Barakamon is the story of calligrapher Seishū Handa, who is forced by his father to move for a time to a small island village after his emotions get the better of him when his work is criticized and he decks the director of a gallery. On the island, he's to improve himself as a human, but also as an artist - to find a way to break away from the fundamentals and create his own unique style.
Neither task will be easy for him.
Aside from Handa, the show primarily deals with various villagers. The primary focus is Naru, an energetic little girl who barrels into Handa's life right away and, despite his best efforts, absolutely refuses to leave it. She's cheerful, innocent, and utterly hilarious, and her innocent outlook tends to provide Handa with breakthroughs in his life and work just when he needs it (though her constant activity troubles him any number of other ways). Together, the two form a real bond that is one of the cutest friendships I think I've seen on a show of any kind.
The other primary villagers are Miwa and Tama, two middle school girls who rope Handa into tutoring them in calligraphy (and generally have fun playing with his ego), and Hiroshi, the village chief's son and a high school student who is struggling with finding a passion for really trying hard at anything. Outside of the village, the show also occasionally deals with Handa's friend (and art dealer) Kawafuji, who encourages Handa is his quest to improve his art (in part out of care, and in part because it'll make him more money), and Kōsuke, a younger calligrapher who looks up to Handa (and serves as a rival as well). There are plenty more, mind, but those are the ones that get some real focus from the show.
And they make for a good cast. Barakamon is a slice-of-life show, and it deals with people that largely feel real, and have the sort of problems we all have. How to figure out how to use your talents. Figuring out what those talents even are in the first place. Learning about the world. Deciding what to do with your life. Learning to find passion in your work. Breaking out of your patterns. Learning to enjoy life and not get wrapped up in things.
Barakamon is a beautiful show.
It is cheerful, innocent, and encouraging. It deals with ordinary life, and the ways that life sometimes goes a little sideways, but not so far that our friends and those who care for us can't drag us back. There's no grand mysteries, no villains, no battles...even the art competitions the story mentions are more of a backdrop, a motivation for Handa, but not the show's focus. This isn't a show about tension and drama. It's a show about laughing with friends, learning to live alongside people even when they disrupt what you thought was important, and finding who you are. Not just as an artist, but as a person.
The growth that Handa in particular shows over the course of the show is wonderful. It's not like he utterly becomes someone else...but his motivations and the things he cares for change drastically over the course of the show, and it's nice to watch a person discover who they really are and what really matters to them. It's a journey as powerful as any hero's journey, but more internal, and more ordinary...the sort of journey we all take, in one way or another. It's relatable and immediately understood.
That's not to say that Barakamon is a quiet show. There's plenty of activity, with lots of humor based around character oddities, Handa's uptight personality, and unfortunate misunderstandings. There's a load of slapstick comedy, too - Handa in particular suffers more than a few pratfalls. He's not the most coordinated person outside of calligraphy, apparently. The show also likes to use its art style for jokes as well - from Naru's face being drawn like an old man's during a point where she's convinced she's learned so much she's become really grown up, to some exaggerated displays of emotion (a literal cloud of despair, for instance) and over the top animation and reactions to events.
Generally, the show's sense of humor is strong, and it varies expertly between sections that feel like an uncontrollable rolling ball of chaos and those that use clever wordplay or inversions of expectations to get you laughing. Not every joke lands strongly, and some feel less necessary to the show - in particular, there's a recurring bit with Tama trying to prove to herself that she's not into a particular type of manga that can be amusing with its work with misunderstandings, but doesn't really fit with the innocent feel of the rest of the show. It's not My Mental Choices level by any means, but when the rest of the show is so strongly based around pretty innocent themes, it's an outlier, and it feels like maybe something else could've been chosen to fit better with the rest of the show. The aforementioned over-the-top reactions can be hit or miss, too...most of the time, they're good, but sometimes it can feel like the show highlighting its own joke - which can be funny itself, mind, but those tend not to be the strongest parts of the show.
The show also takes a little bit to find its footing - the first couple episodes aren't quite as strong as the rest of the show. I'd say that it first starts feeling like its running on all cylinders in the latter half of the third episode, and pretty much nails everything from there on. Not that the first couple of episodes are bad by any stretch of the imagination - they're still lots of fun - but it just doesn't quite feel like all the characters are quite where they need to be, and the show perhaps tries for a couple bits it should've left for later on for the humor to be stronger. Suffice to say, Barakamon doesn't necessarily reach out and grab you right away from the start...but it's more than good enough to convince you to stick with it anyway, and it very much rewards you for your choice.
I would be remiss in not mentioning some of the interesting calligraphy on the show - there's some fascinating pieces that come along, and the show has a lot of fun with Handa producing various pieces of art based on his experiences on the island. Barakamon has respect for the art form and despite his comedic aspects, Handa's very much written as a master artist and the glimpses we see of his calligraphy really sell the concept of a great artist trying to discover a new personal style for himself. It feels like a believable journey, and the new style he finds feels entirely appropriate to the character and the life he's been living.
It's interesting, as well...Barakamon is not a very long show, and I certainly would love to have more...but it also feels like it is exactly the right length for what it is trying to do, and it hits exactly the points it needs to hit, and ends at a point that simultaneously feels like it could lead to more...but also feels totally complete. Handa's journey isn't done...but that's because none of our journeys end just because we have one realization, or one development. Barakamon isn't the story of Handa becoming everything he could possibly could be...it's the story of him even finding the path that can take him there. In the end, I felt like I would be happy to see more...but I felt happy with what I knew, as well. That's...kind of exactly the sort of feeling you want from a show in the end - nothing feels unresolved, but you would love to spend more time with the characters.
So...I've rewatched it once already, and I predict many more times to come.
Barakamon is one of those shows that just makes you feel good. Appropriate for a show about life out on an island, watching it makes you feel like you're getting away from it all, leaving the tensions of your life behind, and just having a chance to relax. Its cast is charming and very easy to like, and Handa's journey to discover himself as an artist and as a human being feels genuine and understandable. It isn't perfect, but I can't recommend this show highly enough. It ranks among my favorite anime - in fact, among my favorite shows of any type - that I've ever seen, and it is one I'm going to revisit time and time again. Watch, and enjoy.
Dubbed or Subbed?: I've watched Barakamon both ways, and both are great. There's some subtle differences in jokes between the versions occasionally - nothing that changes the meaning, just the way the meaning is emphasized - but they both hit things very well. I think the subtitled version is a touch stronger, myself. No one in the dubbed version is bad, but there's a few - most notably, the voice actress for Naru, who tries a little too hard to sound childish in the first couple episodes - who take a bit to feel comfortable in their roles. Though, to be honest, it may be more that I watched the subtitled version straight through first, so I was heavily used to those voices...I suspect things weren't so much wrong as different. Either way that you watch the show, I think you'll enjoy it - nothing about either method gets in the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment