and we jump ahead to the morning of Saturday, August 26, with Haruki and Minori on a train to a destination known only to Minori. Haruki was at a loss, but he tried to guess where they were going based on Minori’s attire:

Today she had exchanged her shrine maiden robes for what looked like a rough hiking outfit. Thick cloth, long sleeves. Probably because we were headed somewhere chilly.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Haruki, still being Haruki, decided to go to sleep when he realized they had a long train ride ahead of them. Minori, still being Minori, was a little bit annoyed. But instead of detaching Haruki’s nose from his face or whacking him with a broom, she suggested a compromise more befitting of their current relationship:

Oh, and … you know what would make me happy? Sleep on my lap?
Minori Kamiake

Much has changed in 15 months.

One hour later, Haruki and Minori arrived at their destination in the countryside. They were greeted at the station by Minori’s grandparents. Recalling the state of their relationship in May of the previous year, this is a significant moment. Back then, Minori had told Haruki that she felt like she could talk to him because he existed in a place in her life apart from family and friends. We learned that Minori had told her friends about Haruki during their year apart. Now, Minori is, sua sponte, introducing Haruki to her grandparents. Haruki had no forewarning about this, but he observed:

They also had, apparently, NO SURPRISE WHATSOEVER about the weirdo that Minori had dragged along with her.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Minori’s grandfather revealed why when he introduced himself to Haruki:

Nice to meet you. I understand that you have been taking good care of my granddaughter.
Grandfather Karose

Minori had already told her grandparents about her relationship with Haruki. In a small way, this signalled that Minori had accepted Haruki as a central part of her life.

Sounds suspicious.

They arrived at Minori’s grandparents’ estate in the country. (Haruki did not comment on the fact that early in their friendship he had mistakenly assumed that she came from a poor family.). Minori still had not told Haruki what they were doing or where they would see snow, but Haruki started to have ideas when he saw Minori’s grandmother packing a backpack while he and Minori relaxed and ate watermelon. Haruki was concerned that they would be hiking up a snowy mountain, but Minori insisted that the preparations were just for a picnic. Minori’s grandparents then drove Haruki and Minori to the “Oodose Mountain Range - Trail Entrance - 4.5 km to peak.”

They got out of the car where Haruki’s and Minori’s hike would apparently begin. Minori’s grandfather was surprised to learn that Minori had not told Haruki what, precisely, they would be doing:

HAHAHAHAHA! Yes, interesting, INTERESTING INDEED! That’s pretty brave of you, Haruki, agreeing to come all the way out here without any information.
Grandfather Karose

Haruki was more confused than ever. Minori ensured that her Grandfather did not reveal the nature of the “snow,” but allowed her grandfather to explain to Haruki that Minori was taking him on a hike that would carry over into the next day. Before the hike began, both Minori and Haruki had an additional notable interaction with Minori’s grandfather. First, Minori asked her grandfather to not tell her mother about her hiking trip because she had not told her mother about Haruki. Her grandfather was surprised, but apparently considered this hilarious and agreed. Minori’s grandfather then pulled a terrified Haruki aside and asked him what was it he enjoyed about Minori. We do not know the answer.

It is interesting that Minori is introducing Haruki to her grandparents before even telling her Mom that she has a boyfriend. However, there is too little information in the script about Minori's Mom to infer anything of significance from what we learn here.

Haruki and Minori began their climb. Haruki admitted being “a little annoyed that my bag was, like, five times the size of hers,” especially when he wondered whether he was actually stronger than his petite girlfriend. Some things never change, and as always, Haruki “bore with the sheer inequality of it.”

Haruki observed that Minori seemed genuinely happy and carefree. Minori then put her feelings into words:

Mmmmmm! Aren’t mountains the greatest? Don’t you feel like your soul’s being cleansed?
Minori Kamiake

Lest anyone was worried that too much had changed, Haruki told Minori she sounded like an old man and Minori responded by elbowing Haruki in the stomach. After Haruki complained about Minori’s violence, Minori complained about his lack of class.

Fine, so maybe after today I’ll turn overnight into a man that would die at any unrefined notion …
Haruki Mizoguchi

Minori did not have much hope.

Haruki has made some progress but let us not expect too much.

Minori returned to good cheer and began pointing out the names of all the flowers to Haruki when he admitted that he was not much of a botanist. Minori revealed that she had regularly climbed this mountain with her grandfather when she was a kid. She showed some mock exasperation when a hungry Haruki asked which plants he could eat.

Haruki, not being in as good shape as Minori, began to drag. Minori had mercy on him after a good amount of walking and chose a location for them to stop and have a picnic.

Minori thanks Haruki without a joke.

Haruki took a moment to take things in, as he explained in his narration:

From so high up, I did have a commanding view in every direction. I could see the horizon where the mountains kept on going, then met the sky. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of awe.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Minori had prepared lunchboxes for her and Haruki, and they more than met Haruki’s expectations. In part 1 of my analysis, I briefly referenced an early Haruki-Minori debate over Haruki’s love of canned tuna. Minori considered canned tuna blasphemous and not long thereafter made a point of using Haruki’s money to buy the two ingredients necessary to cook his least favorite dish. The picnic subtly revealed how their dynamic had changed. Haruki was stunned to find in his lunch box:

… tuna? Not as in, what Minori considers to be the most blasphemous of foods? CANNED tuna?
Haruki Mizoguchi

Minori confirmed that she had used canned tuna in his lunch box, despite still finding it “offensive.” Here reasoning:

… well … see … that … I figured you liked it, so …
Minori Kamiake

Given their difficult food history, Haruki was genuinely touched by Minori’s gesture, earning a “dummy” when she noticed him blushing.

Minori casts aside everything she ever believed in for a man.

Here, the novel cleverly turned two comedic incidents early in the game into an opportunity to show how Haruki’s and Minori’s relationship had changed. Minori went against what she said previously to do something nice for Haruki, and Haruki was openly and genuinely appreciative of her gesture.

Later in their lunch, Minori tried to feed Haruki chicken with chopsticks, first saying she had always wanted to do that before deviating from the script she had been given and admitting it was a dare from her friends. Here we have another important milestone for Minori. Her first substantive reference to her friends on May 15 of the previous year had her proudly admitting that she feigned sympathy with their problems and had no interest in them. That philosophy had likely led to the vague fight she had with a friend a few days later, which she confided to Haruki on May 21. That may 21, Minori also asserted that she did not tell her friends the things she told Haruki – including embarrassing things. But then, Minori revealed that in their year apart she had told her friends about Haruki. Now, Minori was accepting dares from her friends regarding Haruki – matters which certainly fall within the ambit of embarrassing. This immature event ironically served as evidence that Minori was maturing, leaving behind some of the petulant standoffishness she had bragged about one year earlier and clearly making some effort to be more a part of the world around her.

She probably lost by admitting it is a dare.

But our literary analysis aside – Haruki was amused by this turn of events, and Minori became increasingly irritated by Haruki’s amusement, eventually ordering him to eat the chicken whileHaruki wondered “if she was trying to be sweet to me or kill me in a murderous rage.” Eventually, Haruki ate the chicken. Seeing that he now had the upper-hand, Haruki responded as follows to Minori’s tentatively inquiry if the chicken she fed him was good:

Superb. You’ll make a wonderful wife!
Haruki Mizoguchi

This is yet another call-back to earlier in the novel. When Haruki had Minori over to cook for him in May of the previous year, he jokingly asked her to marry him because he liked her cooking, and Minori played along, rejecting him without breaking a sweat. On this occasion, Minori stammered, leading narrator Haruki to wonder “where had the cool, collected everyday Minori gone?” He admitted that he was “ENJOYING THIS IMMENSELY,” and admitted it said something about him. Minori was dismayed, asking how he could say things like that so easily and chiding him for toying with her before regaining her composure. Or, she would had regained her composure had Haruki not followed up with:

… Minori, you’re cute.
Haruki Mizoguchi

This is another call-back. In their third substantive meeting, Haruki inadvertently called Minori cute (he was referring to her shrine maiden clothes). Minori was surprised, but played it off as a joke, appreciating the sentiment while threatening harm if Haruki meant she looked cute like a little girl. On this occasion, Minori again stammered and blushed – showing that the same line (or perceived line) took on a different meaning when they were dating than when they had been new acquaintances.

Haruki admired his handiwork as Minori blushed. He thought to himself that he was being silly, and then decided, “I kinda liked myself better this way” – likely contrasting himself with Minori with the morose solitary Haruki we met at the beginning of the previous May.

Minori allowed Haruki to take a 30 minute nap, again with his head in her lap, before they packed up and continued their hike. The pair continued to banter as Minori led Haruki and his giant backpack deeper down the trail and eventually off the beaten path – revealing that it was the 13th time the 17-year old Minori had gone to wherever she was taking him.

But who's counting?

They reached an old campground in the late afternoon, which Minori revealed was owned by her grandfather. Haruki was exhausted, but Minori saw to it that he would be plenty busy, giving him various tasks in setting up their tent and camp-site before finally giving him a break while she made dinner.

This is probably the moment Haruki truly fell in love with Minori.

Haruki was significantly worse for wear – Minori was the stronger hiker.

Haruki asked Minori what was on the menu. Minori responded:

Liver and chives stir-fry.
Minori Kamiake

Fortunately for Haruki, Minori was joking – their relationship had changed since the year before, and she would not torture him with something he could not eat after he had been hiking all day – at least until “next time.” Minori made a dinner Haruki enjoyed and gave Haruki a beer, which she had procured from her grandfather. Minori asked Haruki if she could also have a beer – but Haruki, wiser now than the previous year, refused his underage girlfriend. Alas for Haruki, Minori’s grandfather had also given her a beer – but on this occasion she handled it without incident.

After dinner, Minori delivered the most notable speech of the August chapter. I will excerpt it below:

This place has lotsa memories for me, see. I remember being her every summer … I think I really like this place. … I feel at peace here. Actually, like, I only started living in that town when I started high school. Until then, I lived in the country, like out here … I love the town – your town; it’s not really mine. I love the shrine too. But y’know, there’s just too many people and not enough trees …
Minori Kamiake

Firstly, I am not entirely sure what to make of Minori saying she lived in the countryside until she started high school. She had previously said she had been, as of the previous year, working at the shrine for four years and since she had been in 8th grade. I assume that Minori meant junior high school – which would have had her moving to the town when she started 7th grade and fit in with the timeline we were previously given, but that is just my speculation.

Minori the country-girl.

On more substantive matters – we learn quite a bit about Minori. She is a country girl. Her wistful musings about the season to Haruki derived from her own experiences running around in the country, hiking mountains, and missing those things living in town and working at the shrine. I dare say we can take it one step further – Minori had, in her very first conversation with Haruki, explained that her grand piano ended up in the shrine because it no longer fit in her room after she moved. Perhaps for her the piano itself reminded her of her childhood home. Another neat point comes from where Minori expressed feeling like the town was not really home to her. As we know, it was also far from home for Haruki in the previous May, and his being drawn to Minori’s piano was related to his alienation from the world around him. Perhaps Minori and Haruki were able to connect precisely because both of them – in some sense – felt like they were not really home.

After expressing some concern that she was blabbering, Minori continued – tying her musings back to bringing Haruki to a place she held so close to her heart.

Like, last summer too, I came here with grandpa and my family, and then I thought that next year, I would definitely see the same sights again. Isn’t it strange? Me and you sitting right here, right now, I mean, the person I was last year couldn’t have imagined this.
Minori Kamiake

Haruki said in response:

…sorry, Minori.
Haruki Mizoguchi

He explained why he apologized in his narration:

The apology came out unthinkingly. Perhaps not for the Minori in front of me. It was said for the Minori who had been standing here last year.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Minori met Haruki’s apology with her own:

… same here.
Minori Kamiake

Because we had the benefit of Minori’s perspective on her year apart from Haruki, we can understand what she is apologizing for. Haruki apologized for having left Minori alone for a year. Minori apologized for her decision to ignore all of Haruki’s messages during that span. In the quietude an evening in the mountains, Haruki met Minori’s honesty with sincerity, and she met his sincerity with her own.

Things reverted to normal when Minori brought out fireworks and started aiming them at a terrified Haruki.

Minori may have mellowed a bit, but here she reminds us that her comic violence tendencies are still there.

After the pair ran out of fireworks, they turned to sparklers. As their sparklers were dying out, Minori suddenly said to Haruki “… summer’s nice, don’tcha think?” Haruki agreed. He then said when Minori’s sparkler faded away:

I knew then that no matter how many years passed, I would never be able to forget the lonely smile on her face at that moment.

This is an interesting – not-entirely-explained observation. My best stab at it is that Minori felt a little wistful that a fun day was coming to a close.

We returned to comedy after Haruki took a shower at the campsite and Minori held out a note from her Grandfather which was attached to the one (wait one?) sleeping bag:

Now we’ll see if birds of a feather really DO flock together.
Grandfather Karose

Minori’s grandfather was playing his comedic role even after exiting the stage that morning (note: I have found that anime/manga/visual novel grandparents are either over-protective of their grandchildren or this). Here, we do learn a bit more about the early relationship with Haruki and Minori. Haruki immediately offered to yield the sleeping bag to Minori, but she rejected his offer on account of the weather. Haruki still did not expect Minori to suggest that they share the sleeping bag, but Minori noted it was big enough for both of them – thus giving the victory to her grandfather. For whatever it is worth, I do not think Minori planned this with her grandfather, but I suppose nothing is impossible. Haruki’s reaction to the single sleeping bag is consistent with the general lack of physical intimacy between the two – which does not, save for the sleeping bag incident, go beyond Haruki resting his head in Minori’s lap. Eventually, they awkwardly and shyly shared the sleeping bag – but the particulars of their awkward conversation are beyond our scope but largely consistent with their back and forth leading up to it. After they teased each other and exchanged some sappy lines, Minori fell asleep first. Haruki as narrator described his thoughts:

So my relationship with Minori could not cross that boundary, but still, I felt happy just being like this. We were past being strangers, but not yet arrived at being friends; we’d come straight to THIS point in a relationship. There was still plenty of time for us.
Haruki Mizoguchi

August 27

Minori woke up two hours before Haruki and worked on breakfast and making preparations for the final leg of their hike. Haruki apologized for sleeping in while she did all the work. Perhaps one year prior, Minori would have whacked him for sleeping while she was working. But here:

It turns out it’s pretty fun to make breakfast for someone else!
Minori Kamiake

Maybe she should run a café in the countryside.

Haruki and Minori continued their hike after breakfast – and Minori remained in extraordinary high spirits. Haruki as narrator mused:

I saw how happy she seemed. I’d gotten to know her expressions while I was around her at the temple, but maybe this happiness was closer to expressing the real Minori.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Perhaps part of the reason Minori wanted to share a special place to her with Haruki was so she could show Haruki what she was like in the place she felt most at peace.

By this stage, one could be forgiven for forgetting that the ostensible objective of Minori’s march was to show Haruki snow in August. We seemed not close to the goal when Minori stopped in front of a cave and announced that their destination was inside. Haruki was forced to leave his giant backpack outside the cave to follow Minori in.

Less than reassuring.

They walked through the cave, and as they approached the exit, Haruki thought to “believed … with all my pounding heart” that Minori’s snow “was just beyond.” They emerged from the cave into a grassy field, a flat meadow, where there “was a gaping CRATER” that was “surrounded on all sides” by an “encircling wall” featuring “a ring of pure, complete whiteness, distinct from the rest of the sloping walls.” The whiteness was a mass of dandelions.

Haruki was in awe, noting to himself that the flowers did indeed look like snow. He said out loud:

Wow, Minori, this is fantastic. This really IS summer snow.
Haruki Mizoguchi

However, Minori cryptically said that it was not snow yet. More cryptically, she told Haruki that she had to make preparations and directed Haruki to wait in the middle of the meadow, because “not being in the middle is dangerous.” Haruki was sufficiently entranced by the scene to apparently not think too much about what Minori, who had been shooting fireworks at him mere hours earlier, had said.

I felt as if I’d somehow slipped into another world. All alone in this wide open space, I looked up at the sky as I awaited Minori’s return. Somewhere in my heart I felt a quiet, but very real, spark of happiness as I looked forward to whatever was coming.
Haruki Mizoguchi

(I assume you, fair reader, can figure out what Minori had planned.)

Minori returned with an electrical cord connected to “a faraway spot on the ‘walls’,” which Haruki, awe-struck as he was, had apparently not been expecting. Before taking action, Minori excitedly said:

At last I get to show it to you for the first time … are you ready for it? Open your eyes nice and wide, okay?
Minori Kamiake

It is notable Minori said for the first time, one of multiple references to the idea that she would return to this trail again and again with Haruki. Haruki was confused, but Minori made a promise:

Just wait – you’re going to see something you’ll remember for the rest of your life.
Minori Kamiake

Minori lit the fuse she was holding and, perhaps too late, advised Haruki to cover his ears as the sound of an explosion went off.

(Bad end?)

The explosion dislodged the dandelion puffs from the wall, throwing them into the air and leaving them to “flutter[] down in single, fine pieces.” Haruki as narrator stated:

The flakes rose toward the sky, and then the show began to fall. And from the summer sky, snow was falling.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Haruki was too surprised to respond when Minori asked him if it was pretty. As narrator he described his feelings:

All about me was calm. Peace. And all I felt was excitement, the great desire to jump all about in the white. The snow continued to fall without making a sound. For some time, I simply kept staring up at the sky, taking in the view. As I felt the sunshine washing over me, my gaze followed the trajectory of the snowflakes. ‘This is, without a doubt, the most incredible sight I have ever seen in my life.’
Haruki Mizoguchi

He did regret his lame “sure” in response to Minori asking if they could return next year. Haruki was more eloquent and verbose as narrator:

I knew that from here on out, in the years to come, I would recall it, over and over and over.
Haruki Mizoguchi

As they were exiting the tunnel, Minori explained in childish exuberance how the “snow” worked. She the noted its significant origin:

So, like, that place? It took Grandpa FIVE YEARS to create it for proposing to Grandma! He found these summer dandelions, and I guess he also found that he could lay tunnels to let the wind through … or something. And this is what always reminds me of summer!
Minori Kamiake

Perhaps Minori had the story of their final destination in mind when she was greatly flustered by Haruki’s joke the day before about her being a good future wife.

When they exited the cave, Haruki’s sense of wonder about Minori’s August Snow gave way to surprised exasperation on one point: He learned when he and Minori were greeted by Minori’s grandfather in a car that the location of the cave and August Snow was right near Minori’s grandparents’ house. It turned out that the entire hike was mostly unnecessary – Haruki had not realized, despite descending on the second day, that Minori had taken him in a circle. She just wanted to hike with him before the August Snow.

This is where our story ends – not before a final poem from Haruki as narrator. I will quote part of the poem:

The summer sky was far and blue
Now and ever ringing true
The tender rays of daylight’s star
Came shining strong from space afar
The two of us inside this train
Were gliding toward future’s refrain
And just ahead were days unchanged
Waiting for us to come once more
The same routine, nothing exchanged
But now for us what was in store?
Summer’s blue skies rose up on high
Spreading wide before my eyes
From the sun came dazzling light
Warm rays strong and shining bright
The season of snow falling was still far, far away.

“But now for us what was in store?” That will have to be left to the reader’s imagination, for May Sky ends in August.

Final August Snow Analysis

When I first read May Sky, I did not know what to expect from the August Snow chapter. For one, I did not expect August Snow at all. For two, I certainly did not expect for it to add at least an hour to May Sky’s reading time.

In both length and content, August Snow turned out to be much more substantive than I had expected. But for August Snow, Collage, not May Sky, would have been my top-ranked visual novel of al|together.

The first thing to appreciate about August Snow is that it goes against the grain of treating becoming a couple as the end of the story. May Sky could have easily ended with Haruki’s return or, if written slightly differently, Haruki’s accepted confession in the first May. But we would have had many unanswered questions. What would this relationship between the pair who went through the main story in some indeterminate space between friends and strangers look like? Especially given how young Minori is. The authors correctly decided to show readers how things were going a few months after Haruki’s return.

August Snow does well to naturally and subtly recreate certain scenarios from the previous year while showing us how the scenarios played out when Haruki and Minori are a couple. The central dynamic wad the same, but their interactions have changed for the better. Both Haruki and Minori have grown up a little. Haruki’s work-related angst is gone and he is happy taking things slowly with Minori and following her example in appreciating the little things around him. Minori is a year older – not at all insignificant when we are talking about the difference between 16 and 17 – and she is far more capable of being sincere and considering his perspective than she had been a year earlier.

Minori, having decided that Haruki is special to her, wanted to share some things that are special to her and core to understanding her with Haruki. Their adventure concluded with the August snow. In addition to being an explosively (literally) pretty show, it had special significance to Minori. It is a memory she shared with her grandfather, it is something she specifically associated with summer, and it has romantic significance in that her grandfather created the scene to propose to her grandmother. Haruki developed special feelings for Minori in the first place because she shared beautiful things with him – first her piano playing and second her poetic thoughts about May, the sky, and an appreciation of the seasons generally. Minori topped those earlier gifts by sharing with Haruki something she could only share when they were more than strangers and something more than friends. Haruki was even more taken by the beauty of this gesture than he had been by Minori’s piano and earlier speeches, describing it unequivocally as “the most incredible sight I have ever seen in my life.”

With all that being said – while May Sky has a positive and optimistic ending, it does not have a happily ever after ending. Minori noted in August Snow that she had yet to have tell her mother about her new 23-year old boyfriend. Haruki, in one of his monologues, referenced the fact that he and Minori, who had only spent about four months together total (add in the fact that they did not have a conversation for an entire intervening year), had skipped many steps en route to their relationship. They still had much to learn about each other. The reader is also left with many questions about the pair. For example, Minori will presumably graduate high school eight months after August Snow. What are her plans for college, or for a career? We have no idea – those matters are beyond the scope of the simple story. Also notable – none of Haruki’s narration references a certain future with Minori. He assures us he will remember specific events. Both he and Minori appear to be planning to be together for the long haul, but one can imagine many different ways a relationship between two people who are improving themselves, but still have many latent flaws, will ultimately progress.

August Snow has the effect of inviting the readerto root for the newly-minted salary man and piano-playing part-time shrine maiden to find happiness together.

Final May Sky Analysis

What precisely was May Sky about? There is no one better to ask than the lead translator herself, Irene Ying. I quote from her essay on the official project website:

May Sky is a story of isolation from the start. We begin with our narrator, so deeply sunken into himself that he has no friends and can barely go on in life. Then we meet an outrageously unsympathetic shrine maiden. These are are practically the only voices we encounter. Throughout the story, other people wander in and out, but even those who try — i.e. Mizoguchi’s nameless ex-colleague — are unable to influence Mizoguchi’s life at all. And Minori, who declared quite loudly that other people can go to hell for all she cares, is the one who is able to teach Mizoguchi to take control and responsibility for his life. Similarly, Minori’s classmates and friends criticize her behavior, but she intentionally ignores them; it’s only Mizoguchi who is able to finally make her speak the truth at all.
Irene Ying

I largely agree with Ms. Ying’s take, albeit with a qualification on the “Minori … teach” point and placing more emphasis on why Haruki was attracted to Minori. Note that it is entirely possible Ms. Ying, who necessarily read the original Japanese script many times in deciding how to convey it to English, is more over the target – so take my differing focus as you will.

I offer my own one-sentence summary:

The story of how an angsty new office worker and nature-loving temperamental teenage shrine maiden, both of whom are lonely and somewhat selfish, create a world just for the two of them and grow up just a little bit in the process.

Haruki and Minori often behave in ways that make them unsympathetic, and May Sky is, at its heart, the story of a strange relationship between two disordered people. The loneliness that drew them together was caused in part by how they interacted with the people around them.

I made a point throughout my analysis of highlighting the ages of Haruki and Minori, and not only for the obvious reason that Haruki's initial confession of love to a 16-year old high school student was at least a little bit head-tilt-inducing.

A significant reason that May Sky works to the extent it does is because Minori is written credibly for a teenage girl. She is a mercurial bundle of contradictions. Minori is simultaneously intelligent and immature, thoughtful and careless. She loves the world around her but is remarkably self-centered when it comes to dealing with others. The same girl who in one moment eloquently describes her love of May in the next attacks a man she had just met with a broom. She proudly claims that she does not care about anyone around her and then gets angry when she feels that she is being ignored. She has a very teenage tendency to intellectualize sentiments instead of stating clearly what she thinks and feels to the point of creating easily avoidable misunderstandings. Minori wants others to see her how she wants to be seen but makes little-to-no-effort to understand others. She is notably childish in how she seeks attention by seeing how much she can get away with. Minori's comic violence toward Haruki can be seen as an awkward way to get closer to him while maintaining dubiously plausible deniability. Part of why she becomes attached to Haruki is because he indulges her even when she indulges her own lesser tendencies.

But we see Minori mature throughout the story. I will submit that she was probably not ready for any romantic relationship, age aside, when Haruki confessed his love on May 29, 2005. While their ensuing year apart was painful, it did both Haruki and Minori some good. We see evidence that during that year Minori begins making an effort to be part of the world around her by becoming closer to her friends, and she begins to think honestly about why she does what she does, even if it does not necessarily change her actions. Minori seems more mellow in August Snow than she did as a 16-year old 15 months earlier. While some of that is undoubtedly owed to the fact that she no longer doubts that Haruki is paying attention to her, I do not think Minori would have been capable of thinking of another person in May 2005 in the manner she does in August 2006.

Haruki addresses his own immaturity head-on in many of his monologues, although that does not necessarily mean he acts on it. He begins the story struggling with taking his first step into the adult world in a town he does not know without the support system and structure he had as a student. He showed the quintessential depressive tendency of taking what he felt at a particular moment (dread at doing a job he found meaningless) and assuming that this feeling would extend indefinitely. Minori's piano-playing and her imploring him to open his eyes and appreciate the world around him genuinely touched a young man who was trapped in his own head (it is perhaps ironic that the self-centered Minori inspired Haruki to get over himself ). Had Haruki not been as lonely as he was, I suspect he would not have fallen for a 16-year old shrine maiden, but as he stated as narrator, Minori's attention and aesthetic sensibilities were like a lifeline to him. In a less abstract take, I suspect that Haruki, who was, in his mind, staring down the barrel of spending the rest of his life chained to a desk, was attracted to a younger lady whose world was smaller but whose eyes saw possibilities that he had become blind to.

While Haruki, like Minori, struggled with their one-year separation, their year apart did him some good too. The only way that a relationship between the young salaryman and the younger-still high school student could work was if Haruki, being the older one, was mature enough to make it work. Haruki becomes more responsible in his year apart from Minori, learning to make the most of his job while appreciating the sky and seasons as he had learned to do from the girl he fell for. Haruki uses the prospect of fulfilling his promise to Minori to succeed in his work, and he returns ready to indulge his girlfriend in healthier ways than he had in the May of their meeting.

This segues into the one point I may disagree with Ms. Ying on, depending on what she meant. I do not think, strictly speaking, that Minori taught Haruki how to take responsibility for his life, at least not intentionally so. I would disagree if this assertion pertains to their fight on May 15 when Minori lectured Haruki for seeking her counsel. I do not think Haruki learned anything from that and, for whatever it is worth, I think the view of the author is that Minori was right about Haruki’s behavior but wrong in her broader worldview. Minori did, however, give Haruki the tools to survive their year apart by teaching him that there are beautiful things in the world around him if he would only recognize them, Ultimately, Haruki did use the prospect of returning to Minori, both for his own sake and to fulfill his promise to return to her, to motivate him to tackle his job with enthusiasm. These factors surely contributed to Haruki earning the reassignment he sought to the place he had hated before meeting Minori there.

Similarly, Haruki inelegantly forced Minori to be genuinely sincere. While Minori was more open with Haruki than she was with her friends and family (by her own account, at least), her initial attempts at openness were clouded by her inherent defensiveness. She was open with Haruki about her harsh worldview on helping others on May 15, but her worldview was flawed. She confided in him on May 21st and expressed why she felt more comfortable with him than with her family or friends, but she did so in a convoluted, and seemingly hurtful characteristically Minori way which had the effect of almost ending their relationship. It was only when Haruki maladroitly backed her into a corner on May 29 with his declaration of love did she muster the courage to be open and honest about what she wanted instead of trying to hide her feelings in psuedo-intellectualism. Had Minori not been able to say that she wanted Haruki to return, their story together would have ended in May 2005.

Minori, like Haruki, is a difficult character for much of May Sky, but she, like him, proves to be more easily likable when we spend time with her in August than she was in the early parts of the story.

I agree entirely with the conclusion to Ms. Ying’s analysis:

Somehow, inexplicably, beautifully, they are able to make this simple and pure connection. And still, they are able to join a ‘group’ of acceptance, belonging, and hilarious fun (and bad karaoke). After that we see that they come to accept their selves and circles for what they are: Mizoguchi learns to live with and even enjoy his job. And Minori … well, her friends push her into an incident with some chicken …
Irene Ying

Haruki and Minori are better and happier people at the end of August Snow than when we meet them in May of the previous year. While it is entirely possible that Haruki would have worked through his freshman blues to some extent had he not met Minori, and Minori may have tempered some of her anti-social tendencies without meeting Haruki, the clear position of the script is that Haruki and Minori were, in the final assessment, mutually good influences, often in spite of themselves. Ms. Ying’s describing this as occurring inexplicably is on the mark. Things worked out well – somehow.

I conclude with my personal pet theme take on May Sky. While Minori is indeed a strange, temperamental, teenager, there is, as Haruki put it, something incredible in her, or to put it in words more fitting for someone who was not falling for her, a pretty aesthetic sensibility. Minori never quite felt like she fit in the town she lived after having moved from the countryside, but she never lost sight of the things she loved from the country. She took time to appreciate the special characteristics of the seasons and different times of day and note the leafing trees and blooming flowers. Minori expressed her love of nature through the piano. We see how Haruki benefits as a person from considering Minori's arguments for taking a deep breath and appreciating the amazing things all around him. May Sky, through the character of Minori Kamiake, encourages its readers to take a moment to go outside, take a walk, and appreciate the world, and to carry those aesthetic sentiments wherever they go, just as Haruki did when he moved for a year on account of his job. While nature may not be enough to fully make whole a lonely heart, the experience of Minori and Haruki show that a proper appreciation of the seasons can make one freshly attuned to the winds of new beginnings.

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In part 3 of my 4-part May Sky story analysis, a salary man displays poor social skills in breaking news and expressing his feelings to a mercurial teenage part-time shrine maiden.

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This is part three of my four part series analyzing May Sky, the 2008 official English language localization of an impressive 2005 freeware Japanese visual novel called Gogatsu no Sora. This article covers the in-game period beginning May 24 and continuing on through the end of May of the following year. Everything in this article presupposes you have read parts 1 and 2 of my project and, ideally, my spoiler-free review of May Sky (I recommend starting with the review if you are not familiar with May Sky).

With that brief introduction out of the way, I pick up where I left off in part 2 of my 4-part analysis.

Note on Quotes

There are no itallics in May Sky. For ensuring clarity, I am using itallics in quoation blocks when the block includes a character’s internal monologue. I am doing this to distinguish the internal monologue quotes from spoken quotes.

May 24, 2005

On May 24, Haruki learned that he was going to be assigned to a new work site on June 1. That work site would be far away from his current location, meaning that he “would leave this place come June and would not come back very soon.”

May 29, 2005

The story then skipped ahead to May 29 – which would prove to be the most significant day of May in May Sky. We learn that Haruki had not yet told Minori that he would be leaving on May 31. After musing to himself that he would leave the town with his few possessions and there would be nothing of him left behind, Haruki resolved to take care of one bit of business he had in the town:

[T]here WAS something I was leaving behind. Just one. A single thing that would eat me up inside if I left without doing anything about it. Addressing the issue would hurt. Hurt like hell, probably. I knew that. But I also knew that if I didn’t do this right here and now, the hurt would never, ever go away.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Haruki had been procrastinating up until this point. But he was not doing nothing while procrastinating. Haruki drops some foreshadowing into his monologue:

Even as I worried like this, I’d already finished thinking about what I needed to do, justified the choices I was about to make to myself, run the possible scenarios through my head – and, finally, steeled myself so I could see this through the end.
Haruki Mizoguchi

The key in the above passage is “run the possible scenarios through my head.”

Haruki's thought process seems unnecessarily ominous.

Haruki spent the better part of a week creating a mental script of his upcoming conversation with Minori. First he decided what he would say, then he tried to think of the possible ways that Minori could respond, and then he formulated his responses to how he believed Minori would respons. One could justifiably accuse Haruki of over-thinking things without knowing the specifics of his script. But as we will see, there is a more grounded danger in Haruki’s war-gaming: What if Minori responds in a way that he does not expect?

Before continuing, I will include one more quote from Haruki’s monologue:

Addressing the issue would hurt. Hurt like hell, probably. I knew that. But I also knew that if I didn’t do this right here and now, the hurt would never, ever go away.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Haruki’s monologue about “hurting” is missing a reference to something, or to be more precise, someone. As usual, Haruki seems to be thinking first and foremost about himself. He does not seem to contemplate the possibility of hurting Minori. I note this not to suggest that Haruki is malicious, but instead to invite readers to consider the possible implications of Haruki’s self-involvement on how he imagines his conversation with Minori transpiring.

Nevertheless, with his newfound resolve, Haruki made his way to Kamiake Shrine. Perhaps he expected. Haruki was surprised to find that the Shrine “was filled with tons of people,” mostly “forty something men.” Haruki found Minori in the crowd who revealed that there was a festival at the shrine that day. Minori was in high spirits:

She seemed like a little kid showing off her most prized possession…
Minori Kamiake

Minori was preparing to play a role in the festival in her capacity as a shrine maiden. This meant that Haruki’s talk with Minori would have to wait. In the interim, Minori volunteered an unwitting Haruki for manual labor – and he spent the day enraged in what he described in his narration as “my first and last act of service to this community…”

Haruki was initially annoyed, but he went along with it, never picking up on the fact that Minori most likely not only volunteered him to mess with him, but also because she wanted to share the festival experience she treasured with someone she had grown fond of. The older men who were also working at the festival liked Haruki, and he ended up in the festival procession next to Minori – where he took the opportunity to distract her while she was playing a fife in her ceremonial role.

The joke Haruki whispered that caused Minori to embarrass herself: "It's a fact, taller people sleep longer in bed." (That's a good one, Haruki.)

Haruki’s description of the festival is mostly beyond the scope of this analysis, but I will highlight one interesting point from his narration of participating in the festival procession:

I didn’t recognize most of the streets or places that we walked through. It brought home, more than ever, the sense that my time here had been so brief.
Haruki Mizoguchi

From reading the script as a whole, it also brought home that Haruki had not made any effort to see or fit into the town. When we met him at the beginning of May, he admitted that he had been unable to muster the energy to do anything more than going to and from work. While meeting Minori changed his life in the town – there is little indication that Haruki had taken the time to see what the town had to offer beyond Kamiake Shrine and its part-time shrine maiden. The weekend before Haruki’s departure from the town marked the first time that he took a small, too-late step, toward being a part of it. Minori rented him out to the town elders, and the town elders not only welcomed Haruki, but gave him a place in the parade procession before dragging him to an after party at the shrine. While he was sitting with them, Minori waved him over:

Mr. Mizoguchi, wanna come have dinner with me? Tonight my family is pretty much here at this festival, so …
Minori Kamiake

Minori stated that she wanted to get away because it was “Geezer Grand Central” and Haruki’s narration confirmed for us that “[n]obody was even close to Minori’s age group.” Haruki agreed and took Minori out to a restaurant.

Haruki had promised Minori 11 days earlier that he would treat her to tuna. It was at the restaurant where Haruki’s bill would (literally) come due – notwithstanding the fact that he had offered to treat Minori because he had somehow convinced himself that she was from a family of limited means.

The USD/JPY exchange rate on May 29, 2005 (see archive), was 107.89, so Haruki was out about $92-93 USD assuming he would be out the entire 10,000 yen bill.

Haruki jokingly tried to get out of the arrangement as he gazed at Minori’s stack of 20 plates, but in the end he said farewell to his “beloved 10,000 yen note.” Haruki tried to enjoy his time with Minori, but he was tormented by the one thing he had yet to say but had to say:

At least as far as this restaurant went – God was in His heaven, all was right with the world. But it was the complete opposite within me. I was restless. Uneasy. With the weight of what I would have to say. With the burden of how I felt. With all that baggage.
Haruki Mizoguchi

(Note: The God was in his heaven line references a Minori quote from May 8, which coincidentally was the first time she lightened Haruki's wallet.)

They left the restaurant at about 9 PM. Minori jokingly referenced the fact that she owed Haruki for treating her to food and drinks on four separate occasions (twice on May 8 and once on May 18). Haruki joked about having Minori repay him with barbecue, but this back-and-forth only reminded him of the fact that their back-and-forths would soon end. Before Haruki and Minori parted ways, he made a request of his acquaintance:

Would it be all right if … we went back to the shrine? I want to listen to you play the piano.
Haruki Mizoguchi

According to Haruki, “Minori looked completely mystified by my request, but she agreed to it without a second thought.”

Haruki and Minori found upon reaching the shrine that “all evidence of [the after party] was completely wiped away.” The shrine was pristine, having reverted back to that place apart that Haruki and Minori shared.

Minori revealed that the reason there was a light at the shrine was because the light was romantic.

After some warm banter and one toe-stubbing incident, Minori sat down to play the piano. Below, I excerpt Haruki’s monologue:

When the piano music started, I thought I could see brilliant motes of light dancing around the notes that Minori was calling forward. … It was not until this moment that I’d realized this – but it was only ever since I’d come to this town … ever since I’d met Minori … that I’d taken to observing the sky like this. The waxing moon filled the cool evening air to the brim with gentle light; there was not a stir of wind or blast of rain; there was nothing in this world but the piano’s tones. Everything else had been washed away, and only the temple remained. The cosmos was in its whole a set of stone steps, on which there was only music and light.
Haruki Mizoguchi

When Minori rose from the piano and exited the lattice door separating the piano from the outside world, Haruki abruptly said what he needed to say:

I’m leaving this town tomorrow.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Haruki as narrator stated, “I’d been bracing myself for a trademark Minori response.” The phrasing here is interesting. By trademark Minori response, we can infer that Haruki expected Minori to respond flippantly – by indicating in some way or other that she did not care much whether Haruki stayed or left. From the use of bracing, we can infer that this would hurt Haruki because he had come to care for Minori despite being under the impression that she did not care about him. But most significantly for what will transpire – recall that he revealed in his internal monologue before setting out to meet Minori hours earlier that he had spent a few days imagining how his conversation with Minori would go and planning what he would say based on his predicting what Minori would say.

As Mike Tyson once said, “everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Minori’s response upset Haruki’s plot (and upset Haruki):

... say … what? …
Minori Kamiake

Haruki noted that contrary to his expectations, Minori’s “face filled with sorrow.” Haruki admitted as narrator that he did not know how to feel about this unexpected (to him, at least) event.

Having written about the 2007 anime movie 5 Centimeters Per Second, there was no way I could not use this screenshot. In a more on-point note, Mr. Mizoguchi has finally noticed that Minori started sitting closer to him.

Haruki revealed to Minori in response to her questions that he was being sent far away and would be leaving the town the day after next. Minori was visibly not taking the news well, and Haruki described feeling like his “heart was being crushed.” Haruki had expected Minori to make it easier for him by expressing ambivalence leaving, but Minori was not playing the part he expected. This presented a problem. Haruki had constructed his mental script based on the premise that Minori would not care that he was leaving. Here, Haruki had the opportunity to quickly re-calibrate – to consider Minori’s obvious feelings and talk to the Minori in front of him instead of the Minori he imagined in his tiny apartment over the previous few days. Unfortunately, he decided to go full steam ahead with his script:

… I won’t be coming back here.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Recall in that when Haruki parted ways with his unnamed former colleague on May 14 (discussed in part 2 of the analysis), he stated that while he assumed that he would never see his former colleague again, it would be "too cold to tell him 'farewell forever.'" Yet here he says just that to a young woman he clearly has much stronger feelings for. We can understand what Haruki is doing when we see that the audience for this declaration was himself, not Minori. He came up with the idea for the sake of giving himself closure. But in coming up with his plan to bravely declare that he would never return to the town, he assumed that Minori was not an interested party – that she would go about her life the same with or without his presence. By this point, however, it was clear that Minori was not taking the news well.

Minori tried unsuccessfully to keep a brave face:

I see … so we’ll never meet again, hmm?
Minori Kamiake

Haruki then, after confirming this was the case, told her that he had had fun and would never forget the time they spent together. Minori responded with “mhmm” to everything he said, and Haruki stated as narrator that “it felt as if I were destroying something precious, grinding every scrap into dust.” Minori picked up on the same thing:

… those really do sound like the words of someone who’s never coming back.
Minori Kamiake

Haruki responded that was because he never was coming back, and they both laughed uncomfortably.

To be sure, this was not the response that Haruki had prepared for.

However, something was about to change. Up until this point, Haruki had stuck to his script and, in so doing, trampled Minori’s feelings. But he would finally deviate from his script – at least in my reading – and put into words one last thing on his mind, his true feelings for Minori. Alas, we only have a reference to what happened next because as Haruki the narrator put it:

I don’t remember my own confession of love.
Haruki Mizoguchi

The Moon’s spotlight then focused on a stunned Minori:

Well now … this is the first time this has ever happened to me. I’m kind of drawing a blank here, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to say … You’re so unfair!
Minori Kamiake

Haruki’s confession was indeed unfair under the circumstances, and it had the effect of snapping Minori out of her disaffected melancholic state.

You don’t get to do this! Even though you’re never coming back, even though it’s not like you’re ever going to see me again, you just say what you feel like saying …
Minori Kamiake

It is unclear whether, in the heat of the moment, it dawned on Minori that Haruki was more or less following her life philosophy.

There is some subtle irony here. Minori’s complaints about Haruki’s behavior are entirely justified. But as is often the case – Minori can be correct about Haruki while reminding us of her own character flaws. It was Minori, after all, who on numerous occasions articulated her view that people should do whatever they want and whatever they do is correct since it must have been to them at the time. Here, Haruki had decided to cut ties with the town and Minori because he felt doing so would make it easier for him, but then, upon seeing that Minori seemingly cared for him more than he had thought, he decided to confess that he had fallen in love with her without otherwise changing his plan to leave her and the town for good. In both cases, Haruki impulsively did what he wanted to do without much regard for Minori’s feelings – just as Minori had said things on May 21 without considering how they would sound to Haruki. Haruki was wrong, but his actions were entirely consistent with how Minori opined people should behave.

That aside, Minori continued:

What am I supposed to do with MY feelings now? You’ve got the total advantage. You’re a coward and a cheat …
Minori Kamiake

Minori was simultaneously angry and confused, not having had time to process anything that Haruki was dumping on her. Haruki could only offer a meek apology, knowing full well that Minori was correct. Interestingly, narrator Haruki goes silent here – as if his future self has nothing to add beyond the present dialogue. Haruki replied to Minori with an honest statement of fact:

… I think it’s only because this is the last time, because we’ll never see each other again, that I was even able to get myself up to say this to you.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Minori took a moment and then addressed Haruki’s confession, again not quite how he expected:

… I don’t really know if I like you in that way. I mean, I never thought about you in that way either, so …
Minori Kamiake

I think Minori is being honest here. While I opined with regard to their May 21 meeting that Minori’s feelings were changing in ways that she did not fully understand, I do not think she had consciously thought of Haruki in romantic terms. Despite Haruki’s being unfair, his honesty triggered something in Minori. When he first announced that he was leaving, Minori tried unsuccessfully to keep a stoic facade and did not speak of what her face revealed of her feelings.

A careful reader can see that Minori did not reject Haruki's confession, but was instead struggling to process what was happening. Haruki chimed in with his narration, stating that he understood what Minori said as "words of rejection," but that he "felt becalmed" while he waited to hear what Minori would say next. Haruki continued to fixate on his own feelings instead of listening to Minori. But a reader can be optimistic that he also said he was ready to "wait[] forever if need be for her next words." Perhaps Haruki would finally listen to the young lady he had fallen in love with.

After a pause, Minori decided to articulate one crucial part of her feelings:

But, still … without you, I’ll be alone. And that would kind of suck ... Yeah, it’s true … it’s gonna be lonely …
Minori Kamiake

Minori then almost repeated herself before dismissing Haruki:

I feel alone … all alone .. but anyway, good luck with your new job.
Minori Kamiake

While Haruki still had not noticed that Minori did not reject his confession, he was finally compelled to plainly admit to himself in his narration that Minori actually did care about him and the time they spent together. He described feeling pained to see how upset Minori was but happy to learn that she cared enough for him to be upset.

The signs had been there throughout the novel that Minori was a lonely girl – but for the first time, she put those feelings into words. After that last line, Minori began to lose her composure and started apologizing – of course no apologies were needed. Here, narrator Haruki admits that he "had neither the time nor presence of mind to ponder what exactly she meant." Minori then leaned against Haruki, joked that they must look like lovers, and stated she was happy in that moment while reiterating that she did not know if she liked him in that way. Then Minori finally stated what she wanted in terms that not even Haruki could misunderstand:

It’s so weird, isn’t it? Just all this right now, I mean. I want to stay like this forever. Now THAT would make me happy. That’s what I think.
Minori Kamiake

This turns out to be the decisive moment – but let us take a step back to understand why.

Minori says what it is she wants.

Haruki had incorrectly assumed that Minori would respond to his leaving wirth indifference. This was because Haruki had misunderstood Minori's feelings based on their prior interactions, most significantly May 15 and 21. But there was one sense in which Minori did behave in what Haruki may have understood to be trademark Minori. While she was upset he was leaving, she did not allow herself to say that she wished he would stay. While she was even more upset when he said he would never return, she did not say that she wanted to see him again. His confession of love understandably confused Minori, and Haruki refused to allow himself to believe that she was open to his feelings, even after having to conclude that she greatly valued his presence in her life. Minori eventually gathered herself, and for the first time in the conversation put into words what she obviously wanted: “I want to stay like this forever.” In simpler terms, Minori was happy leaning against Haruki and wanted to continue spending time with him. Narrator Haruki said to himself that he "was thinking the same thing" as Minori.

The dye had been cast. Haruki has been consistent throughout the story in one respect: There’s a certain someone he cannot turn down. Minori asked again if she would never see Haruki again and he half-heartedly affirmed this. But Haruki’s narration foreshadowed the inevitable that he had not yet spoken:

And slowly, all this hard resignation I had inside of me was melting away. Things – my heart – the world – were changing in this wonderful time where there was just the two of us.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Out of the blue, Haruki asked a question which surprised Minori:

Would it be okay if … I came back sometime?
Haruki Mizoguchi

Minori reminded Haruki that he had just said he was never returning, but Haruki waved that objection away by stating that he had changed his mind. Minori was happy enough to not press the issue of Haruki’s whiplash-inducing behavior further:

So … if you’re gonna come back … when will that be?
Minori Kamiake

Haruki responded honestly that “[i]t could be a month … or could be a year,” noting in his narration that his job assignment was for one year and he had to remain on call even on his off days. Minori warned Haruki:

… I don’t think I can do it. If I wait that long, then all my feelings for you will turn to zero … and I’ll forget you … I don’t think I could keep the candles burning for you. Because I don’t like you all THAT much …
Minori Kamiake

Minori stated she would make no promises, and Haruki accepted her terms but promised to not forget her. Minori, then in a moment of genuine happiness despite having been jerked around quite a bit over the course of a few minutes:

… I’m happy. I must be the happiest girl in the world right now. Knowing that there exists a person who would choose me to think about, that’s got to be what happiness means …
Minori Kamiake

To be sure, we saw in their more friendly interactions that Minori liked attention and enjoyed Haruki’s attention. For the first time, she is connecting that impulse to romantic attention. Of course, Minori qualified all of this:

… right this second, I think I really, really want to see you again. I don’t know how I’m going to feel tomorrow, but that’s how I feel right now. Sorry, but out of all the girls you could have picked, you picked out a strange one.
Minori Kamiake

Haruki, to Minori’s happiness and amusement, stated that he “didn’t mind at all.”

Haruki concluded May 29 with his narration:

Knowing each other too well to be strangers, not knowing each other well enough to be friends – but still, having total faith in each other. Such a strange relationship.
Haruki Mizoguchi

May 31, 2005

Haruki stopped by the shrine on the morning of his departure on May 31. There, despite it being a school day, he found Minori in her full shrine maiden robes. Haruki asked Minori if she was waiting, and Minori stated she was without any sarcasm.

Bulls eye. Of course Minori admits that she was waiting at the shrine despite having to go to school for the same reason.

Haruki insisted he was there just to pray for his safe travel, and after teasing him, Minori taught him how to say a proper prayer. Before Minori left for school and Haruki left for his new home, Haruki finally got something that would come in handy: Minori’s phone number.

I preface my final bit of analysis of Haruki’s dumpster fire of a farewell-turned-confession by noting again that in discussing the flaws of Haruki and Minori, I am not fully equating them – for Minori’s short-comings are generally more forgivable than Haruki’s on account of her understandable age-related immaturity. The mess that was May 29 reminds us that the heart of May Sky is the strange relationship between two lonely, needy, and often-selfish people. Their friendship was driven to the brink not by Haruki’s having to move, but because of their own behavior. Minori took Haruki’s presence in her life for granted, confided in him while keeping him at a distance, and conveyed that she valued him because he meant nothing to her. For his part, Haruki let his own feelings for Minori get in the way of understanding Minori’s perspective on May 21 – which would have been intelligible to him had he been less emotional. Throughout his failed attempt to part ways with Minori, Haruki proved unable and unwilling to quickly adjust when Minori defied his expectations and took several actions, from attempting to sever ties to subsequently confessing his love, which were nothing if not self-centered.

Everything Haruki did on May 29 backed Minori into a corner. Minori was not only dealing with her being confessed to for the first time, but also with having to be open and honest about her feelings to avoid losing something that, in the face of loss, she realized was important to her. While Minori did not have time to process her possible romantic feelings for Haruki, his self-centered declaration that they would never see each other again and, by the way, “I love you,” forced Minori to honestly grapple with the fact that she had come to depend on Haruki for companionship over the course of four weeks, that she was much less lonely with him in her life than without, and that she would be happy if their time together continued. Minori thus stumbled into saving their friendship (and perhaps more), for I doubt she had fully understood the cosmic significance of simply being honest and unambiguously stating that she wanted to be with Haruki. Haruki’s whiplash reversal from “I will never see you again” to “I will never forget you and I will be back” makes perfect sense based on what we know about him. Once Minori made her wish clear, there was only one thing Haruki could do.

I avoided opining too much about Haruki’s romantic feelings until now as to not totally spoil the ending – especially since we may have some analysis readers who are following along in lieu of reading the novel. I am confident that Minori had not thought much about romance until Haruki’s confession. Haruki the narrator was notably silent about romantic feelings for Minori prior to recounting his confession, forcing us to rely on events to get to the bottom of the matter. There was no indication that Haruki considered Minori to be unusually attractive – he had as narrator described her behavior as cute and referenced enjoying the attention of a cute high school girl (I suspect he was not a Giga-Chad in high school), but nothing more. But Haruki had called Minori “beautiful” once – when he first saw her playing the piano in the glow of the afternoon sun on May 1. He in fact called everything in that scene beautiful, from Minori herself to her music. A few days later, Haruki admitted to seeing something “incredible” in Minori when she opened his eyes to the beauty of May. While Haruki seems and generally behaves like a simple man, all evidence suggests he fell in love with that something beautiful he saw in Minori – her aesthetic sensibility and way of seeing the world resonated with him and, by his own admission, changed the way he started looking at the world around him. With that being said, I think it took some time for those feelings to develop into something concrete enough for Haruki to act on. Haruki’s negative reactions to things Minori said on the 15th and 21st were likely influenced by the fact he had deeper feelings for her than the feelings one would have toward a fun acquaintance. It is entirely possible that narrator Haruki’s omission was very minor, and that he genuinely had not at any point seriously consider acknowledging much less confessing his love to Minori until he saw how she reacted to his leaving on May 29 (which, to be sure, would not undercut Minori’s assertion that he was a coward).

Their Year Apart

The novel changes gears completely in how it covers the events of the ensuing year. This section is split into two, with the first half being narrated by Haruki and the second half narrated by Minori. We will focus primarily on the Minori side here, both because Haruki’s is less eventful and also because it is the first and only time the novel takes us inside Minori’s thoughts and lets us see the world from her perspective.

The middle-year section of the novel begins from Haruki’s perspective. We find him at his new job three months later, on August 28, 2005, a Sunday. We learn that he had not yet had a chance to go anywhere outside of his new town, including to visit a certain shrine maiden. Haruki had taken advantage of having acquired Minori’s phone number, but:

Of all the text messages I’d sent off to that shrine maiden, not a one had been responded to. And every single time that happened, I always ended up going, ’oh I’ll give it another week, then I’ll send another. Not only was I not freaking out over this, but I was, in fact, looking forward to sending the next message off. Weird, wasn’t it?
Haruki Mizoguchi

Haruki explained his sentiments in this way:

For Minori Kamiake couldn’t help but be this way.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Haruki’s Minori-inspired sentimentality had not abated at his new job. He described having one plant in his small apartment, a Mayflower that he had picked up at the end of June for no reason other than its name.

Haruki sounds slightly more grown-up in this middle section than he did in that fateful May. His freshman blues have subsided and he seems to find work fulfilling. But there was one thing he hated:

The aching restless in my heart was growing worse and worse … So maybe this horrible feeling was what they call ‘love’.

Haruki’s section the skips ahead from to April 16 of the next year (again, almost certainly 2006). He had sent Minori a simple text, his 23rd according to him: “I’ll return in May.” The next day, Minori responded to Haruki’s message for the first time: “I’m not holding my breath.” Haruki described Minori’s first words to him in more than a year as “so like her that it made me smile.” He admitted in his narration that he cried a little bit that night. Haruki explained the circumstances that led to his impending return:

I had finished a long year’s work assignment. In recognition of my slavish work and achievements, they awarded me a reassignment to the firm’s headquarters, plus a week’s vacation … I didn’t manage the exact area that I’d lived in before, but I would be fairly close.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Haruki’s narration concludes with his return to that town on May 31, 2006. He took in the late May sky and remembered Minori’s argument that May was the best time of the year. He followed the sound of a certain piano toward a certain shrine that he found “hadn’t changed a bit over this past year” just as he had done the year prior. He then sat on the steps and waited for a certain lattice door to open.

Before we find out what happens next – the novel switches perspective to Minori after the end credits. On June 17 of 2005, Minori narrated her reaction upon reading Haruki’s third text message since Haruki had departed.

Characters appear on the screen. There’s so much kindness in them that it’s too much for me. I read it all without emotion. And then I flip my phone back down without even bothering to reply.
Minori Kamiake

Minori then noted that she had been talking to her friends about her peculiar circumstances and received feedback on her decision to not respond to Haruki’s messages:

My girlfriends tell me this is a stupid thing to do. I think so too. And I think I’m making a big mistake. But you know, that’s always been Minori Kamiake’s stance. That’s always been the coldest part of me, the one I only show to him, the one I never show to anyone else. And that’s why I’m prepared to keep holding this stance. Even if my heart tightens and shatters with pain. Just as it is now. I really have no idea what I’m reacting to, why I’m doing this. I don’t know much. But I do know this: it’s important for me to hold this stance – for me to be me. How long, then? How long will this temperance – which I selfishly explain away by going “oh, he’ll understand” – continue?
Minori Kamiake

This is an interesting look into Minori’s mind. At a basic level – I understand her position as being that she’s unwilling to overtly engage in some sort of long distance relationship with Haruki. Phone messages would not abate Minori’s loneliness or recapture what she felt in May 2005. Regarding her “stance” and “coldest part of me” lines, Minori’s behavior is consistent with the worldview she articulated to Haruki – that they should both do what they wanted. Haruki could keep sending her messages and Minori could keep holding out until he returned. But through it all, while Minori takes the view that she had no choice but to stay true to herself, she described her own actions as “stupid” and “selfish” and expressed the fear that perhaps there would come a point when Haruki would lose interest in her.

Before we turn the calendar, I will note one last interesting note from Minori about June 17:

It’s raining today. A May shower, just like that day…
Minori Kamiake

It had been raining on May 21, which was the day Minori inadvertently led Haruki to believe that he was nothing to her. It is curious that the author made a point of having her think of May 21 instead of the day of Haruki’s confession, May 29, but Minori does not have anything more to say on the matter.

We then skip ahead to December 27. Minori referenced Haruki’s 22nd message – an interesting specific since we know from Haruki’s side of the story that his April 16 message was the 23rd. Minori noted that Haruki expressed the desire to return but stated that he could not yet. She then narrated solemnly:

I spent Christmas alone.
Minori Kamiake

But while Minori was still not responding to Haruki’s messages, the messages had an effect on the lonely girl:

[O]n a good day, I catch myself wondering if it’s finally come time for them to become good memories. But then he sends me a message, and then my heart’s breaking all over again, and I’m dreadfully lonely. And when the messages stop coming all of a sudden, the pain I thought I left behind in my memories just comes roaring back. It may be getting a little weaker, sure. But it’s still there, tormenting me – unending.
Minori Kamiake

Minori referenced that her birthday was in two weeks, on January 12 – but that she did not expect to receive a birthday message. The reason was related to the peculiarity of their relationship-in-stasis:

[S]o I continue to wait for this man who doesn’t even know when my birthday is.
Minori Kamiake

Finally, Minori’s side of the story converges with Haruki’s on April 16. She described needing half a day to compose herself after Haruki wrote that he would return in May – specifically because it was the first of his messages where he said something definitive. She described her thought process in coming up with her “not holding my breath” response:

It has to be something that’s completely the opposite of what I actually feel. Something nice and indifferent and neutral. Something very ‘me’.
Minori Kamiake

But after sending her indifferent response:

[T]hen I run to my calendar immediately and draw a big circle around May.
Minori Kamiake

Minori’s narration then skips ahead to May 31. According to her, she played the piano at the shrine every day in May, hoping to be playing when Haruki returned. On May 31, she had understandably given up, and pledged to herself that:

After today, I won’t come to play the piano here ever again. I won’t be able to touch this thing again until time heals these wounds and I can look back on these events fondly. He told me he’d return. But he hasn’t. I won’t be able to keep him in my heart anymore.
Minori Kamiake

Minori’s despairing pessimism was justified. I dare say Haruki could have sent an update. But I suppose Haruki was going to be Haruki just as Minori was going to be Minori. Minori opened the lattice door after she finished playing the piano expecting to say so long to her feelings. Instead, she saw the man she had been waiting for. We are still viewing the story from Minori’s perspective, but the first spoken line comes from Haruki:

… sorry I’m so late, Minori.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Minori tried to stay in character, but admitted that she was trembling:

… y- … you’re … so late … I … I’ve c-c-c-completely f-f-forgotten you …
Minori Kamiake

After gathering herself, Minori ran up to Haruki and said what she had kept inside for a full year:

… I wanted to see you so much! I’ve been waiting, waiting this entire time …!
Minori Kamiake

Minori’s narration concluded as follows:

The arms that wrap around me are strong, yet gentle.
The warmth I’ve long been waiting for is right here.
The place I want as my own is right here at his side.
The man I always want to be with is right here.
The May sky spreads out high above us, in all its blueness and clarity.
The gentle sun showers its affection down on us from its high place in the heavenly spheres.
May is ending …
… and under the skies of June and every other month to come …
… we are beginning.

Minori had warned Haruki that her feelings might change if he took too long to return. He took a full year and Minori, by her own admission, had a difficult time. But her doubts melted away when she saw the man she had been waiting for. Our mercurial shrine maiden’s sadness instantly gave way to optimism about the days ahead .

Part 3 Final Analysis

Many visual novels, anime, and manga have a tendency to go all in on the build-up to a relationship and skip the actual relationship. May Sky could have easily ended things with Minori accepting Haruki’s confession. Instead, it opted to do two things – both of which undoubtedly made it a more difficult project than it had to be, and both of which were necessary for May Sky to ultimately be the terrific final product it is.

May Sky grappled with the necessary consequences of its own scenario in the section covering the events after May 31, 2005. Haruki and Minori had spent much of May 2005 together, but they still did not know each other particularly well. They both had their flaws and they were both in periods of transition, Haruki with his new job and Minori being 16 (17 by the end of the section covered). While the post-May section was brief, it conveyed that both Haruki and Minori grew up in some important ways. Haruki sounds more mature in his half of the post-May section, settling into his new job and carrying with him to his new town some of the sensibilities he had garnered from Minori . I have little doubt that having the goal of completing his work assignment and then returning to Minori was good for Haruki’s character. Minori opened up to her friends about Haruki. While she was conflicted about how to deal with them being apart, we see in her monologues that Minori began to think critically about why she did certain things and felt certain ways and how her actions could be interpreted by others.

Given Haruki’s and Minori’s flaws and the oddness of their relationship, one could debate whether a relationship was really going to work out, or even whether it should. Fortunately, May Sky has one more story up its sleeve – the August Snow chapter, wherein we receive a slice-of-life snippet of the new couple. I invite you to join me as we get a look at what happens after Haruki’s dramatic return to the Kamiake Shrine.

Continue to part 4...

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In part 2 of my 4-part May Sky visual novel analysis, a salaryman and shrine maiden fight about feelings, social decorum, and root vegetables.

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This is part two of my four part series analyzing May Sky, the 2008 official English language localization of an impressive 2005 freeware Japanese visual novel called Gogatsu no Sora. This article covers the in-game period of May 14-21. Everything in this article presupposes that you have read part 1 of my project and, ideally, my spoiler-free review of May Sky (I recommend starting with the review if you are not familiar with May Sky).

With that brief introduction out of the way, I pick up where I left off in part 1 of my 4-part analysis.

Note on Quotes

There are no itallics in May Sky. For ensuring clarity, I am using itallics in quoation blocks when the block includes a character’s (always Haruki’s in this analysis piece) internal monologue. I am doing this to distinguish the internal monologue quotes from spoken quotes.

May 14

The novel implicitly suggests that Haruki regularly visited the shrine throughout May, but the story skips ahead from May 8 to May 14, leaving us with the impression that nothing particularly out of the established ordinary had happened between Haruki and Minori in the interim.

On May 14, an event occurs which causes a shift in the story, but instead of it coming in a conversation between Haruki and Minori, it is revealed during Haruki’s final meeting with an unnamed (now-former) co-worker with whom, he reports, he had become friends with:

The man sitting opposite of me – he and I had a lot in common. We were both 22; we’d both just graduated from college; we’d both just been employed in the same company; we sat in neighboring cubicles.

Haruki’s friend informed Haruki that he had decided to quit working for the company. The friend cited several reasons:

“[A]ll the stuff we’ve done is neat, but … I’ve never once felt anything resembling excitement about it.”

“I guess I’m scared now. Staying on with this company, coming here every day for the next forty years … I can’t see that at all.”

“It’s not like I have some big dreams, some ideal that makes me go ‘no matter what, I am going to live for this’. I am empty.”

“To put it bluntly, even if I were to find another job I don’t think it would turn out any better.”

“I really screwed up.” (Referring to leaving.)

“[M]aybe I’m just running away with my tail between my legs. You know what’s funny. Throughout high school, college – I thought I knew how this story ended. Now, suddenly, I realize I don’t – and I’m scared.”

Before Haruki’s former colleague left, Haruki asked him why he was leaving if he believed it was objectively a mistake. Haruki’s former colleague responded: “Because I can still do something about it,” with “it” being the feeling that staying with the company would mean that he would be sitting at the same desk for the next 40 years. The significance of the exchange has little to do with Haruki’s former colleague, who never returns to the story. Instead, the significance is what that conversation caused Haruki to feel:

The freshman blues I’d carried around with me like some vague weight … now started to coalesce – into a mass of suffocating anxiety. All the doubts and questions I’d had about stepping into the brave new world of adulthood were now being given shape. I didn’t like the shape they formed. I couldn’t point to a single thing that I was facing and say, ‘this is what’s bothering me’. And yet, in spite of that, yesterday’s restless, unsettled feeling was turning me inside out.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Haruki’s former colleague had not only verbalized what Haruki himself was feeling, but he had also shocked Haruki by taking drastic action. Worse yet, Haruki had already noted that the former colleague was the one friend he had made since starting his new job a month and a half earlier (notwithstanding the fact that Haruki considered his friend too insignificant to name, of course).

Haruki stated that while he assumed he would never see his unnamed former colleague again, he thought it would be "too cold to tell him 'farewell forever'" but also "too much of a lie to say 'see you again.'" I will not reference this line again in this analysis article, but I recommend keeping it in mind when you read the next part of my May Sky analysis series.

Who would he turn to with all of his “suffocating anxiety”?

May 15

A 16year-old shrine maiden on May 15, of course.

Narrator Haruki admits with hindsight that he had a feeling dumping his anxiety on Minori would be a bad idea.

I hoped – a little bit – that Minori wouldn’t be there, even though I knew that chances were she’d be there alright.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Minori was there, alright. Haruki proceeded to dump his problems on Minori – going through a sort of Hamlet to quit or not to quit routine about his job. It was received about as well as one might expect. Haruki says that he does not have the guts to quit, to which Minori responds “then just don’t quit silly.” But then he says that he feels like it is his last chance to do something, to which Minori responds “then just quit silly!” So on and so forth. Eventually, Haruki lashed out in frustration:

… Minori. Is my CRISIS, or what I’m going to have for dinner tonight, a more important question?
Haruki Mizoguchi

Minori replied “dinner” without a moment’s hesitation. That only made Haruki more agitated.

Minori. When you’re listening to your other friends tell their troubles, are you this nasty?
Haruki Mizoguchi

Minori replied:

Oh, no. I say things like ‘oh, that’s terrible!’ or ‘I see, I see’, right on cue.
Minori Kamiake

Minori is a future shrink.

Haruki then asked whether Minori’s being dismissive of his “crisis” was because she hated him more than her friends. Minori denied that, stating instead “I just don’t care.” Haruki, being self-centered, missed the hidden significance of what Minori said. Minori’s point was not that she cared more about her friends problems, it was that she did the bare minimum with them to keep up appearances while being just as dismissive of her friends as she was of Haruki. But with Haruki, she felt comfortable expressing herself without pretenses (or at least without obvious pretenses). After Haruki poked Minori when she yawned and Minori responded by chopping Haruki on the head, Minori relented to a point and said something more substantive.

Hmm … you know, sometimes you turn into a stupid little kid.
Minori Kamiake

Haruki responded snidely, saying he was a teenager at heart. Minori told him to grow up. At this point, Haruki admitted to himself that Minori had a point:

So here we had this actual teenager (her) telling this teenager-at-heart (me) to ‘grow up already’ … Anyhow, after what I’d done, it was too late to back out gracefully. Had to play it to the end.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Haruki needed to keep up his appearances. Right on cue, Haruki continued his back and forth with Minori, ultimately getting whacked on the head again. Minori, in some frustration, finally exclaimed:

This has to be some BAD JOKE. Do you SERIOUSLY expect me to sit here and counsel you?
Minori Kamiake

Haruki responded in the affirmative, which caused Minori to get up and try to leave. Haruki, who was admittedly behaving like a bratty little kid but still desperate to have someone listen to him, tried to play it off as a joke and indirectly apologized for his behavior. But the back and forth continued. Haruki admitted to himself that his behavior was off:

Whoever heard of going to a teenager girl for advice on being an employed adult? Exactly. No one.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Minori twisted the knife after Haruki narrated the above sentiment:

First of all, why are you bringing your troubles to someone like me anyway? Is it because you don’t actually have any friends?
Minori Kamiake

Minori hit the nail on the head, although Haruki tried to deny it unconvincingly. Now I am going to combine Minori’s next two lines, omitting a couple of unsubstantive interjections by Haruki and parts of Minori’s responses to those interjections:

I really don’t like talking with people about what’s bothering them. I suck at it, and it’s SUCH a waste of time anyway … [Your former co-worker’s] problems are his own; they have NOTHING to do with me. He should just do as he pleases, if you ask me … Like I said, the choices that someone else makes is that someone else’s responsibility.
Minori Kamiake

While one cannot fault Minori for dismissing Haruki’s life problems under these particular circumstances, we should file away her assertion that no one else’s problems have anything to do with her and that people should always “do as [they] please.” Haruki then asked Minori whether she was saying she did not care whether he quit his job. Minori then stated the obvious:

Yep. If you wanna quit, then why not go ahead and do that? Even the unemployed are still people, and they’re still alive, aren’t they?
Minori Kamiake

After that, Haruki’s and Minori’s banter became somewhat more lighthearted, with Haruki joking that he would live at the shrine if he became unemployed, causing Minori to jokingly beg him to not quit his job. Eventually, Haruki threw up his arms and said he did not care anymore, which inspired a turnabout from Minori:

Oh, excellent! If you really don’t care, then you might as well spit it out, right? As long as you don’t turn into a mental case on me, I’d be happy to listen to your foolishness.
Minori Kamiake

While Haruki was stung by Minori chalking up his problems to foolishness, he took her up on her invitation and Minori nodded along – although he suspected that she was not really listening. Narrator Haruki summed up their relationship at the moment as “[m]ore than strangers, less than friends, each pursuing our own ends.”

Haruki as narrator and Minori in the moment more or less summarized all of the ways in which Haruki’s behavior was childish. The only minor mitigating note for Haruki is that his behavior was not driven by the idea that Minori somehow owed him for his listening to her gripe about her day on multiple occasions or buying her food. The evidence in the script clearly points to Haruki being lonely and needy and concluding, unwisely, that his best course of action was to whine at Minori.

One of the central refrains of May Sky.

While Minori was in the right with respect to her specific complaints about Haruki’s behavior, the script demands that we take a critical look at her reasoning. It may be the case that while Minori was on sound footing regarding Haruki in this specific instance, her reasoning would leave her on less solid footing in other cases. Why was Minori so frustrated with Haruki? An outsider can rightfully criticize Haruki for seeking counseling from a 16-year old girl. But Minori’s complaint was not specifically that an adult was asking a teenager for life advice. Minori’s complaint, as she explicitly stated, was that she felt as if Haruki was trying to offload responsibility for his own life choices onto her. Minori’s position is that the only person who can decide whether Haruki should stay at his job is Haruki – and it is Haruki, and no one else, who has to then deal with the consequences of that decision. If we recall earlier cases when Minori griped to Haruki, she did so because she wanted to chat, have someone listen, and get some things that were bothering her off her chest. At no point did Minori ask Haruki for advice. This is why after their comical and sometimes tense exchanges broke Haruki’s will, she invited him to talk about his problems provided he did not “turn into a mental case.” That is, Minori was willing to listen – but no more. After calling Haruki’s “crisis” foolish, Minori then made it clear she would expect no more from him:

Next time, when I’ve got something stupid to complain about, you’d better lend a sympathetic ear, understand?
Minori Kamiake

The issue as I see it is whether Minori’s position is sustainable in all cases – for example in more normal friendships with classmates or other people similarly situated to her. File away for the time being Minori’s stating that an additional reason she does not enjoy “counseling” is because, in her own estimation, she is not good at it. We must consider whether part of the reason Minori is standoffish with regard to giving advice is because she thinks it will end poorly. Moreover, we must consider whether Minori’s view on only venting to others but never asking for help is a way of maintaining internal consistency in light of her unwillingness to do anything more for others. Finally, Minori never seems to consider that one can offer support while still framing that support in a way that encourages the other person to take responsibility for his or her choices.

May 18

In the end, Haruki and Minori navigated through their silly argument and returned to the status quo. May Sky then skips ahead to May 18 – which is clearly and beyond doubt the strangest part of the novel. The chapter picks up not at the shrine, but at the grocery store. Haruki reaches for a daikon radish on sale only to find that someone else had her hand on it. That someone was Minori – now wearing her school blazer. If one thought that their argument on May 15 was immature, it had nothing in terms of immaturity or passion on their fight over a root vegetable. As funny as this sequence is – the daikon fight itself, which occupies several pages of my PDF version of the script, is not significant to our analysis beyond noting that they both behaved like children.

Two lonely people find a special someone who shares the same passion.

What is significant is Minori’s proposition.

After Minori and Haruki decided to split the daikon, Minori told Haruki that her parents were out of town and asked what would be a fateful question.

Is there any chance of you treating me to dinner?
Minori Kamiake

Haruki initially refused, internally citing her selfishness and perhaps also thinking about his limited finances. Minori was not deterred – offering to cook dinner if he bought the ingredients. Haruki gave in, not having had a home-cooked meal in a long while. Haruki did manage to avoid buying Minori expensive tuna cuts, although he promised that he would buy some for her after receiving his first paycheck after somehow convincing himself that Minori, whose Aunt ran a shrine and whose Mom had enough leisure time to write over 200 piano pieces, was from a poor family. The rest of the shopping trip went about as well as one would expect for Haruki:

Her power of persuasion in convincing me that she was up to any decent purpose? About as poor as I’d mistaken her wallet to be. I was left holding the other handle of the bag. Oh, and as for its contents? Lots of foods that (1) Minori liked and (2) I hated.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Minori confirmed that she had deliberately chosen foods that Haruki said he hated, and Haruki described her as smiling more brightly than she ever had before when she said it.

Haruki should have had the foresight to not tell Minori what his most-hated foods were.

We will skip over Haruki’s and Minori’s banter while she was cooking because it was more comedic than revealing about their characters.

Apparently she was not interested in the video game console he mentioned near the beginning of the novel.

Minori proved to be a good cook, and Haruki was very grateful for her cooking, so much so that he had a proposal:

… Minori. Will you marry me? If not you can be my housekeeper and cook.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Minori immediately rejected the proposal, stating she would not throw away her life for his stomach. Haruki chided Minori for making light of his “once-in-a-lifetime proposal,” to which Minori, on cue, advised him to not make such important proposals lightly. We should file this humorous banter away for much later (specifically the fourth and final part of this series).

There was of course one part of the dinner that Haruki did not approve of – the entree, liver and chives, featured the two foods Haruki hated most of all. All was well until Minori force-fed Haruki a chopstick-full of liver and chives (perhaps it was revenge for the rice cake 13 days prior – but Minori does not specifically reference that incident).

After Haruki took a shower, Minori asked him if she could have a beer from his fridge. Haruki absent-mindedly said yes, apparently (according to him) forgetting her age (Japan’s drinking age was and is 20 – so that was a big miss). Three beers later, Minori was drunk. While this would seem like an opportunity for something dramatic to happen, Minori mostly acted like an exaggerated version of herself, poking Haruki in the face to the point she caused bruising before passing out on him.

Minori is handling her alcohol very well.

The inherently unsavory nature of the situation dawned on Haruki, but he was able to carry her from his apartment to the shrine without further incident. Minori woke up mid-route having regained her senses, although she remembered enough to have a distinct feeling that she had made a fool of herself.

While the dinner arc had plenty of comedy, it did not paint the most flattering portrait of either Haruki or Minori.

The questionable circumstances of May 18 stemmed from Haruki’s inability to say no to Minori. He could not turn down her request to visit and he also could not put his foot down when she used his money to buy several food items that he hated. Similarly, he absent-mindedly approved her request for a beer from his fridge (while it seems somewhat implausible that one would forget Minori was well-short of 20 years old, especially in light of the fact she was in her school uniform – that is the clear position of the script so we will have to accept it for our analysis) – which is consistent with the growing list of examples of Haruki always saying yes to Minori – even when he should not.

While there is no indication in the story that Haruki had nefarious intentions (outside of a few “I’m a man after all” thoughts in his monologues), Minori could charitably be described as naive for inviting herself over to the apartment of a 22-year old man at night whom she still does not know very well. Moreover, in light of the fact that Haruki agreed to have her over and to buy all of the food that she would be cooking for dinner – one could question her determination to (1) try to get him to buy expensive tuna and (2) compensate by buying food he did not like. Finally, having already noted that it was probably unwise of Minori to invite herself over to an adult man’s house in the way she did, it was even more unwise to get drunk there. Granting all of Haruki’s flaws, Minori should count herself as fortunate she did not attach herself to a man with character defects worse than immaturity, indecisiveness, and being a mush when it came to her demands.

Haruki’s decision-making and being a mush for Minori are not cryptic. But what exactly was Minori thinking? I mark Minori’s behavior up to the escalation of tendencies we saw in her earlier shrine meetings with Haruki. Minori, like Haruki, is lonely – and when she saw Haruki at the grocery store, she saw an opportunity to put off retiring to an empty house. Minori also likes attention, but she is immature in how she seeks attention. For example, one could see her trying to drain Haruki’s wallet and force him to pay for a main dish consisting of two things he hated as a way of testing the limits of how much she could get away with. If we understand Minori as testing Haruki’s limits, the beer request makes sense too. If he was willing to buy all this food and promise to buy her more expensive food later, perhaps he would not stop her from having her first alcoholic beverage (or beverages as it would turn out).

May 21

Haruki visited the shrine on Saturday, May 21. It was raining heavily on this occasion. Haruki genuinely did not expect to find Minori there, but to his surprise, she was there in full shrine maiden attire sitting under a canopy on the front steps. Minori greeted him with her traditional quip about him being bored – for once, Haruki finally had a retort:

I guess that makes two of us today, doesn’t it?
Haruki Mizoguchi

Minori, apparently lacking her usual spunk, agreed with Haruki.

Minori and Haruki sat for a while in silence. Below, I will excerpt part of Haruki’s thoughts:

Even though we were side-by-side now, even though we knew that something had happened between us, we didn’t do anything about it. That was our stance. A waiting game: each waiting for the other to ask to be let in. Neither doing anything. In a sense, it may have been that we didn’t care about each other. But that wasn’t quite it – for this, too, was an odd kind of trust. An unbreakable trust that we would not meddle in each other’s lives, that we would not become part of each others’ lives.
Haruki Mizoguchi

After 20 minutes, Minori broke the silence after asking for permission to ask a question:

… you know that word ‘correct’? What does that really mean, anyway?
Minori Kamiake

Minori describes having gotten drunk at Haruki's apartment despite being underage as they sit in the rain at Kamiake Shrine.

Minori continued:

… I think, probably, both you and I have always done the ‘correct’ thing up until now. Always …
Minori Kamiake

Haruki expressed some disagreement, thinking of himself rather than Minori, which led Minori to qualify her statement in an attempt at a quasi-Socratic/Platonic take:

To put it another way, we just don’t DO things that we think are ‘wrong’. If we felt something was ‘wrong’, we wouldn’t do it in the first place.
Minori Kamiake

Haruki retorted by confessing he teased a girl when he was a kid. Minori followed up with a reference to May 18:

And two days ago, I got really drunk. Even though I’m underage.
Minori Kamiake

But Minori insisted these actions were correct, at least under her definition:

[These decisions were correct] [t]o the people we were at those moments in time – absolutely those were the ‘correct’ courses of action.
Minori Kamiake

Minori then opined that she would “go to my grave thinking that ‘correct’ is within each individual person.”

Haruki was confused about what Minori was getting at – perhaps she was too.

It was actually three days ago since I do not think Minori started drinking after midnight.

As it would turn out, Minori had other concerns beyond the 18th. She asked Haruki if she could vent – without specifically referencing that she had extracted a promise from him on the 15th that he would listen to her silly problems in the same way she listened to his. I excerpt from her venting:

Just recently, I did something I think is ‘correct’, and then this girl in my class got REAL mad at me for it … How could it be, huh? I don’t think I did anything wrong. She doesn’t think she did anything wrong either. We both did what we felt was ‘correct’. So how come everything’s so messed up now?
Minori Kamiake

Minori assured Haruki she did not need an answer – and suggested she would just apologize even though she did not think she was wrong. But still – she was twisting herself into a pretzel trying to figure out who was the judge of who was right. Then, Minori thanked Haruki for listening. Haruki insisted he did nothing but listen, to which Minori responded:

As far as I’m concerned, right now, I couldn’t have asked for more, really.
Minori Kamiake

She continued when Haruki continued to insist he did not do anything worth being thanked for:

When someone just needs to get some load off their mind, especially if it’s all nonsense, being listened to like this is extremely important! Haven’t you ever really wanted someone to talk to, more than anything else in the world?
Minori Kamiake

Haruki did not disagree, but he told Minori it didn’t have to be him that she spoke to. Then, for perhaps the first time in some time, Minori surprised Haruki:

Nope. It HAD to be you. … I feel like I can talk to you about anything … even things I don’t tell my parents or friends. Everything …
Minori Kamiake

After a pause, Minori continued with another surprise (note I am piecing together three parts of what she said, separated by pauses):

… so I guess … when it comes to you, I … think there’s nothing between us. We both … how do I put this? We categorize the people we know, don’t we all? We label them as friends, family, relatives …
Minori Kamiake

Minori continued:

But I can’t fit you into any of those boxes. You don’t belong anywhere, it’s just me and you … I can say horrible things about my classmates to you, but they’ll never hear it.
Minori Kamiake

This turns out to be a significant passage. As presented in the novel, it looks like Minori is about to confess her feelings (the music pauses here) for Haruki before coming out with “there’s nothing between us.” A careful reader will see that Minori was not thinking of romance at all – she did not set up the line as a tease and she was not, consciously at least, trying to cover for romantic feelings. Minori, being an intelligent-but-guarded and very self-centered teenager, was inadvertently being a too cute by a half. She was seriously trying to convey that she was comfortable talking to Haruki because their relationship existed in a different sphere than her family and school relationships and that she could talk to him without worrying about the effect it could have on other parts of her life. Of course, while Haruki could be clear-headed about Minori in some cases, he admitted in his narration that he did not take this line from the girl who had helped him see the world differently too well – noting that he felt a sharp pain when Minori asserted there was nothing between them at all.

Haruki overlooked the fact that Minori was sitting much closer to him than she had during previous meetings.

Haruki acknowledged in his narration that he had a similar thought about boxes when he confided in Minori about his career angst. But still, he subjectively understood Minori as saying she was comfortable with him because he did not matter to her. After Minori added that she could even tell Haruki embarrassing things, Haruki teased her by inviting her to do so – but Minori was serious, so Minori tried to steer the conversation back to the point, before Haruki finally derailed it with a joke about Minori being violent.

Now we have quite a bit to work with.

This is the first instance in the story when Minori speaks from the heart about her feelings on something other than nature – granting she makes a characteristically teenage effort to intellectualize those feelings. Other than greeting Haruki by asking if he was bored, Minori made no attempt to mess with or hit Haruki, which also distinguishes May 21 from their previous meetings.

What exactly was Minori going on about?

Minori’s fight with her friend is ambiguous – but in context we can infer what probably happened. To start, we can rule out that it had to do with her talking about what happened with Haruki from the fact that Minori makes a point of saying that she does not tell her friends embarrassing things. Minori was almost certainly describing an actual disagreement she had with one of her school friends, although the nature of the disagreement is was not something she opted to disclose. Recall that when Minori dismissed Haruki’s attempts to seek her counsel, she stated that when her friends have problems, she simply nods along to keep up appearances while otherwise blowing them off. I suspect Minori had reacted in a characteristically Minori way to one of her friend’s problems, and this had led to a fight similar to the one she had with Haruki on the 15th. Minori believes that her way of thinking and avoiding entanglements in the problems of others is correct, but similarly dislikes conflict or having people think poorly of her – causing her to conclude that she would likely apologize to keep up appearances while maintaining her own view that neither she nor her friend had anything to apologize for. Of course, it is Minori’s tendency to distance herself from others and maintain a veneer of superficiality that created the circumstances for Haruki to occupy a unique place in her life.

There is clearly something else bothering Minori: That is her feelings about Haruki. Minori’s correct spiel begins with her refernce to her drunkenness on the 18th, while her vague reference to the argument with her friend is presented only after that. Although Minori insists that her behavior was “correct” in both cases because it seemed right to her on the 18th, she is clearly embarrassed – evinced by how differently she behaves around Haruki on this day than before. Minori is many things. On one hand she is a talented pianist who can articulate her aesthetic views in such a way as to genuinely move a malaise-ridden office worker six years her senior. But this does not make Minori mature in all respects – she is still very much a 16-year old girl. Minori’s immaturity informs what is, on a very surface-level, her most level-headed interaction with Haruki to date. If we understand that Minori was in fact embarrassed about her behavior on the 18th – something Haruki of all people picked up on before Minori started talking, why was it that Minori, who was guarded to the point she ordinarily never asked for advice or divulged embarrassing things, was fine behaving in embarrassing ways in front of Haruki and telling him all the things that she otherwise kept to herself? Minori spent some time thinking about it and decided the answer was that Haruki just existed separate from the other people in her life, including friends. But Minori phrased it in the way she wanted to, without considering that Haruki may hear her saying that she did not care about him at all. This would not have been a problem had Minori intended for her words to be taken literally – but we will soon see that was not her intent.

Minori’s feelings about Haruki are shifting in ways she probably does not fully understand, but I do not think she was consciously thinking of him romantically at this stage – not least because there is little evidence that Minori thinks of herself at all as someone who a man would be attracted to. Instead, Minori had become dependent on Haruki in just two weeks. This lonely, closed-off, sentimental girl who spent her time off from school and her rainy days working alone, part-time at a shrine, suddenly had this fun 22-year old sweep into her life. He praised her music, listened to her vent, paid attention to her, and seemed completely unable to turn her down. Minori liked the attention, but Minori also liked that she could be herself, or at least behave without inhibition, and still have Haruki’s full attention. Of course, Minori, a girl with limited life experience and emotional range, missed that she was taking her new companion's attention for granted.

Haruki offered the following monologue (excerpted):

I felt a tiny awareness coming to life within some deeply hidden crevice of my chest. There it flickered weakly, like a candle about to be blown out. In the end, I’d never been able to answer that question for myself: what was it that I wanted to do with my life, anyway? … But I did know one thing. Something new was coming into being inside me. Didn’t know what it was. That didn’t matter right now. And all the while, the piano went on singing its songs in a May sky choked with rain.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Regardless of whether Haruki’s feelings were clearly romantic on May 21, did have strong feelings for Minori. He credited Minori with making him see the pretty things around him and spending time with her was helping persevere through a very difficult patch in his life. Had Haruki had a more level head, he would have been able to see through Minori’s obfuscation in her saying there was nothing at all going on between them.

Before we move into the final section of the main part of the novel – I will lead with a question. Much of May Sky has focused on Haruki’s indecisiveness about his future. But what about Minori? What would it take for Minori to fully let her guard down and be honest about her feelings and desires? What would it take for Minori to extend a hand to someone or accept a hand being extended to her? Let us find out.

Part 2 Conclusion

Each of the three Haruki-Minori meetings covered in this analysis featured some sort of conflict or issue. In the first meeting, which occurred on the 15th, Haruki annoyed Minori by trying to use her as his life counselor. In the second meeting, which occurred on the 18th, both Haruki and Minori behaved somewhat unwisely, culminating with Minori embarrassing herself by getting drunk off three beers from Haruki’s fridge. The third meeting followed cleanly from the previous two. Minori’s embarrassment over her behavior at Haruki’s apartment made her introspective, and she called in her favor from their meeting on the 15th by having Haruki listen to her problems.

The events of the 15th, 18th, and 21st , as we see in the next part of this series, created problems that our strange friends will have to confront. Without fully equating Minori’s faults to Haruki’s on account of her younger age, Minori said several things on both the 15th and 21st that will prove to have some unintended consequences. I noted some clear flaws in Minori’s view of human relationships and Minori’s clunky, self-centered explanation of why Haruki had a unique place in her life on the 21st was not taken by Haruki as she had likely intended. Haruki is similarly self-centered with regard to Minori, and in his case his focus on his own feelings influenced how he understood those things Minori said on the 15th and 21st. Having granted that Minori does not think some of the things she says through as well as one would hope, she is not so mysterious that Haruki could not have had a better read on her had he taken a step back.

Perhaps all would be well and work itself out if things could continue on indefinitely as they were. But the month of May was approaching its end, and the winds of impending change were beginning to swirl.

Continue to part 3...

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A U.S.-centric take on how to localize Japanese high school classes in a way that is intelligible for readers familiar with 4-year high school systems.

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While working on my comprehensive analysis of the story in May Sky, Insani’s 2008 localization of a 2005 freeware doujin Japanese visual novel, I came across an interesting translation point while reviewing the script – which I converted from the novel’s text file into a PDF that I could annotate in Zotero. Before continuing, do note that I cannot read Japanese, so I am examining the localization on its own English-language terms.

May Sky centers on two characters. The primary view-point character is a 22-year old salary-man named Haruki Mizoguchi. His main interlocutor is Minori Kamiake, a high school student who works part-time as a shrine maiden at a shrine where her Aunt is head priestess. Note that I left the particulars of Minori life as a high school student vague – for that is the subject we are concerned with today.

Whenever I write about media that involves Japanese high schools, I make sure to note for the benefit of most of our readers (being an American website and all) that Japanese senior high schools cover three years – 10th through 12th grades – instead of the four years covered by U.S. high schools. For this reason, I usually describe the year of fictional Japanese high school students using a grade number (since that is transferable) or with the reminder that, for example, “second year” high school student in Japan is equivalent to our 11th grade instead of 10th. I avoid using “freshman,” “sophomore,” and “junior” because I think doing so would invite confusion for people who are not familiar with the three-year high school scheme. Technically speaking, freshman and sophomore mean first-year and second-year, but mapping those terms to Japanese high school students requires knowing the duration of high school in Japan – something that I do not presuppose all of my readers know. I am comfortable using “senior” because that maps to the same final grade level in both Japan and the United States.

Now let us return to Minori, and specifically to an early scene where she and Haruki are getting to know each other. See the following quote:

“Speaking of which, I’m a sophomore in high school…”

Don't worry about talking too much, Minori. You can help increase our word-count here at The New Leaf Journal.

An American reader who is unfamiliar with the grades covered by high school in Japan may come away from this line in isolation with the impression that Minori is a 10th grader. Insani, the circle which handled the May Sky localization (specifically Irene Ying working under the editorial supervision of Seung Park), emphasize that they understand localization to be distinct from rote word-for-word translating (see Mr. Park’s very insightful translation review). I immediately understood that Insani was not taking localization liberty here – Minori is clearly saying that she is an 11th grade student in four-year high school terms. The expert team at Insani certainly knew the precise definition of sophomore as conveying the second year of the three years of senior high school in Japan, just as it is the second year of the four years in the United States.

(I will add that the script previously used the word freshman where Haruki is describing “freshman blues” experienced by new corporate employees, where freshman is referring to first-year workers. Mr. Park explained that this was Insani’s translation of “May sickness,” a term which only makes sense in the the Japanese context where the school year begins and ends in April. But that aside – the use of freshman at all indicates that had Minori been a first year high school student, Insani would have certainly opted for freshman instead of sophomore.)

With that being said – I do not like the use of sophomore here, even if it is the most natural conversational way of Minori describing her year as a student. Its meaning is only clear if you presuppose that whoever is reading it understands that Japan has a three-year high school system. Moreover, Minori’s age is a significant point in May Sky. Had Haruki, a 22-year old salary man, been ambiguous to some readers about whether some past event happened when he was a 10th or 11th grader, it would have most likely hardly been worth noting. Minori, however, is a high school student in the present and the particular place she is in her life is important to understanding her character and interactions with Haruki.

A very careful reader would actually be able to pin down from the script alone that Minori means 11th grade when she says sophomore – but I am saying that based on reading the script as a PDF, which is not how the ordinary reader would (or should, for that matter) interact with the visual novel. In order to define “sophomore” using the script, we have to first turn backward in the script, about a page and a half earlier than the sophomore line.

“I’ve been [working here] four years now, actually.”

Minori had previously revealed that she had been working as a part-time shrine maiden for four years. Thus, she was working four years before becoming a sophomore in high school. I say becoming because the Japanese school year starts in April, another point that some readers of the novel may not be familiar with.

Now let us skip down further in the script. On my PDF we need to skip 24 pages from the sophomore line and 26 from the four-year line to reach the next important quote. While this is still early in the grand scheme of the novel (my PDF is 196 pages), this is a decent amount of reading for someone enjoying the original work. I quote Minori:

“Well, see, I was in eighth grade when I first started working here …”

Eureka! Minori started working at the shrine when she was in eighth grade. She worked continuously at the shrine for four years and she is now a sophomore. The math works out: Minori is in eleventh grade.

However, the problem remains – a reader who is (A) reading the visual novel normally and (B) does not know that Japanese high school is three years (much less that the year starts in April) is unlikely to piece the two additional pieces of evidence together and deduce that sophomore Minori is an 11th grader at the start of May Sky. The script is not ambiguous on its own terms, and Minori’s “sophomore” line is not technically ambiguous, but the overall effect is ambiguous to an American reader without having knowledge beyond the scope of May Sky.

To be sure, the vast majority of people playing the al|together novels are likely familiar with how high school works in Japan. I have a different interest in the issue. In reviewing the novels, I hoped to not only bring attention to some worthy, under-appreciated projects (noting that May Sky is my favorite of the 31 al|together novels), but also to encourage some people who are not familiar with visual novels at all to give some a try. Because I am writing for an audience beyond core Japanese visual novel fans, I take note of little issues that may be confusing to a broader English-speaking demographic, especially here in the United States.

Thus, I conclude with my two cents on how Japanese-language games referencing Japanese high schools and junior high schools should be handled, notwithstanding the fact I cannot read Japanese. Assuming arguendo the goal is to mitigate potential confusion for American readers or readers from countries with 4-year high schools, I advocate either:

Using grade numbers instead of class names except in the case of seniors, since “senior” corresponds to 12th grade in all K-12 cases; or

Adding a note, elegantly within the script or as an aside, clarifying the three-year high school system.

Point 1 may be inadequate in the case of 8th, 9th, and 10th grades. In America at least, 8th grade is the last year of junior high school – a senior so to speak (your humble editor was class salutatorian – not to brag). But in Japan, the 8th graders have seniors. Similarly, using 9th and 10th grade alone is lacking context since 9th grader is junior high school in Japan but high school in four-year high school systems, and 10th graders are high school freshmen in Japan but sophomores in the United States. I have found that anime centered on high schools where classes are issues tend to make indirectly clear at one point or another that there are just three grades – but in a novel such as May Sky where age is significant but high school exists only in the background, a more targeted definition should be used.

(Note: I mention an ambiguity about when Minori moved from the country-side relative to her schooling that pops up late in May Sky in the final part of my four-part analysis.)

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Evidence That May Sky VN Begins in May 2005

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I use textual evidence in May Sky to induce that it almost certaintly takes place in 2005 and 2006.

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I wrote a full analysis of what was my favorite of the 31 al|together visual novel localizations, 2008’s May Sky. In order to write that analysis, I turned the script of the novel into a PDF and read it closely while annotating it in the Zotero reference manager. This process allowed me to notice some fine points that are easy to miss while reading the visual novel as it is intended – for example how the localization describes one of the two main characters' grade in high school. Another thing I found was subtle evidence of when exactly the events of May Sky take place.

May Sky is a novel with a real-world modern Japan setting. The majority of the piece takes place in a certain May. While the novel always notes which day of May (as in number) things transpire, it never specifies a year. Because the base Japanese novel was originally released in four parts in May 2005, I assumed without thinking too deeply about it that the main game was set in 2005 or close to it. My closer reading of the script led me to conclude with high confidence that May Sky almost certainly takes place in 2005 and, in its final part, 2006.

The first key piece of evidence comes in the first few lines of the novel when the view-point character, Haruki Mizoguchi, notes the day his story begins:

May first. Sunday. 4:00 PM.

Because I vaguely assumed that the events of the main part of the novel were set in 2005, it occurred to me to check what day May 1 fell on in 2005. Sure enough, May 1, 2005, fell on a Sunday.

There are many other dates noted in the main May part of the novel, but they are all follow from May 1 being a Sunday.

The final part of May Sky takes place not in May, but in August, 15 months after the events of the main May part of the novel. The August section specifies two dates: August 20 (Sunday) and August 26 (Saturday). Assuming everything is consistent, these two August dates should correspond to August 2006. I checked and confirmed that indeed they did. August 20 and 26, 2006, fell on Sunday and Saturday respectively.

Thus, while May Sky only specifies months and days and not the year in its script, we can be reasonably confident (if not all-but certain) that its main events take place in May 2005 and August 2006. I appreciate the attention to detail – albeit I am uncertain why the original author (assuming arguendo the localization followed the author here) did not specify the year which seems to be strongly implied by the in-game noted days of the month.

Note: For those who are curious, I generated the calendars pictured in the article by running the following command in my terminal (XFCE Terminal in this case):

cal 05 2005 && cal 08 2006

I then used my screen clipping utility to collect screenshots of both generated calendars.

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The first of a four-part in-depth analysis of the script of May Sky, one of the best of the 31 visual novel localizations to come out of al|together. A lonely newly-minted salary man meets a mercurial teenage shrine maiden...

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Back in 2005, 2006, and 2008, various individuals and groups in the Japanese-to-English game localization community came together to create three visual novel localization festivals, which were called al|together. The three al|together festivals yielded 31 localizations of freeware doujin visual novels from Japan. From April 2021 through December 2023, I wrote full reviews of 29 of the 31 localizations, and in January 2024 I published a final assessment wherein I offered my ranking of all 31 al|together novels, beginning with 31 and working my way to 1. My choice for the best of al|together was May Sky, which was part of the final al|together festival in 2008. However, I have written less about it than some other pieces. We do not yet have a May Sky analysis piece like what I wrote for third-ranked Shooting Star Hill and 14th-ranked From the Bottom of the Heart nor do we have an article about a literary analysis term inspired by the novel like what I wrote for Collage. Today I begin remedying this oversight: Welcome to my story analysis and more in-depth thoughts of the best of the al|together novels (in my book, at least), May Sky.

This is the initial title screen. It changes after reading through the main game (as in the first six chapters) once.

This article is my introduction to what is a four-part May Sky analysis project. The early sections introduce the project and then I get into my analysis, analyzing the in-game period of May 1-8.

May Sky Background Background

If you are not already familiar with May Sky, please take a look at my regular review of the May Sky and, optionally, my article on the first two original Japanese versions of the piece. Here, I will give a very short re-introduction that is intended only to serve as a refresher for people with prior familiarity with the piece or my writing about it.

May Sky is the English localization of a freeware Japanese visual novel called Gogatsu no Sora, developed by circle Scrubbing. Gogatsu no Sora was originally released in four parts in May 2005 as an Adobe Flash game. An installable version with a lengthy extra section was released on August 31, 2005. In 2008, the legendary English language visual novel localization circle, Insani, obtained permission to translate the second installable version of Gogatsu no Sora (the official website for the Japanese novel includes a link to Insani’s page for the E nglish version). Irene Ying localized the novel under the supervision of Seung Park and Insani released it as the final piece of al|together 2008 on December 1, 2008. (May Sky was the last of the 31 al|together novels to be made available for download – a clear case of saving the best for last if you follow my final evaluation.)

You can download May Sky from its official website and run it on Windows or Linux.

Spoiler Notes

While my al|together reviews are largely free of major plot spoilers (with the qualified exception of my first al|together review, The Poor Little Bird), this is an analysis piece, meaning that I am discussing the plot of May Sky. I offer potential readers the following recommendations:

If you are already familiar with May Sky, I hope you enjoy my analysis.

If you are not yet familiar with May Sky, have a look at my spoiler-free review of the novel first. If it looks interesting to you, I would encourage you to actually play the novel before reading my spoiler-filled discussion.

If you have not already played May Sky but plan to do so, you can approach my analysis in one of two ways. Firstly, you can read the novel in full first and then see my analysis. Alternatively, you could follow along with my analysis – which is presented in chronological game order. I include the in-game dates I am covering in each section header for those of you who may want to read my analysis as a companion to the novel.

If you are 100% certain that you will not be reading May Sky but enjoy The New Leaf Journal and learning about new things, I invite you to read my analysis piece (I would still recommend skimming my original review first). There will be enough detail for you to follow the story.

Without further ado, let us jump right into the first part of my analysis.

Analysis Introduction

May Sky follows the strange developing relationship between its two main characters. The view-point character is always, with one brief exception that we will cover in part three of my analysis, Haruki Mizoguchi, a 22-year old first-year salary man who was sent to a small town for his initial training assignment. In that small town he meets Minori Kamiake, a 16-year old 11th grade high school student who works part time as a shrine maiden at a shrine where her aunt is the head priestess. As we will see in the analysis, that Haruki is the narrator for about 99% of the novel creates an asymmetry. We usually know Haruki’s perspective on things because he is the view-point character. Conversely, we have to rely on Haruki’s interactions with Minori and his subjective impressions of her behavior to understand her thoughts and feelings.

While May Sky has its own internal chapter structure with six chapters in the main story and then an epilogue or extra story called August Snow. I structured my review without much regard for the in-game chapters, focusing instead on where I thought the best break-off points were for each section of my analysis. I ultimately decided to break my review into four articles. In coming up with the structure, I focused on in-game dates (May Sky always specifies a date), but the end of each analysis article coincides with the end of a chapter.

May 1-8, 2005 (chapters 1-2) < You are here!

May 14-21, 2005 (chapters 3-4)

May 24, 2005 - May 31, 2006 (chapters 5-6)

After May 31, 2006 (August Snow)

I have read May Sky multiple times. For the purpose of this analysis, I converted the novel's script into a PDF and then annotated the PDF using Zotero.

The bulk of the game takes place in May of a certain year – almost certainly May of 2005 (see my evidence). While May 2005 constitutes the main game, I will argue that this can be thought of as consisting of two halves, with the latter half beginning on May 14 (the novel always notes the day events are happening). After May, there is a comparatively brief section that covers the events occurring between May 31, 2005, and the same day one year later. It is in this section that the novel briefly switches from Haruki’s perspective to Minori’s. Finally, the last part of the novel, which is exclusive to the installable Gogatsu no Sora and May Sky (it is not part of the Japanese-only Adobe Flash version) takes place in what is almost certainly August 2006, 15 months after the events of the main part of the novel.

Before finally advancing to the analysis – note that my analysis is based entirely on the English language localization, May Sky. To the extent there may be some minor differences between May Sky and the original Gogatsu no Sora, I am not competent to consider them.

Note on Quotes

There are no itallics in May Sky. For ensuring clarity, I am using itallics in quoation blocks when the block includes a character's (always Haruki's in this analysis piece) internal monologue. I am doing this to distinguish the internal monologue quotes from spoken quotes.

May 1, 2005

May Sky begins with Haruki’s narration on May 1. Before we meet Minori, we learn a few key points about our view-point character. Haruki gives the reader a to-the-point introduction:

My name is Haruki Mizoguchi. I’m 22 years old. I’m fresh meat at a corporation. That’s right, I became a card-punching corporate monkey just this year .. not exactly of my own free will or anything.
Haruki Mizoguchi

He lives in a “nine-by-twelve” apartment that is “[t]he very picture of a ’bachelor pad for a young cubicle rat.” Haruki had been living at his apartment for his new job since April. April is significant because the Japanese school year begins and ends in April, meaning Haruki had completed his final year of college. Haruki is not making a home of his tiny apartment – it is merely a temporary abode for his initial work training assignment.

Haruki insists that he is neither lonely nor depressed. He explains that he had started talking to himself since living alone, but he marked it up to habit. He admits having a lonely feeling looking at the town (just a few lines after insisting he was not lonely). Regardless of whether Haruki is lonely (he certainly is) or depressed (debatable), he is suffering from angst related to taking his first step into adulthood and a new career. In an easy-to-skip line, Haruki describes looking at his unused video game console which he had played constantly as a student (note again he had been a student just two months earlier) but had neglected since starting his job. Something changed in him beyond the simple fact that he finished school and joined the workforce.

Haruki overcomes his malaise to drag himself outside one evening. This proved to be a fateful decision. While on his walk, Haruki hears “the faint sound of a piano, somewhere out there.” It is then our story begins:

I’m pretty sure there was no rhyme or reason to what I did next: I stopped walking, focused on the music, and figured out where it was coming from. Then I started for that general direction. Like I said, the reason was not what you’d call a ‘profound’ one.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Haruki’s narration is interesting in that some points he is clearly reflecting on what happened in the past whereas in others he is offering live commentary on what is happening. The above line is ex post de facto reflection.

[I]t never even crossed my mind that this random little act might have any lasting impact on my life.
Haruki Mizoguchi

But the Haruki who is trying to explain why he did what he did already knows how the story ends. Haruki, likely in hindsight, tries to explain the impulse that drew him to the sound of the piano:

I walked around that sunset road, ears straining to hear and follow the thread of the melody, the way a drowning man grasped at a lifeline he couldn’t even see.
Haruki Mizoguchi

The same Haruki who insists he was neither lonely nor depressed also compares himself then to a “drowning man.” Haruki felt like there was no meaning to anything he was doing and that his decisions were not his own. Looking back, he believes he heard something intangible in those piano notes – something meaningful, or at least that is what he tells himself in hindsight.

Haruki's in-game narration makes a point of hammering home how a piano does not fit the Shinto shrine aesthetic.

Haruki’s sleuthing brought him to a Shinto temple – not ordinarily a place one would expect to find a grand piano. That someone was playing a grand piano at a Shinto shrine was not the only surprise. Haruki described the pianist:

The high-school-age-ish girl had her eyes closed. Her lips were blurred in a faint smile that seemed to follow along with the movement of her fingers on the keyboard. She was decked out in full-blown shrine maiden regalia, which made it seem all the more bizarre that she was playing a piano.
Haruki Mizoguchi

But another sentiment quickly overrode Haruki’s bemusement:

Beautiful. This was beautiful. I didn’t have another thought in my head. This girl. And not only her: this music, this light, this entire tableau. It was like an enchanted painting, in which everything had its special place. I stood transfixed. For a moment it made me wonder if that lattice door wasn’t the gateway to a whole other dimension.
Haruki Mizoguchi

An unexpected life-changing moment.

The “whole other dimension” line proves to be an apt description of the place that will become the center of Haruki’s life that May.

Haruki and the girl whose name Haruki did not yet know had a brief encounter after she finished her performance. Haruki awkwardly told her that the songs were “beautifully played” and the girl shyly thanked him before heading on her way. We return to Haruki in retrospect about that day:

Our little concert. Our brief meeting. No more and no less. I didn’t know at all whether something like that could have any impact on the future. Either her’s or mine.

Skipping ahead a few lines:

Then again … you know how they say that the journey of a thousand kilometers begins with one footstep? It’s funny – important matters always start with something that seems tiny and inconsequential at the time.
Haruki Mizoguchi

May 3, 2005

We then jump from May 1 to May 3. May 3, a Tuesday, fell during Japan’s Golden Week holiday. Haruki found himself unable to take advantage of the holiday:

Starting somewhere around the end of April, there was this leaden weight that sat inside me daily and enervated me and sucked out all my desires, motivations, energy – everything. Nothing got to or into me. I was just barely functional enough to carry on every day.
Haruki Mizoguchi

In one of his more insightful moments – Haruki attributed his deep malaise to “freshman blues,” an April-May phenomenon particular to new students and members of the workforce fresh out of school. Of course, what starts as unease particular to a certain circumstance can grow into something more. Haruki again made his way to the shrine where the girl was again playing the piano. On this occasion, Haruki fell asleep while listening to the girl play the piano. The shrine maiden woke him up by poking him after her performance and asked if he was the same guy who had been there the day before. Haruki confirmed he was. The girl then went on her way.

May 4, 2005

Haruki returned to the shrine on the fourth of May – this time bringing lunch. He discovered that the girl played for more than three hours – something he found remarkable. It was on May 4 that Haruki and the girl, who was startled when she exited the lattice door and found Haruki, had their first somewhat-substantive interaction. Haruki humorously had to convince the girl he was not homeless (based on her having to wake him up the day before). He accounted for his presence:

Well … I came because .. the piano sounded so nice …
Haruki Mizoguchi

The girl was taken aback, insisting she was just a hack. But when Haruki expressed his sincerity – the girl was genuinely happy and started slapping Haruki on the back out of embarrassment – which caused Haruki to note to himself that her behavior was not consistent with her appearance. The girl told Haruki she would play for him more after she finished her work, which turned out to involve five minutes of sweeping the already-clean shrine grounds. After this remarkably quick cleaning session, we finally start to learn about the shrine girl.

This is perhaps Minori's most dignified moment in May Sky.

The girl introduces herself as Minori Kamiake, a shrine maiden. She states that she is a second-year high school student (senior high school is three years in Japan, so she is an 11th grader in U.S. terms) and had been working at the shrine for four years (see my companion editorial on localizing Japanese high school years). We can reasonably infer that Minori is 16 years old from her grade level and from our much later learning that her birthday is January 12 (note again that the school year in Japan starts in April). The head priestess of the shrine was Minori’s aunt – explaining why the shrine was called the Kamiake Shrine. Minori was impressed when Haruki introduced himself as a company man, despite Haruki insisting he did not feel like a grown-up. Minori then became self-conscious about how much she was talking before admitting she was flustered about having her piano playing praised. Before Minori returns to the piano to play for Haruki, we learn that she is playing songs written by her mother. Minori’s reasons for playing the piano are simple and straightforward: She liked practicing, enjoyed playing, and confessed that she did not have anything better to do. The reason the piano was at the shrine was because Minori had begged her Aunt to take it after her parents moved and the piano did not fit in her new, presumably smaller than before, bedroom.

We begin to see a relationship dynamic develop between Haruki and Minori. First, on several occasions, Minori sets up a joke, says something unexpected, and Haruki responds with astonishment in a straight man role – wherein Minori praises him for his “comebacks.”

Haruki often finds himself playing the straight man role.

Minori insists that Haruki call her by her first name without honorifics, stating that everyone uses honorifics with her and she hates them. This passage struck me as interesting. If one were to read it as her referring to her life in general, it may suggest that she had no close friends at school – or at least close enough to forego honorifics. However, upon reflection, I think in the full context of the line and its place in the overall story, Minori is more likely referring to how people address her when she is working at the shrine. In any event, Minori refers to Haruki respectfully as Mr. Mizoguchi (see Mr. Seuing Park’s note about how the translation deals with Minori’s use of honorifics). Perhaps hedging against familiarity in speech, Minori warned Haruki that she did not “go out with old men” – which Haruki said in a mental note he was not “broken up about it … much.” Minori went on a brief rant about how there was a “shrine maiden fetish” and some people went to the shrine just because of that, calling it “DisGUSting.” While this is not important in and of itself – Minori’s thoughts here are worth filing away for the end of this first analysis piece.

Haruki then convinces Minori to answer whether she formally studied the piano. While Haruki greatly enjoyed Minori’s playing, he takes pains to remind the reader that he knows nothing about music. Minori states that she “used to” formally study and even participated in competitions, but that now she plays “to pass the time.”

No recitals, so no stress – and I can play whatever I like now.
Minori Kamiake

Minori does what she wants to do and does not do what she does not want to do. Haruki was somewhat surprised, stating that Minori played with passion for someone who talks about playing so casually. He then observed Minori’s reaction:

She looked away a little as she responded [with ‘… hmm … maybe …’]. It was a tiny, tiny motion – but one that stayed with me, somewhere, for a long time.
Haruki Mizoguchi

We learn a decent amount about Minori from her initial conversation with Haruki. Moreover, we see what will become a template for their interactions for the majority of the novel.

We all have a long way to go since this is just the first part of four.

May 5, 2005

Haruki returned to the shrine the next day with a problem. His mother had sent him a large number of rice cakes with instructions to share the extras with people in his building. However, Haruki had no friends there, just acquaintances, and many of his acquaintances were home for the holiday. He gave away what he could, but still had about 12 cakes. Haruki decided, for the first time, to dump his problem on the shrine maiden (or at least try to).

Haruki was greeted by a mild insult from Minori:

Sup dude? Long time no see … SINCE YESTERDAY. As bored as ever, hmm?
Minori Kamiake

Minori created what we will see becomes a greeting tradition. Haruki described Minori’s attitude to himself as cute – an attitude he would need to keep for our in-game friendship to pan out. Insults aside, Minori was clearly happy to see Haruki again – at least until he revealed the purpose of his visit. It turned out that Minori had already eaten nine rice cakes that day brought by families – as shrine maiden she could not say no. She however felt perfectly comfortable rejecting Haruki’s rice cake. She also felt comfortable landing an upper-cut on Haruki’s chin when he stuffed a rice cake in her mouth.

After the dust settled, Haruki and Minori sat and talked together – she having eaten one of his rice cakes and Haruki taking on five. They sat and talked and a new dynamic developed:

Minori started to gripe her way through everything that happened that day.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Among the many things she griped about that were particular to the holiday and her duties as a shrine maiden, Haruki noted that she complained about being bored when people did not come but she was annoyed when they came when she tried to start playing the piano.

There she was, chattering away as if she wanted to convey every single moment of her waking day to me. And there I was, listening and nodding appropriately.
Haruki Mizoguchi

Here we start to learn a little bit more about Minori. She seems lonely herself – and perhaps as a result took quickly to “chattering away” to Haruki, someone she had only formally introduced herself to one day earlier. Minori did not seem to want anything from Haruki other than for him to sit and listen to her complaining. In musing to himself in the narration, Haruki found it odd that he was “enjoying the time we were spending together.”

Then, suddenly, Minori shifted from complaining to what would be one of the more significant monologues of the story. I will excerpt part of it below, cutting out Haruki’s brief interjections:

May is wonderful, isn’t it? … [I]f you ask me, [it] is the most wonderful month out of the entire year. My dear Mr. Mizoguchi, have you ever looked outside and felt ‘life’ all around you this season? [O]f sprouting grass … of newborn leaves … the stems that grow … the tender breeze .. wisteria .. and peonies .. the sweetest scent of freshest tea … it takes a forest … or a wilderness. Not a village .. I think you’ll know what I’m talking about if you go to a place where nature can seek you out. And when it finds you – the smell of the plants, the song of the trees – you feel ‘life’ like never before. ‘Life’ from within, telling you ‘keep moving forward, no matter what.’ That’s why I love May. I love how this is the season where the entire world makes you stand up and take notice – that it’s alive.
Minori Kamiake

Minori shares her love of May. I agree with her.

Haruki mostly listened, giving a few short answers to Minori’s questions. He noted to himself that she looked genuinely happy as she talked and that it seemed “as if she were entrusting me with a silent secret…” Having admitted in his narration that he had never thought of May in this way before, Haruki recalled that “for the briefest of moments … I saw .. something incredible in her.” That this is a key moment in the novel should go without saying. Minori’s aesthetic sensibility, specifically her wistful admiration for the simple things around her, touched Haruki, who had already conceded in his narration that he felt dead inside. Minori opened Haruki’s eyes to something new – the world around him. For Minori, she found someone she felt comfortable expressing her aesthetic sensibilities to in an unguarded way – something that, for whatever reason, she may not have been comfortable doing with her peers.

As they parted ways, Haruki asked Minori if he could return to the shrine. Minori told him to do whatever made him happy – which Haruki decided “was just like her.” While Minori objectively conveyed that she did not care one way or another, her words carried inadvertent meaning to someone who, just a couple days earlier, could barely motivate himself to leave his apartment.

We have two final encounters to cover in this section: May 7 and 8. Both of these, especially May 7, are more (or even more) comic than Haruki’s and Minori’s first couple of meetings, but they nevertheless reveal more points about Minori and her understanding of her strange developing friendship with a certain directionless office worker six years her senior.

May 7, 2005

Haruki visited the shrine on the afternoon of May 7 after having, by his own admission, slept for 10 hours (which predictably causes Minori to call him a bum).

This is how you know she's warming up to you.

That was apparently not enough sleep for Haruki, who fell asleep on the steps of the shrine while Minori was sweeping. Minori woke him up by violently (according to Haruki) wrenching his nose. Minori's explanation:

I … HAVE A PROBLEM WITH A LAZY BUM WHO JUST LIES DOWN AND SNORES WHILE I FREAKING SLAVE AWAY!
Minori Kamiake

Haruki, perhaps tempting fate, then fell asleep while Minori was playing the piano. He was greeted by a broom to the forehead. Minori’s explanation:

You ungrateful, unappreciative, lying JERK! You tell me you like my music and then you go and FALL ASLEEP while I’m pouring all my heart and soul into playing that piece just for you!
Minori Kamiake

While Minori was violent, it was clear that some of her violence and rage was in good fun or just her way of interacting with one particular individual – for she quickly forgave Haruki who promised that he would not fall asleep again.

My localization: "Pay attention to me or else!"

A careful reader should pick up that there is something to Minori’s newfound irritation with Haruki sleeping at the shrine, for there was no sign she held his earlier sleeping against him after they were properly acquainted. While Haruki may have been confused – the answer to this conundrum was in their previous interactions. Minori enjoyed “chattering away” at Haruki about the things that annoyed her, her interests, and her most sentimental thoughts about nature. She also appreciated that her piano playing touched someone. Mostly, Minori wanted someone to listen to her and pay attention to her, and she wanted attention without having to beg for it. Her simple desire for him to pay attention to her was fundamentally at tension with his falling asleep in her presence. While Haruki’s many instances of immaturity (many more will be forthcoming) are usually less forgivable than those of a 16-year old girl, Minori unintentionally reminds us that she is a lonely, somewhat needy, very insecure, and often temperamental teenager.

There are some fun exchanges after Minori and Haruki (quickly) reconcile, but I will share just two – an anecdote – which sheds some further light on Minori. Here, Minori gives a long-winded explanation into why she wears shrine maiden robes despite not technically being a shrine maiden in the formal sense. When she first started working at the shrine, old women from the neighborhood would hand her candy as if she was working there as a good deed. In reality, as Minori explained, it was a part-time job her Aunt was paying her for. She discovered that by wearing the robes, people would understand that she was working at the shrine. Present Haruki’s ability (as opposed to narration lines where he is talking with obvious hindsight) to understand Minori is inconsistent throughout the story, but here he showed a moment of clear insight:

Interesting. So she hated being seen (misrepresented?) as this nice girl who volunteered for these things out of the kindness of her heart.
Haruki Mizoguchi

We have clear evidence that Minori is short on close friends – both from some of her exchanges with Haruki and the fact that she is spending her entire Golden Week break working alone at the shrine (not to mention nattering away at a 22-year old office worker she has deemed to be a bum). Now we learn she does not like it when people misunderstand her or why she does things. Assuming arguendo Minori does not have someone in her life to complain to about annoying things at the shrine, or to share her feelings about nature with, or to listen to her piano playing – what face does she show to others and how does she feel about how others see her?

May Sky is an almost entirely non-interactive visual novel which. However, there are two ultimately meaningless choices which result on minor dialogue differences on May 7. The second and more notable gives Haruki the opportunity to respond in one of two ways to Minori saying that she likes her shrine maiden robes despite them being “kinda strange in this day and age.” If Haruki simply agrees with Minori, she launches into a humorous monologue about wielding a naginata, which results in a symbolic exchange of mildly violent gestures between the pair. While the naginata dialogue is amusing, we will focus on the second choice – “I think they’re cute, actually” – because it results in a more interesting (for our analysis, at least) response from Minori. There, Haruki tries to convey nicely that he thinks Minori’s shrine maiden robes are cute. Minori took it as Haruki thinking that she was cute and appeared happy, although she threatened him with further violence (snapping every bone in his body) if he meant that she looked cute as a child on Children’s Day. Of course, Haruki had actually thought that and a few other things she would not find charitable, but, in a rare act of self-preservation, he kept that thought to himself. This is why I filed away Minori’s rant about a “shrine maiden fetish” earlier in this analysis. Despite complaining about people visiting the shrine because they had a priestess fetish, Minori was flattered when she misunderstood Haruki as saying she was cute. Again – for whatever reason, Minori appreciates attention from Haruki, her sharp tongue notwithstanding.

A short introduction to Japan's Children's Day for those who want to know what Minori is referencing.

May 8, 2005

On May 8, Haruki arrived at the shrine with his own lunch – which resulted in a humorous-but-absurd debate with Minori, a tuna connosseur, about Haruki’s love of canned tuna (which Minori considered “blasphemy”). More significantly, Haruki shared his non-canned tuna with Minori, who brought out tea and then remarked that they should get dessert to go with the tea. Minori dragged Haruki to a nearby convenience store, picked out all the snacks, and then told Haruki “you’re welcome” after making him pay. They agreed to go for a second food run under the condition that Minori would pay, but Haruki ended up paying again – showing that Minori liked free stuff almost as much as she liked attention and Haruki was more or less incapable of saying no to her.

In between the tea trips, Minori, in a more serious moment, shared her nature sensibilities again. She regaled Haruki with facts about the clouds, which caused Haruki to ponder internally that he had never looked at the sky like Minori was having him do then. Then suddenly Minori said:

… God’s in His heaven; all’s right with the world.
Minori Kamiake

Haruki, in that moment, agreed. He then reflected on his exchange with Minori:

I’d seen the sky thousands of times in my life. But perhaps this was the first time I’d allowed myself to really OBSERVE it with all my might, without any other mission or distraction.
Haruki Mizoguchi

I am curious how this looks in the original Japanese.

Minori was causing Haruki to appreciate the world around him. If we are being charitable to him, perhaps this was how she goaded him into paying for not one but two rounds of tea and snacks.

Part 1/4 Conclusion

The first part of May Sky gently introduces our two main characters and establishes their relationship.

We know that Haruki is just starting a new career, fresh out of college, as a corporate worker. He is living in a new place, has no friends and, for whatever reason, is deeply uneasy about the transition he is making from student to working adult. While Haruki is inconsistent in describing the particulars of his malaise, he does admit to have been feeling dead inside for the month before that fateful May 1 day when he followed the sound of Minori’s piano. Something about Minori’s playing touched Haruki, and Haruki was not disappointed when he actually met her. Her dreamy monologue about the virtues of May and spring and her imploring Haruki to admire the sky both touched him in similar ways to Minori’s music. Haruki says point-blank in his narration that he saw something incredible in the 16-year old shrine girl, and her idle musings changed the way he looked at the world around him.

Minori is more difficult to parse at this stage because we do not have access to her internal thoughts, but she is fortunately (for our purposes) reasonably transparent most of the time. She clearly did not think anything of Haruki on first sight – but was flattered when he praised her piano playing, especially when she put two and two together and realized that he had been coming to the shrine to listen every day. Minori appears to be a loner – although not as obviously as Haruki. She is an intelligent, quirky, but very definitely 16-year old girl. In one moment she speaks about nature with a sensibility beyond her years and in the next she throws a tantrum because Haruki is not paying enough attention to her. Minori quickly takes to Haruki, turning him into her confidant and free meal ticket while simultaneously maintaining that she neither supports nor opposes Haruki visiting her at the shrine.

Continue to part 2...

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April showers bring May flowers; August showers bring August mushrooms (or so says my photographic evidence).

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We had a stretch of rainy days in Brooklyn in August 2024. If April showers bring May flowers, then what do August summer showers bring? I had not thought much about the question until I looked down at a tree pit. There, I found my answer: Summer showers bring mushrooms.

While I know that I took this photograph on August 11, 2024, I am sad to say I do not remember precisely where I took it other than that it was in Brooklyn in the broader Brooklyn Heights-Carroll Gardens area. This is a very striking mushroom. It has a rich brown color and texture. It grows out of a tree and appears to be working on consuming a concrete brick (I would not bet against it, given enough time). When I find a notable mushroom, I am curious as to its identity. Recall that I sought opinions regarding the identities of several Brooklyn mushrooms I photographed in the summer of 2021. My photo of this mushroom was clean enough that I figured sending it to Google and Yandex might lead me to an answer. Indeed it did. It appears to be a reishi mushroom of some sort. I know those are used for tea – but I did not know one could find them in random Brooklyn tree pits (not that I would necessarily gamble on consuming any particular wild mushroom). With that being said, I would not recommend consuming anything found in or adjacent to a New York City tree pit, which are much loved by dogs and their owners, but this (likely) reishi mushroom shows that you may occasionally find something photogenic if you keep your eyes peeled.

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Did I really write an entire article about the Belarusian government's allegations that Pokémon GO is a spy tool in order to deliver a pun?

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I came across an article titled Pokémon is a Western intelligence tool, Belarus claims on Politico EU. I found this to be a nostalgic headline. It reminded me of some of the wild stories and Pokémon claims from the height of Pokémania in 1998/99. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was in power in 1999 too. Perhaps he missed the Poképlot back then or is rekindling an old classic. But, of course, there is no way whether Pokémon is a western intelligence tool. The original games were genuine works of art and most of the subsequent entries have been good. Why would I need to read this?

But it was in my feed reader, so I decided to give it a read.

I read the first sentence:

A Belarus Defense Ministry official has accused the once wildly popular mobile game Pokémon Go of being an instrument of Western intelligence.

(The quoted official is Alexander Ivanov, identified in the article as the Belarusian Defense Ministry’s head of ideological work.)

What did I think?

Oh, they’re talking about Pokémon GO. Why didn’t Politico say so in the headline? That makes much more sense.
Nicholas A. Ferrell

I never understood Pokémon GO. I generally avoid downloading proprietary data vacuum apps on my phone, and I am not sure why I would want to spend my pleasant walks outside staring at my phone. If I am doing anything on my phone outside, it is contributing to Open Street Map, not being tracked by whoever is running Pokémon GO. I know people who like Pokémon GO, but I never played it and do not get the appeal (but to be fair, my friend and colleague Victor V. Gurbo did send me some Meltans so I got what I needed from Pokémon GO anyway).

Victor V. Gurbo's avatar in Pokémon GO. What kind of mask is he wearing?

But is Pokémon GO a tool of Western intelligence? Let us see Belarus’ evidence, courtesy of Mr. Ivanov:

“Where do you think there were the most Pokémon at that time?” Ivanov asked on the Belarusian talk show Essentially earlier this week. ‘On the territory of the 50th air base, where the runway is, where there is a lot of military aviation equipment. That’s where there were the most Pokémon. Is this not intelligence information?’

Interesting. I had to think for a minute about how this would work. So I guess the theory is that ordinary Belarusians install Pokémon GO and go where the AR Pokémon are. The Pokémon are on the Belarusian air base. Pokémon GO is sending information back to the CIA – maybe even live camera feeds, so the CIA is turning the Belarusian Pokémon GO players into unwitting spies.

Screenshot from Victor V. Gurbo, who has apparently taken to playing Pokémon GO at night instead of aimlessly swiping through TikTok.

Something like that, probably.

(Pre-publication aside: Considering someone just made Hezbollah's pagers spontaneously combust, I suppose anything is possible.)

But then again – if the CIA already knows where everything it needs to tag with AR Pokémon is, does it really need Belarusian Pokémon GO players to spy there for them? Moreover, does Belarus just let people wander around its air bases? Or is their concern that Belarusian airmen and other military personnel are avid Pokémon GO players? Maybe they should clamp down on their troops playing phone games on the job then. Even we managed to do that against TikTok on official devices.

According to the article, Belarus’ sometimes-friend Russia apparently lodged similar allegations against Pokémon GO years ago, causing the game’s developer, Niantic, to deny that Pokémon Go was used for spying. A likely story. That is exactly what would expect Niantic to say if Pokémon GO was an espionage tool and it did not want anyone to know about it.

(I looked it up and confirmed that Pokémon Go is still available in the Russian Google Play store. Mighty suspicious, no?)

All things considered, it does seem like Belarus’ Pokémon Go espionage theory is probably too cute by a half. If anything, that sounds more like the kind of stunt that Belarus would try.

Does this mean that Pokémon GO is not a CIA espionage tool?

Let us not get carried away.

It definitely has quite a few trackers and demands a hardy 42 permissions (residing in F-Droid land, 42 permissions is something I am not familiar with). Maybe we should err on the safe side and call it Pokémon GLOW (not the Volbeet kind of GLOW).

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Reviewing a new free and open source reaction game for Android called Click Switch.

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F-Droid is an alternative application repository for select free and open source Android apps. I subscribe to F-Droid’s blog RSS feed and regularly check in on the new apps to see if there is anything interesting. I recently became aware of what appears to be a relatively new game called Click Switch on F-Droid. After reading the description, I decided to install it and try it out for a small New Leaf Journal write-up.

Finding the Game

Click Switch is available on F-Droid and GitHub.

F-Droid Page

Code repository on GitHub

Click Switch in the F-Droid Basic client.

Click Switch is developed by GitHub user cuadratico and available under the MIT License. For those who do not use F-Droid, the app is available as a direct download from GitHub.

My Review Version and System

I initially installed and played version 8.6.6 (August 26, 2024) from F-Droid. I installed the version 8.7.6 update (September 6, 2024) and took some additional screenshots for my review. I did not notice any significant differences between the versions. I installed and played the game on a Google Pixel 3a XL phone running the DivestOS operating system.

Short Descriptuon

The F-Droid page for the game describes it as being “based on a game where you have to give the written color not the text color, it consists of four buttons that can be exchanged between three color palettes, one being the main one.”

Having played it, I will provide a more succinct summary. You have a square divided into four smaller squares, with each smaller square being a different color. By default, the colors are red, blue, green, and yellow. Above the square, one of these four colors is written out. However, the letters spelling out the color will also be colored, and they will usually be a different color than the word. For example, we may have “Blue” colored green or “Yellow” colored red. The player is supposed to tap the square corresponding to the word instead of the color of the word. So if we have “blue” with the letters being colored green, the player is supposed to tap on the blue square.

If that was at all confusing, things should make more sense as we actually try the game.

Starting the Game

Upon first starting the game, the player is greeted by a small disclaimer from the developer, noting that the app is a one-person project that may have errors.

Of course – this is an entirely free and open source little game, so no apologies are needed. In fact, I will offer some (I hope to be) constructive feedback in this review.

After accepting the disclaimer, we are taken to a very minimalistic title screen. There are three game modes: Easy, Hard, and Crazy. There is a small hamburger menu in the top right of the frame which has options for Color, Sound (off by default), language (English or Spanish), and a link to the game’s GitHub repository.

I will return to the colors and sound at the end of the review.

Easy Mode

For now, let us start with Easy mode. The developer describes Easy as follows:

In this mode you will only have to hit the correct button, if you hit it correctly you will get a point and if you don’t hit it correctly and your score is higher than your previous record you will have a new [record].

In short, on easy mode you have four colored squares and the colored squares do not move or change. Your job is to hit the square that corresponds to the written word for the color (not the color of the written word for the color) and to see how many times you can tap the correct square before making a mistake.

For example, in the below screenshot, I need to click the Green square because the word above the square is Green. I have to ignore the fact that the letters making up “Green” are yellow.

Whereas here in the same game, I have to hit yellow, notwithstanding that the word “Yellow” is colored blue.

As you can see in the above screenshots, your current score is listed along with your best score. One interesting point is that the new record is not recorded until after the current game is over. For example, you will see below that I beat my previous record but the new record will not be recorded until my game is over.

Easy mode is very straightforward. One thing that surprised me was the lack of a timer. This means that the player can take as long as he or she wants to choose a square with it having no effect on his or her ability to proceed in the game or the final score.

Hard Mode

Having tried Easy mode, I moved on to Hard. The developer described Hard as follows:

The hard mode is the same as the easy mode with the difference that you will have a Dialog to choose the amount of time you want between 15, 30 and 60 seconds.

Hard is exactly the same as Easy mode save for its timer. The timer is represented by a bar above the playing field which ticks down until it expires.

One minor issue I ran into is how scoring records are recorded in Hard. After finishing a game, it usually shows your most recent record.

But it seemed to struggle with finding my record if I switched to a different time span (e.g., trying 30 seconds after 15).

Crazy Mode

Finally, let us look at Crazy mode. The developer describes Crazy as follows:

This mode is the same as the easy mode but the order of the buttons varies randomly each time you score a point.

I will show rather than tell here. See the square on one point.

Then after I made the correct choice in the above frame.

Interestingly, crazy mode does away with the timer from Hard. The gimmick is that the squares shift every time you make a correct choice. But like Easy, there is no benefit to playing fast or penalty for playing slow.

Colors and Sound

I noted that there are three sets of color options. All of the above screenshots were of the default color one scheme. See scheme 2:

Then scheme 3:

The pallets are a matter of preference. In theory, it may be the case that the second and third color schemes are supposed to be more difficult because the colors are less sharply distinguishable than the default configuration, but I personally did not think it made a big difference.

Sounds are off by default. I tried turning them on. They add a small clicking sound as feedback for touching a square, but that is the sole sound effect.

Ideas for Improving the Game

I enjoyed testing Click Switch and I think it has a fun concept. The actual action – trying to choose the correct square – works well. There is plenty of room for improvements in the game modes and record keeping.

Regarding the game modes – I do not think that the current Easy, Hard, and Crazy levels make sense. While Easy is the most basic experience, it is not clear to me that Crazy is “harder” than Hard. While Crazy does have the color-swapping mechanic, its difficulty is offset by the lack of timer. If one is going for a high score, Hard is harder than Crazy solely by virtue of being timed.

Instead of opening with asking the player to choose between one of three vaguely-defined difficulty levels, I would begin with asking the player to choose between modes: Marathon and Against the Clock. In Marathon mode, the game continues until the player makes a mistake (similar to Easy and Crazy in the current build). In Against the Clock mode, the player would try to choose as many correct squares as possible within a time limit, like the current Hard mode. In order to make the Clock mode more distinguishable, I would not have the game end if the player makes a mistake – instead, I think the player should be assessed a penalty – for example losing three points (with a point awarded for each correct square choice).

After choosing between Marathon and Against the Clock, the player should then choose between Stable Colors or Color Swapping (I am sure someone can name them better). Stable Colors would work in the same way that Easy and Hard do in the current game where the four tappable squares do not move around. Color Swapping would use the current Crazy mechanic.

These choices would be sufficient for the Against the Clock game. For Marathon mode, I would have one additional prompt. I think there should be a time limit for choices in marathon mode. Not having one makes the game too easy and demands that the player make the challenge him or herself. I would offer four options: Something like no timer, 10 seconds per move, 5 seconds per move, and 3 seconds per move. People could still choose to play with no timer (like how it works now), but others can work with a per-move time limit. Whether 10/5/3 makes sense would require testing – that is just a starting suggestion to illustrate the concept. I do not think a per-move timer is necessary in Against the Clock games since the clock would effectively penalize slow play, but it is possible it should be an option there too in light of my idea that wrong choices should result in a points penalty.

Finally, the game should have a best score section that keeps track of the player’s best scores in each game. One additional idea would be to allow the player to enter a name (a la old arcade games) – which could be a fun way to allow more than one person to play on the same system.

Conclusion

I enjoyed trying Click Switch and the actual clicking game seems to work very well from my testing. The fundamentals are there. The game modes can be improved and I humbly submit that my suggestions may be a good starting point. I will keep it installed and check out later versions to see how the project develops over time. I tip my hat to cuadratico for the fun addition to open source gaming on Android.