Apr 1, 2017
For Onegai Sensei, there's a listlessness that Kei Kusanagi feels after the time he loses through his standstill. His friends left him; he is stuck. His everyday is broken through Mizuho, and through their fake marriage the two find belonging through each other.
I think if we go to Mihkail Bakhtin’s idea of the Chronotope, we can find how space is manifest. Bakhtin’s Chronotope - roughly speaking - is about space and time are linked. Matt (RCAnime) has used the example of Penguindrum to show how space literally manifests time. Using that Chronotopic relationship, we can see a very similar relationship with Onegai Sensei.
However, it’s a
...
two-part relationship. The town in which they stand is a standstill, manifestation of Kei’s condition. However, the town is penetrated by Mizuho, whose otherness is cast very quickly in the first two episodes. From then, Kei’s relationship to Mizuho reveals bits and pieces of the town. Kei’s sensation of time rips itself from the town in which they live. Bakhtin’s Chronotope is about space and time, but Onegai Sensei is more specifically about that space manifest in bodies.
So why is this important to Onegai Twins? Well it’s an inversion of the general idea of ‘bodily’ Chronotope as presented in Onegai Sensei, but it arrives at the same basic conclusions. Onegai Twins’ Kamishiro is not ‘stuck’ in the town, but rather he is drawn there. He moves to the town that ‘doesn’t move’, but the act of moving there is ironically shattered when he comes across Karen and Miina.
And yet, once again we see how the Chronotope plays out. After all, what draws them back? It’s the photograph. Material objects in the space of the story draws them back to the space. There, they attempt to recapture lost time. On a surface level, this might not be too far off from Kei’s situation: he lives in that town to ‘recapture’ lost time, doesn’t he? How is Kamishiro so different?
Because Kamishiro’s lost time is penetrated by two girls, not one. Instead of a linear, singular progression that removes the stasis, Karen and Miina double the narrative complexity. They are two girls, representing both old relations and new beginnings, they establish the two narratives of romantic and familial love. They connection Onegai Sensei’s bodily Chronotope to the town’s spatial Chronotope.
And that’s why Onegai Twins is a simple, yet phenomenal show. Onegai Sensei's bodily 'Chronotope' is subsumed and reconstituted with classical space-time in Onegai Twins.
PS. I gave everything a 1 because I do not believe in giving out numbers.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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