In Japan, it is quite easy to find a manga, anime or a light-novel depicting one’s favourite sport or hobby. These activities offer the writer a welcome narrative frame to explore interlocking themes likes friendship and love – homosexual and heterosexual, interpersonal conflict, and personal growth. When Kaeru Inoue took fishing as the subject for her light novel High school girls’ after-school angler life, she did so to revisit these themes.   

Given Inoue’s choice to remain within the narrative boundaries of the shoujo genre, it is not surprising that Hideo Jojo’s adaptation delivers something that, despite its unique setting, feels very familiar. In fact, by offering no deviation to the common narrative structure nor play with the usual dramatic flow, Jojo delivers a film that is very predictable.

The fact that Afternoon Angler’s club is predictable and familiar is not necessarily a bad thing. The spectator, who knows a happy resolution will follow, can sit back, relax and peacefully enjoy the narrative’s emotional ebb and flow. In fact, it is by granting the spectator such a safe space, that Hideo Jojo can evoke the effect of bullying in a rather innocuous way – recognizable, but un-traumatizing – and inspire victims to give the Other another chance.

Yet, before delving in what Hideo Jojo succeeds in formulating about the interpersonal dynamic of bullying, we need to offer the reader a brief synopsis. Mezashi Oikawa (Toomi), who suffers from bullying after a mundane conflict at school, receives an unexpected second chance when her family, due to her father’s work, move to a port town in the Kansai region. The first day at her new high school, Mezashi is approached by her classmate Shiira Shirogisu (Marupi). While Mezashi expects to be bullied again, Shiira surprisingly calls out the fateful coincidence of both their names being references to fish and forces her to join the Angler Girls club. To keep the harmony and avoid problematizing her presence within the societal field, Mezashi meekly accepts the invitation. 

Within this brief synopsis lies all the elements needed to grasp and elaborate Mezashi’s subjective logic and her compromised social place. The fluidly interweaved flash-back fragments depicting the bullying show that the bullies did not simply force Mezashi in the position of excremental object – the object nobody desires but can be enjoyed, but also subjected her to the demand to continually apologize for her symbolic existence (Narra-note 1).

The effect of being subjected to bullying acts, i.e. acts that violently reduce her to a toy-object for the Other’s enjoyment, is deeply sensible in the way Oikawa prepares herself for making herself present within the new societal field, within her new high school environment. In her notebook she writes the following: “It’s all good. I won’t make the same mistake again. I won’t oppose anyone. I’ll try not to stand out. I won’t say no when asked for a favour. I’ll maintain average grades. I’ll have an average smile. (…) I won’t make friends.”

These self-imposed rules, written down to avoid bullying, do not only reveal her determination to suppress her subjectivity and reduce herself to an anonymous plain object within the societal field, but also echoes her decision to let her facade, her ego, be determined by the currents of the Other. To make herself as subject disappear, Mezashi thus aims to become a mere plain reflection of the Other.

Yet, her wish to fade in the background is complicated by two incompatible dynamics, a subjective and a relational one. The subjective dynamic concerns Oikawa Mezashi’s inability to avoid (showing) the emotional impact of the disruptive bursting forth of traumatic fragments. As she moves through her new social environment, she encounters signifiers that, by association, unavoidably call forth her painful past – e.g. the smiles of her new classmates echo the laughter of enjoyment of her bullies. It would, in fact, not be wrong to state that, as this associative dynamic cannot be silenced, Mezashi’s new environment is anticipatorily poisoned by the enjoyment she was subjected to in the past.     

The second dynamic that complicates her subjective disappearance in the societal field is the Other’s approach, the Other’s recurring demand to show her subjectivity. Even though Mezashi wants to be an absent presence in the societal field – an object to be ignored rather than to interacted with, the members of the Angler club invite, each in their own way, Mezashi to make herself present as subject.

The reader should, by now, be able to grasp that Mezashi’s set of rules, constructed to avoid future bullying, are deeply contradictory. By strictly following these rules, Mezashi ends up offering herself, as ego, to the Other and his ‘manipulations’. Her refusal of utilizing ‘no’, the primordial expression of subjectivity, can be exploited by the Other to force her to reveal herself as subject (Narra-note 2). At one point in the narrative, for instance, Shiomi Nagi (Futaba Mori), another member of the Angler Girls club, entraps Mezashi and sabotages her ego-defence by confronting her with her social media and her painful past (Narra-note 3). 

Afternoon Angler’s club delivers a few evocative visual moments that reveal that, behind Mezashi’s imaginary defence, lies a desire for connection and friendship. The contradiction that marks her set of rules is, in our view, an effect of her unconscious desire; it is an expression of that desire. The refusal of refusing masks her desire for recognition. 

It is therefore not surprising that Mezashi, in her interactions with her fellow members Shiira, Nagi and Akari (Tamao Hirai) lets bits of her subjectivity slip (e.g. “I’m sorry. I really cannot stand worms”; I don’t know if I like (…) [fishing] yet). In fact, these slips of subjectivity are what Hideo Jojo’s Afternoon Angler’s Club is all about. By highlighting the pleasure of sharing a hobby and the joy of fishing – from sea to plate, Jojo succeeds to celebrate the endearing beauty of a subject who heeds the call of her unconscious desire for recognition and finds the way to the signifier to rewrite her position to her own painful past.   

The composition of Afternoon Angler’s Club is quite straightforward – combining fluid restrained dynamism together with static moments. Yet, Hideo Jojo does find the time to elevate his composition by combining musical pieces, visual decorations, dreamy dynamism to create evocative visual moments that offer the spectator an indirect glance at Mezashi’s unvocalized subjectivity and her compromised desire. The few moments in the composition marked by shaky framing have a similar aim: to reverberate the expression of Mezashi’s unvocalized emotionality.

While Afternoon Angler’s Club will be considered as a vehicle to promote Japanese gravure model and idol Toomi, the gravure model Marupi, and former drummer Futaba Mori, they did take the opportunity to prove that they have some acting-ability. The performances are quite decent and ensure that the interactions between the girls charm the spectator and the predictable subjective trajectory of Mezashi can touch touch the spectator.

Toomi, for instance, succeeds, by the way she makes herself present within the filmic frame, to convincingly embody the social inhibition that marks Mezashi; she makes the bodily and mental hesitation to commit to her unconscious desire a sensible presence.  

While Afternoon Angler’s Club will not win any prizes for originality or for outstanding performances, Hideo Jojo’s heartwarming tale of subjective growth and salt-water fishing is still a pleasant watch. Jojo’s film might succeed to give insight to some about the contradictions – the conflict between refusal and acceptance, between silence and speaking – that defines their functioning within the societal field.    

Notes

Narra-note 1: Moreover, like so many victims of bullying, she refuses to share her suffering with the parental Other.

Narra-note 2: Afternoon Angler’s club also underlines that an act of deceitful refusal is sometimes necessary to disallow one’s subjective suffering from entering the field of speech and disrupting the subjective and social equilibrium.

On the other hand, a confirmation in speech – a yes – can also be an affirmation of a subjective truth, offering the Other a glance behind the ego, the facade.

Narra-note 3: The fact thatMezashi forgot to delete her social media account is another effect of her unconscious desire for recognition. She unconsciously desired for someone to discover her painful past, to discover the key which might unlock the imaginary prison she locked herself in.