Kashimashi
~by Albright

ROFL pink triangle.

Kashimashi is a twelve-episode TV series in the romantic comedy genre. However, in reality, it's too weird to be romantic and not funny enough (at least, not intentionally funny enough) to be a comedy. It's one of those series where only the train wreck factor will keep you watching.

It almost goes without saying that new anime productions, like so many other forms of mass-market creativity, tend to follow in the tracks of what has been successful before. There're various Gundam-inspired giant robot shows, Sailor Moon-inspired magical girl shows, and so on. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Some series have been formed in the mold of these definite genres, yet were able to define themselves with their own quirks and twists which kept them from being yet another has-been. For example, one of my favorite giant robot shows, Dai-Guard, gave the pilots the roles of low-level office workers who had to balance their time between saving the world and appeasing their higher-ups. (It works better than it sounds, trust me.)

I think Kashimashi was trying to define itself in the crowded romantic comedy genre with its own unique twists. Those twists definitely cause this particular show to stand out, but not in the good way…

Okay, so here's the story. The hub is Hazumu, and he is the most whiniest little bitch of an anime character you've ever seen. Seriously, if Shinji is a wet towel, Hazumu is, like, toilet paper that's been soaking in an aquarium for the last hour. Also, he doesn't have any eyeballs.

The first scene in the first episode shows a red-haired girl sitting in a high-school classroom. A dark-haired girl enters the room, grabs the red-haired girl's hand, and, after they exchange a few words, totally starts kissing her. Then a girl with long pigtails enters the classroom and is so surprised, she drops the things she's carrying all over the floor, which cause the other two girls to look over at her, also in shock. We then see the title card.

The dark-haired girl, as it turns out, is Hazumu's first crush, Yasuna, a Quiet Girl With A Secret who shares Hazumu's passion for gardening. The pigtailed girl is Tomari, Hazumu's childhood friend who always shamed and teased him for being such a sissy. The red-haired girl… well, more about her in a moment. In addition, there's Ayuki, a bespectacled girl who the writers apparently intended as a voice of reason but who often comes off as an asshole; and Asuta, the sole source of sorely-needed testosterone-bearing influence in Hazumu's life.

So as the episode progresses, we find out that Hazumu has, with the help of Asuta and Tomari (and no thanks to that asshole Ayuki), built up enough testicular fortitude to ask Yasuna out. Alas, he was shot down like a biplane in a barrage of flak. In his depression, he's exploring the hills around his city, moping and reminiscing and whining and generally doing that whiny bitch character archetype thing. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a malfunctioning alien spaceship crashes into him.

Before and after. Which is more freakish; having no eyes, or having eyes that take up a third of your face's surface area?

Hey, this is anime. That kind of shit happens.

The alien on board, with his requisite advanced alien technology, is able to save Hazumu's life. But there's one small flaw; in the process, Hazumu is turned into a chick. (And also gets a pair of eyeballs.)

Now this is where shit starts to get weird.

Because, you see, for reasons that relate to her Secret, Yasuna likes Hazumu even more now. And for reasons that are never explained, Tomari, who, of course, has always had a crush on Hazumu despite teasing him so much, has now decided to confess to him. Er, her. Within days of becoming a woman, Hazumu finds himself (er, herself) as the fulcrum of an odd sort of lesbian love triangle.

(This is slightly complicated by the fact that Asuta has the hots for hi- er, her too now that she totally has a great rack. Pondrance: Which situation is more gay? That of a guy lusting over a guy who has become a girl, or that of a girl lusting over a girl who used to be a guy?)

From left to right: Yasuna, Asshole, Asuta, post-op Hazumu, and Tomari.

So in case you haven't guessed it yet, the red-haired girl in the opening scene kissing Yasuna was in fact Hazumu, though that scene doesn't chronologically take place until episode 5 and is offset by a similar scene Hazumu has with Tomari in episode 6. From there, the series enters a rather odd mode in which Tomari and Yasuna recognize they've both got a thing for Hazumu, but in order to maintain stability in their relationships with both Hazumu and each other, they both go out of their way to make sure the other has equal access to Hazumu's time and affection. It's like your typical harem anime situation turned inside-out or something. The series spends the next few episodes sending the kids to the karaoke joint and the amusement park and such things that all high-schoolers do in anime (hey, guess what! They go to the beach and one of them gets hit in the face with a volleyball! Betcha didn't see that coming), with both Tomari and Yasuna trying to get closer to Hazumu while staying friends with each other at the same time. (Keep in mind they're all chicks throughout this.) Somewhere in there there's an episode centered around Ayuki and how she's trying not to get involved in the three's relationship, when in reality she already has and her boasting in this ep only makes her come off as an asshole again.

Finally, in episode 11, the situation comes to a head when a leap to judgement causes the two girls to do the inevitable slow-mo overly-dramatic anime bitchslap thing to each other. It doesn't last long, though; by the end of the episode, they're BEST FRIENDS 4EVER!!!!<3<3 again, and Yasuna even tells Tomari her Secret. Tomari then actually concedes and tells Yasuna that Hazumu (who, keep in mind, is a chick) can be hers. Meanwhile, that asshole Ayuki tells Hazumu that he needs to choose one of the girls, which isn't really an asshole-ish thing to say, but she sure goes about saying it in an asshole-ish manner. He picks Yasuna. So in episode 12, the aliens use their technology to change her back into a guy. Hazumu and Yasuna finally hook up, while Asuta decides to ask Tomari out and the two couples live happily ever after and get married and have lots of babies while that asshole Ayuki dies a thirty-seven-year-old shrew twisting in the wind.

Except that doesn't happen. Sure, Yasuna and Hazumu hook up, but Hazumu is still a chick. (Gay marriage is not legal in Japan. I'm not sure about adoption, but I wouldn't count on it.) Furthermore, while the group remains friends with each other (even Her Majesty Ayuki Asshole, Ice Queen of Bitchistan), the show ends with Tomari and Asuta lonely and dateless. In any good romance, all the "good" characters should at least end up with prospects. Then, after the final credits, there's some confusing scene with Yasuna and Hazumu, then with Tomari and Hazumu, which seems to be trying to say something epilogical, but hell if I could make any sense out of it.

Hazumu trips and falls on Yasuna in an embarassing position. How paint-by-numbers can you get?

Anyway, so Kashimashi (subtitled "~Gaaru Miitsu Gaaru~" (with the obligatory Anime Subtitle Tildes), which is apparently a katakana approximation of "Girl Meets Girl") is a rather unique twist on the romantic comedy anime mold, but that twist ends up being a little too unique. I mean, you know a series has problems when it ends up being funnier in the serious bits than in the comedic ones. The series' attempts at comedy are mostly running jokes; for example, Hazumu's father keeps trying to find ways to get his new daughter naked and take pictures of her, which might be funny if it weren't so damn creepy. The series also plays with the whole Tootsie/Ms Doubtfire/Ladybugs thing where Hazumu has to learn to wear a bra and sit like a lady and so on, but these are all so tired by now. No, the real funny scenes are the ones of the confessions and the kisses and so on; probably because if they were between a guy and a girl, they'd be merely trite, but with two (or three) chicks, they just come off as surreal and all the more cheap-looking, like a Thomas Kinkade painting on velvet that glows under blacklight, if you'll allow that reach of allegory.

It appears to me the biggest flaw in Kashimashi is that they pretty much just took a standard cookie-cutter anime high-school love triangle plot, substituted another girl for the guy, then went bumbling about their way as if nothing has changed. I don't think you can just do that and have it work. It isn't PC to say this, but there is a social stigma attached to homosexuality, and real romantic lesbian situations aren't something we as an audience isn't used to seeing in the media. So if you're going to do a serious show involving people discovering their homosexuality, you do need to deal with issues such as how their family deals with it, what the rest of school outside of their own little clique thinks, any feelings of shame the couple (or triple) themselves feel, and so on. (I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain, but from what I've heard, that would be a good example of what I'm talking about.) Kashimashi hardly deals with such things at all. The series doesn't even take much time to explore what Hazumu thinks about suddenly becoming a girl; for such a whiny character, he sure takes it in stride. And the ending was just so dumb and nowhere near as happy and conclusive as it should have been. Kashimashi may be a very good example of a clever idea that had its potential ruined by lazy writers.

Were it two chicks and a dude, Kashimashi would be merely unremarkable, a grain of sand on an infinite beach. Had it dealt with its unusual subject matter with imagination and gravity, it could have been a rock jutting up from the sand, prominent, something all the little grains gather around. Alas, as it is, it's a dead rotting fish washed up by the waves. Kashimashi is an anime that sucks.