Introduction

Koji Maeda is not a big name is Japanese cinema, but some might know him from helming the less than stellar sequel Sailor Suit and Machine Gun: Graduation (2016). Can he redeem himself with his latest film?

Review

One day, Kasumi Akimoto (Kaya Kiyohara) learns from one of her friends that ‘dog-face’ Ayaka Kimishima (Kasumi Yamaya) is dating with one of the cutest boys of the school, Yanagi. Even though Kasumi joins the badmouthing, she vehemently dislikes their singular fixation on looks and falling-in-love. Kasumi, for her part, feels attracted to men with interesting ways of thinking, like Isao Miyamoto (Kotaro Koizumi).

Yasuomi Ono (Ryo Narita), Kasumi’s math teacher at cram-school, has been unsuccessful in romance all his life. What makes it difficult for him to connect to women is nothing other than his mathematical way of functioning. He struggles to accept the indefinite nature of language and is quite incapable to discern the intentions that hide within the words of the romantically interested female other. One day, Kasumi finds herself coaching Yasuomi to become more normal so that even he would be able to find a marriage partner.

When Kasumi learns that Miyamoto is set the marry Minako Togawa (Rika Izumi), the daughter of a hotel-business, she becomes moody – a sign of her romantic interest in him. Yet, she quickly realizes that she can try to utilize Yasuomi to thwart the marriage of her beloved Miyamoto.

Despite being a quite straight-forward and predictable romance narrative, You’re Not Normal, Either! offers some interesting insights into the function of gossip, the meaning of normality, the vague moment of falling-in-love and the importance of the imaginary in the field of romance, and the equivocal nature of language.

Concerning the function of gossip, here understood as the verbal exploitation of the image of the other – “dog-face”, You’re Not Normal, Either! reveals that such bad-mouthing has no other function that to transform lingering feelings of jealousy and frustration into a fleeting moment of socially-shared pleasure. Yet, as Kasumi’s character reveals, some do not join the badmouthing to gain some pleasure from their frustrated position, but merely to maintain the imaginary equilibrium of the amical group. Some subjects lie certain facets of their ego, social facets that will please the others that surround them, to ensure their position within the amical dynamics and safeguard the superficial ‘wa’ (harmony) of these dynamics as such. Yet, such social lying also implies that something of the subject’s subjectivity should remain unsaid.

Maeda’s narrative teaches that ‘normality’ is nothing other than playing along with the societal expectations. ‘Normality’ is only attained when the subject hides his/her subjective difference behind a social face to honour the societal demand for sameness or locks up his/her subjective suffering to subject him or herself to the oppressive demand to safeguard a certain public image within the societal Other.

The imaginary dynamic of falling-in-love is explored via Kasumi’s trajectory. Despite her complaints about her friends’ superficiality and fixation on looks, Kasumi’s ‘falling’ for Isao’s signifiers is equally superficial – the very act of falling in love is, in fact, radically superficial. Becoming attracted by someone’s looks or his signifiers follows the same logic. In both cases, the element that attracts the female subject is neither the looks nor the signifiers as such, but the presence of something phallic (agalma) that looks and signifiers imply. Yet, Kasumi fails to grasp the truth of such event, fails to understand that the sudden moment she has perceived it (agalma) in the other is the very instant she falls in love with this other. Due to her failure, Kasumi becomes, when it has finally happened, engulfed by feelings of confusion.

The importance of the imaginary within the field of romance is also underlined by Kasumi’s need to fantasize about Miyamoto’s wife-to-be. Her fantasies are all focused on exploring why Minako and Isao are an ill-match (e.g. Minako is doubting his true intentions, her attraction to him is merely due to her strict upbringing, and to ensure herself, albeit fantasmatically, that she still has a romantic chance with him. The fantasizing is, in other words, caused by Kasumi’s inability to accept her deprived position. This deprived position also causes her to quickly transform her aid to turn the math teacher more ‘normal’ into a plan to take revenge, i.e. to thwart Isao’s marriage and create the possibility for her to make Isao hers.

Yet, it is not only the imaginary that plays a role in the blossoming of romantic feelings, as Kasumi and Yusuomi’s interactions reveal. By helping out Yasuomi, Kasumi has created a situation that is not solely played out in the imaginary, the world of phantasmatic longing and deception by the phallic shine that entraps desire. By being together and continuously interacting, both subjects inadvertently offer the other subject glances of his/her singular subjective position. Yet, as Kasumi’s feelings blossom for Yasuomi, will she be willing to lose him to Minako?

The equivocality of speech/language is lightheartedly exposed by the problems the socially awkward Yasuomi Ono has in the field of romance. His demand for mathematical precision and logic in speech and rich reliance on definitions does not only evoke his wish for language to follow a certain mathematical logic, but also explains why it is so difficult for him to accept the equivocality that speech creates (between the sexes) as well as why he has problems with understanding the play with signifiers and acts that subjects naturally utilize to either vaguely reveal their romantic interest or to subtly echo the source of their suffering.

The composition of You’re Not Normal, Either! provides a pleasant mix between dynamic and static moments. Yet, Maeda’s kind of mix is not really dictated by a sense for composition, but a mere need for variety. Static moments are nevertheless generally used to frame seated or standing conversations, but also to emphasize, in some rare cases, facial expressions. Musical accompaniment is used to give the flow of the narrative a lighthearted feel.

You’re Not Normal, Either! is a pleasant film, but nothing more than that. Even though Maeda’s narrative touches upon interesting things, for example upon what ‘normality’ actually means and the indefinite nature of language, this cute little narrative, as a whole, will be easily forgotten.