“My first kiss was with a girl.

Her name was Yuri-chan. It sounds like a joke, but it’s not.”

These are the opening lines of Happy Go Lucky Days, the anime movie based on Shimura Takako’s manga Dounika Naru Hibi (どうにかなる日々). The movie was originally supposed to have had a spring 2020 release, but due to COVID-19 delays, it was pushed back to autumn. The Asian Pop-up Festival streamed it with English subtitles. The opening 8 minutes of the movie are still on Youtube on the Cinema Today channel for you to enjoy.

The story is a loose conglomeration of scenarios that revolve around love and sex and romance. The first scenario follows Ecchan, who dated the above-mentioned girl named Yuri in high school. Years later, she’s attending Yuri’s wedding and finding herself crying in the bathroom, where she encounters Aya, who also has dated Yuri, in college. Motivated by their common ground of annoyance with Yuri, they end up sleeping together, then just being together, in a way that feels comfortable and not forced at all. Yuri’s marriage has done something good for them, at least. ^_^

The second scenario follows Sawa-sensei, a man who feels very closeted to me, as he navigates a confession from a student and need for affection.

The third scenario is my least favorite. Sayoko was thrown out of her house for doing a porn video and is staying with neighbors. Her overtly sexualized behavior and speech fucks around with Shin-chan who is only in 5th grade. He and his best friend and ultimately girlfriend Mika, are made aware of sex because of Sayoko. We watch as they navigate puberty…something I’m not really all that interested in doing.

The team at Pony Canyon for this movie was the same as brought us Asagao to Kase-san, so the animation was very pretty, although the scenery and content was less well-served by the animation. Hotel bathrooms can only be lovingly animated to a very limited extent. ^_^; 

The content is in exactly the space that Takako-sensei really sits most comfortably, as characters become uncomfortably aware of their sexuality (or, in other of her works, gender.) It’s never a wholly pleasant journey, but it’s not unpleasant, either. It always feels a little like she’s trying to figure something out, or standing outside, looking in on people’s inner thoughts, trying to work out something in herself.

In this case, I found myself relieved that the initial scenario was not unpleasantly complicated and we’re left thinking that it could be a happily-at least for a normal course of time- after. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8,8,6
Characters – 8
Queer – 8 in the first vignette, and yes…but, for Sawa-sensei. He’s questioning more than queer. Let’s give him a 5.
Service – Yes. Sex and sex adjacent stuff. I’d give it a 6.

Overall – 8

Happy Go Lucky Days was pretty and the lesbians are okay. ^_^