Air TV - 04

I think, as a starting point for understanding Kano's arc, I have to go back to an idea I abandoned earlier: I think her multiple personalities are allegorical. That is, we shouldn't try to take her story literally - in fact, I don't think it has much to do with dissociative identity disorder.

I'm not completely certain about that; there's another fairly good interpretation that supposes Hijiri's attempts to seal away Kano's feelings (that meaning of the ribbon has been obvious for a while) were the inciting events, and Kano's multiple personalities grew out of the resulting repression. I don't think so, though; I think the ribbon was a symptom of Kano's attempt to avoid dealing with her problems, not the cause of them.

The key point is that Kano is fully aware of what's going on. Her suicide note makes it clear that that's true by the end of the arc, but it's the end of episode 3, viewed in this new context, that convinces me: I can't, for the life of me, figure out why Shiraho would want to hurt Yukito. In fact, in her story, Shiraho is portrayed as very much the opposite sort of person; you'd think, if she was willing to strangle someone, she'd have given that priest a ceremonial statue to the head and made a run for it.

On the other hand, Kano has a perfectly good reason to be upset with Yukito: he's rejected her. So I have to think that Kano's been in control all along, and that the appearance that she's not is, like Hijiri's protestations of "You're not Kano!," an excuse. If Kano's possessed, it means she's not desperately lonely - Kano doesn't have to deal with the guilt of being lonely when her sister's probably got it worse, and nobody else has to deal with the fact that they haven't been able to give her the companionship she needs.

There's a new problem introduced here, though (which wasn't all that small before): why, if Shiraho isn't really relevant, did we spend nearly five minutes of obviously scarce screen time on her story before offering Kano resolution?

I think it's for the same reason Kano's story came first: we're looking at a sort of Haibane Renmei structure here, where the easy problem is dealt with first, and the knowledge gained is used to tackle the hard problem. I think the ideas introduced in these couple episodes are going to inform the rest of the show, and so I'm going to have to remember to keep that monologue (along with the loneliness theme, and the idea of magic-as-expression-of-subconscious) in mind as I watch the rest of the show.

It does reinforce one new idea, though, which ran through the whole episode: there are new connotations of danger and grief attached to the winged-girl motif. That feather in the temple is portrayed as an uneasy thing; it brought disaster on both Shiraho and Kano, and its disappearance is a positive resolution. And, meanwhile, Misuzu had her dream of flight again, but this time she was sad. I still think the flight imagery carries its classic meanings of "freedom/escape;" suddenly, though, as we segue into Minagi's story, that's not being portrayed as necessarily a good thing anymore.

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