“Omae no deban datsu-no.”
The confession that was due from day one of the Bokura ga Ita was, in the fourth episode, finally realized. By itself, the scene was nothing special; combined with the rest of the series’s beginning, it developed into something much more. What exactly made this scene more poignant than I expected it to be?
From its onset, Bokura ga Ita is the epitomy of the classic girl’s shoujo manga; its female lead wanders and frets over her relationship with the happy-go-lucky male lead hiding a tragic past. Granted, the interactions between the irresponsible (but characterized by the phrase yaru toki ni yaru – he gets things done when they have to be done) Yano and continuously worried Nana is entertaining, but Bokura doesn’t blatantly try anything particularly fresh except for its soft pastel feel and one-eye zoom-ins.
Even then, it feels like there is something special about the way the confession of love in Episode 4 was wrought out. Due to her relationship to the watcher, we’ve known from day one that Nana has a heavy infatuation with Yano, just as clearly as we know her irritation toward his antics and constant teasing. We also know that Yano’s past contained another girl, and although he is a little taken aback by Nana’s inability to leave the one she likes alone to both his irresponsible antics and hidden suffering, the nature of Nana’s relationship with Yano, and to what degree it is progressing (or not) is much of the time anyone’s guess.
Perhaps that is why Episode 4 seems so monumental. Nana, although in love with Yano, is reluctant to be in an one-sided affair, and thus constantly worries if she has said something that has driven Yano away or actually brought him closer to a relationship with her. Her thoughts are made clear to us, but Yano’s are a bit more of a mystery, just like they are to Nana, and as Nana ponders what Yano meant by his last comment, it somewhat becomes the viewer’s role to interpret what his reactions meant as well. In the end, Nana’s sincerity seems to have won over, but neither Nana or the viewer can be completely sure of much of the process through which it occured; the scene itself comes as a surprising eventuality, a plot twist that was expected to happen sooner or later, an out-of-the-blue event whose only unpredictable element was its actual placement in the plot.
Although we hold one advantage to Nana – the knowledge that her dreamed-of relationship will occur, at some point – her surprise, in a way, likely mirrors our own when Episode 4’s finale draws near and Yano decides to accept her into his heart.
