Rainy Blue
Part 2
Yellow Rose Storm Warning
(I believe that the title of this particular anime episode was mistranslated. All of the three sections refer to the rainy weather, which is so indicative throughout.)
It wasn’t a big deal, until she made it into one. It was more light than heat, until Rei hotted it up. It wasn’t a problem until she said “no.” Really, she’s a baka.
Yoshino’s comment about wanting to join kendo club makes Rei suspend eating a piece of cheesecake mid-motion. As they argue, the cheesecake slides from the fork onto her plate, where it splatters, getting a piece of cake in Yoshino’s water glass (thus the odd call for water in the anime) and a piece of cake in Rei’s hair. As the argument heats up, Rei runs her hands through her hair, smearing the cake, so when the waitress comes up, she eyes Rei strangely and bails as fast as possible, because Rei looks quite gross. Yoshino watches all this (without telling Rei about the cake in her hair) and thinks that Rei’s fans’ illusions would be completely shattered at this moment if they could see her.
As Rei starts going over the difficulties of kendo, Yoshino starts to be convinced, because she hadn’t really considered the issues of working out in a unheated dojo in the winter, etc, but when Rei gets cocky, Yoshino gets mad. She says that 2nd dan (second degree black belt) Rei-sama need not concern herself about a lowly beginner, but then immediately hates herself for saying it.
Throughout this chapter, Yoshino is berating herself for saying things in anger.
Yoshino realizes she doesn’t have the rosary on, and believes that this is Maria-sama’s way of saving her from herself. She thinks that throwing the coral necklace (which was from her parent’s honeymoon) at Rei wouldn’t hurt her emotionally, so she leaves. But she does regret not finishing her dessert, and leaving the chestnuts behind.
***
Rei and Yoshino live an 8-minute walk from school.
***
Yoshino is kicking the shoe boxes, as she puts her school shoes on. She kicks a shoe off in anger, and the pair of legs next to her says, “What are you doing?” Yoshino reprimands herself – obviously, the legs are not speaking, so she lifts her eyes to see Yumi attached to those legs. ^_^
***
In class, Yoshino turns to Yumi and says, “About the conversation this morning…”
Yumi has absolutely no idea what Yoshino is referring to. Yoshino thinks she’s faking, gets annoyed, then realizes that Yumi really has no clue, although she was present at the Rose Mansion when it occurred. She reminds Yumi that Noriko will be joining them today. Yumi is amazed – she has no memory of the conversation at all.
Yoshino gets a bad feeling when Yumi mentions that she hasn’t seen Sachiko, then her face stiffens, and droops. Yumi says that Sachiko cancelled their date. Yoshino is appalled this is the second or third time she’s done that. Sachiko is a princess, Yoshino thinks, but she ought to know better and treat the commoners more fairly.
***
Yoshino is running around getting permission and clearance to join the kendo club. She is being old over and over that with Rei’s permission, it would be easier. The school doctor, Hoshino Eiko (semi long wavy hair, very lovely, lots of students admire her, doesn’t look the thirty years older than Yoshino that she is) has to check with her attending physician.
***
Thoughts that were not audible in the anime, but are damn fun:
When Sachiko welcomes Noriko to the Rose Mansion, her smile, Yoshino thinks, would make her fans positively dizzy. :-)
Yoshino thinks of the whole meeting with Noriko as an “omiai,” a marriage meeting, with Red and Yellow Roses acting as attendants and go-betweens. She thinks the engagement is a given – everyone seems positive and interested in the pairing.
She’s a little jealous of Shimako and Noriko – their relationship is new, the future unclear. She thinks that she and Rei have hit “the stage of fatigue” of married couples – there’s no doki-doki left. . By seeking stimulus in the form of joining the kendo club, Yoshino feels that she may have pushed too hard and precipitated a divorce.
***
When the Kendo club president says that it’s her fault that Rei’s out of school, because last night she told Rei about Yoshino’s petition to join the club, Yoshino becomes furious at Rei. She thinks it’s deplorable that she’d stay home from school because of such a thing. (She’s not. Rei has a cold, but Yoshino doesn’t know that yet.)
***
In order to be able to join the club, Yoshino has had to get permission from the club president, the club faculty advisor, the head teacher, the school doctor and her attending physician. They held a special staff meeting about it, and approved her conditionally. In general, Yoshino feels that they handled it all with fair speed.
***
Having gotten a chance to join kendo club, Yoshino is determined to play by the rules. No slacking because she’s tired, or using her health as an excuse. She also doesn’t want to involve or invoke Rei at all.
She’s assigned to Tanuma Chisato (the girl who won the half day date with Rei back on Valnetine’s Day) because Chisato is the last person to join. Yoshino understands this, but is annoyed as hell. She also hates Chisato’s way of speaking. The girl never says anything wrong, per se, but is always slightly snarky. Yoshino thinks the short haircut looks crappy on Chisato. :-)
***
More Yoshino wonderfulness that had to be cut as it was internal monologue:
Thursday noon as they walk down the hall, Yumi asks Yoshino how kendo is going. She answers that it’s fine, but to herself calls it “The stretching marathon and muscle conditioning association.” And her legs hurt.
Yoshino sees Shimako standing in the window, looking like she bears some secret pain. It makes her look her impossibly sexy.
The three of them walk to the Rose Mansion together and we get a replay of the triple sigh scene, from Yoshino’s point of view. For the life of her, Yoshino can’t figure out why Shimako is hesitating about Noriko. They clearly want to be together. She knows it was the same with Sei and Shimako, but couldn’t comprehend that, either.
When Shimako runs off so suddenly, Yoshino wonders out loud if she’s hurt her feelings.
***
This scene was done in the anime just fine, but as Konno Oyuki is so particular about language and I am so fascinated by her use of words, I want to address a few things:
Rei says to Yoshino, that “Yoshino’s life is Yoshino’s. I have no right to stop you.” Rei goes on to say that she was thinking about kendo club and soeur “stuff”. Yoshino thinks, “In other words, you were thinking about me, but you can’t say that straight.” As we learn later, Yoshino is actually wrong…. Rei says that Yoshino “abuses” her. The verb was translated in the anime by the fansubbers as “blow off” which isn’t the same thing and I think they lost something crucial here. Remember this, it comes back later…
That day Rei takes over the training of the underclassmen. Yoshino is feeling particularly crappy, but she doesn’t want to take the day off so she seems like she’s lost to Rei.
We see half of this scene in the anime. The half cut out is infinitely more interesting. Yoshino is doing a practice exercise she finds particularly difficult. She has trouble with it (they morph this in the anime to her falling while doing a simple deep knee bend, something I found extra irritating…). When she falters, she sees Rei looking at her and shoots her a peace sign. Rei turns away. Here’s the bit that was cut: Yoshino watches Rei turn away and becomes so incensed that she has to fight the urge to drop her index finger so that only the middle finger remains extended. LOL She immediately quashes the thought because, of course, Lillian students do *not* behave that way.
(Yoshino has always been one of my favorite characters, but I simply adored her for this. I wanted to take her home and hug her after this display of bad temper. ^_^)
***
It becomes apparent to Yoshino that Chisato is the only one who speaks to her honestly and normally. The first-years think she’s a bit odd for entering the club late, with the high-and-mighty title of “Rosa Foetida en bouton”. The second-years mostly joined to be with Rei, so see her as encroaching on their territory, and the third-years are in and out like ghosts. So as much as it galls her to do so, Yoshino relies on Tanuma Chisato, her erstwhile rival.
***
By herself, with no one to watch and correct, Yoshino knows that exercise tends to slack off, but she keeps focused so she doesn’t “lose.” Then she wonders to whom? Herself, or Rei? After a moment, she admits…both.
She hears footsteps and knows instantly that it’s Rei.
Earlier when Rei said that they had been thinking about kendo and their soeur relationship, Yoshino assumed she meant that she was thinking about Yoshino (as we were meant to, assumably.) However, she was really thinking about her *own* roles. The problem, Rei goes on, is that Yoshino doesn’t listen to her and she honestly thought it would be a problem in kendo, since Rei, as a senior member *must* be listened to. The anime does a nice version of their reconciliation, so I’ll leave you to (re)watch that.
Yoshino offers Rei the chance to take the rosary back, but Rei says she doesn’t want it. Rei says that she doesn’t want Yoshino to lessen by even one milligram. Yoshino asks what Rei wants her to do – what can she do to make it right between them. She offers to quit kendo for Rei. Rei of course, tells her its okay she can continue to “abuse” her, and they embrace.
The keystone of the story, IMHO, is the verb Oyuki-sensei has Rei use. In the anime the translators translate it as “You blow me off.” The actual verb, which can mean to “abuse” is also used to say “wield” as in a weapon. It’s much more active than just ignoring Rei. In a sense, Rei says, “you wield yourself as a weapon against me” which of course, Yoshino does, frequently. So I kind of feel that the subbers lost the point there.
The anime made Yoshino seem much more of a jerk than the novel does, and bizarrely added a lot of extraneous dialogue.
One last muy importante note. The animators were clearly suffering from a paucity of experience with exercise (well, duh) because they made Yoshino seem positively moronic in the simplest exercise, instead of what she is in the novel – an extremely out of shape girl. She did *not* scream and cramp when she stretched, nor did she fall over doing a knee bend, which was just stupid. She was just stiff and uncoordinated, in a perfectly normal way considering that she’d had a freakin’ heart condition her entire life.
End Part 2
