This Week in Anime

Is The Stranger by the Shore the Perfect BL Movie?

Nick
Well Jean-Karlo, we had such a fun time last week, I figure we might as well press our luck and try for two on late Pride Month topics. Though for the sake of our editor's nerves we should probably choose something with less on-screen fellatio. You have any ideas?

I dunno, are you SHORE? Seems like a STRANGE proposition to m—

Don't worry team, while there's some mildly NSFW parts to this hour-long BL manga adaptation, it's a much smaller piece of the puzzle this time. By which I mean nobody gets DP'd in this one. Unless DP stands for DePression!

Oh we will talk about the Gay Symbolism Cats plenty, believe me.

But first, we should probably talk about characters who actually talk in this movie. First is Shun, an early twenty-something novelist who really, really needs a nap.

This is what you might call a slow burn, despite being barely an hour long. Stranger isn't really interested in an overarching plot or a single consistent conflict, but rather just letting us hang around with its central couple as their relationship advances and regresses like the tide. I'd compare it to the OVA adaptation of the equally cute as hell Kase-san and Morning Glories in that regard. Also dear Lynzee please let us cover that one next please and thank you.

Emphasis on pretty. This isn't a powerhouse of animation but damn is it nice to just look at.

Dammit movie, you just had to get me with a Sad Mom story. You bastards.

Also Shun has all of the social grace of a dead fish, and his first attempt at contact is to run up to the kid and give him bread for no reason.

Yada yada artistic license, media isn't bound to reality, but if any actual teenagers are reading this: do not take food from a complete stranger and definitely don't start dating them afterwards.

Well sort of—it's more that this crush on Mio resurfaces a lot of feelings from when he did realize he's gay. One thing this movie does have a bit of a problem with is temporal relativity. There's a number of moments that are actually flashbacks, but it's kind of hard to tell at first. Like this moment here had me thinking Shun was still in high school until I realized no, that's his backstory, and he's in his 20's now.

It's also the fastest slow movie, because after one awkward dinner and a heart To Heart, these two say their goodbyes...

And then the next scene it's three years later, Mio is back from the mainland, and he happily tells Shun he's 20 so they can bang without any baggage. His words not mine.

Er, sort of? It's my understanding all this happened before their initial meeting. Shun looks (slightly) younger and is already carrying baggage from a crush on a friend from high school. I figured that all was the impetus for him going into exile on Okinawa.

Side note: there's also a pair of women working at the inn Shun is staying at who are casually revealed to also be a couple. So I guess this inn is like the secret refuge for gay boys, girls, and cats.

Regardless of the exact timeline, Shun's big issue is that he's internalized his own sexuality as the reason for his isolation. Sure, he wants to be with Mio, but he also feels like he's dragging somebody else into a life of being ostracized by getting close to him. The heteronormative microaggressions certainly don't help.

To be fair Mio does come on a little strong. He's got that overeager 20-year-old energy while Shun is firmly in his tired quarter-life crisis phase.

He's a novelist! Which means he does all his work two days after his deadline.

We can do it right now! Look at the kitties who are also convenient visual metaphors for our leads. Look it how precious they are.

So yeah, that's the only major conflict for the first half of this film. Mio has spent the last three years working himself up to starting a relationship Shun feels abject guilt over sparking. It's a relatively simple one to solve—they just have to actually talk to each other—but there's a lot of neat details. Like how Mio first came to terms with his feelings by confiding in a local queer bar owner.

This is also the kind of girl who meets her ex's new guy and immediately tells him what he's like in the sack, so she goes by the beat of her own drum.

It's here we should note that part of what makes Mio charming is that this boy is an absolutely doofus. He's a sweet doofus, but also he has three brain cells in his head and two of them are constantly thinking about holding hands, so this is the best plan he can come up with.

Well sometimes it's also consumed by Horny, much to Shun's exhaustion.

Yeah so I did lie a little about this being SFW earlier. There's one (more or less) on screen sex scene as the climax—no, not that kind—to the film. But unlike Twittering Birds Never Fly, this one is framed as both romantic and deeply awkward.

And I like how this movie is able to make use of sex to tell that story. Like I vaguely recall some discourse about sex scenes being artistically unnecessary, but right here we get a remarkably honest, sweet, even funny conclusion to our main romance in a way that just couldn't happen in a TV adaptation.

That's the other thing—this movie can be really funny when it wants to be.

And like I said, it's romantic too. If this is a fantasy, it's one about being comfortable and trusting enough to be vulnerable and awkward and honest with somebody in about as intimate a way as possible, and it makes for a really nice capstone to this story.

In terms of both spiciness and romance, Stranger is definitely more my speed, so I'm glad it's available for folks to check out. I hear there's also a sequel manga, and I'm really curious to check that out at some point.

Also, and I can't stress this enough:

Cats.