Journal With Witch – Episode 5 - Ai Animes 🤖

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m guessing we’re in for another brutal emotional pummeling, as we return to the painfully well-observed drama of Journal With Witch. The show has so far offered up a pair of poignant, intimate character studies, observing an unlikely duo who seem united less by their tangential genetic bond than their fellow pilgrimage through a great, forbidding emotional desert. For Asa, this desert represents the grief she still cannot name, a feeling too immense to look at directly, yet which nonetheless marks her as apart from the carefree high schoolers and confident adults surrounding her. For Makio, this desert is her personal fortress, the barricade of sand and stone that has shielded her from the unhappy truths of an isolated adulthood.

Back when Makio first suggested Asa start a journal, it seemed like that might have just been the idle, unconsidered advice of someone out of their depth in offering true consolation. But now, it seems more likely that Makio was sharing her own survival strategy – to transmute to the page that which is intolerable to the mind, and thereby exorcise her demons through the alchemy of fiction. We all develop our own coping strategies for handling life’s disappointments, but Asa’s presence is forcing Makio to reexamine the routines of her life, and ask once again if she is happy settling for what is simply comfortable. Let’s see how our desert wanderers continue to shape each other as we return to Journal With Witch!

Episode 5

We open on a musical performance being watched on the apartment TV, our presumed introduction to the Asa singing thread promised by the OP. I’m guessing that singing will be her outlet for the feelings she’s having so much difficulty expressing, as either a compliment or alternative to her journal. It’s a funny thing how it can be easier to shout out feelings in a song than simply admit them in your own voice; art has a way of liberating us from “taking responsibility” for our feelings, of abstracting them so we can almost engage with them like a third party

I personally cannot imagine not having artistic outlets for my thoughts and feelings. I know it’s a privilege to be able to dedicate time to such passions, but for me, that is what life is for – all the other stuff, all the chores and labors and responsibilities, are accepted purely because they provide me the opportunity to explore and create art. I never really had much uncertainty about what I wanted to do with my life; creating and celebrating stories is what I am

This scene is actually a flashback to Asa at home before the crash. Her mother lightly chides her, saying “so that’s the sort of boy you’re into,” when Asa was actually compelled by the performance itself. Feels aligned with what we’ve learned of Asa’s mother so far – she sees art as trivial, and thus assumes Asa’s interest is in the performers’ appearances

“You know how I’m more into girls? Like idols.” Emiri is quick to qualify her own feelings

Looking back from the present moment, Asa can only envy how quick her younger self was to dismiss the advice and support of her mother. All these encounters seem so infinite and inconsequential until the moment you realize there will never be another. The best things in life so often can only be recognized in retrospect

Still, this is progress, a moment of genuinely engaging with her grief

Apparently Makio and Asa’s mother both linger in the doorway the same way, a detail Makio assumes they inherited from their own mother. What strange, fragmentary legacies we leave

Asa plans to color her hair, at Emiri’s suggestion

At school, she bumps into a tall classmate named Mori as she’s inspecting the various club fliers

Apparently Asa was in choir in middle school, so she’s already had some vocal training

We gracefully flit back to the moment Asa’s mother decided she’d join choir. Love how this episode is so elegantly expressing the endurance of memory; we don’t have to actively conjure some memories, they just arrive unbidden in the moment, sharing space with our present experience

Also seems clear that Asa actually appreciated the direction her mother provided, in contrast with Makio’s indifferent “do what you think is best”

“You’ve got to learn to make choices for yourself.” “Good grief, what did you do to your hair?” Of course, eventually her mother’s contradictions made pleasing her impossible. Thus just as her love of singing serves as a tether connecting to her mother, so does her short haircut serve as an icon of her rebellion. Even the ways we challenged those we’ve lost end up serving as tribute to their memory – a sentiment Makio embodies with her every reflection on her sister’s disdain for fiction

“During spring break, I’ll…” A future that seemed endless, cut short in an instant. She had infinite time to convince her mother until it was already too late

This is also our first return to the moment of the crash itself, something she likely hasn’t been able to grapple with before now

“I’m irritated. But at what, though?” Her frustration at no longer having even the adversarial sounding board of her mother is interpreted as a directionless irritation. Who can she blame for these contradictory feelings, at feeling almost annoyed at her newfound freedom?

Emiri ignoring her call instantly drapes her world in shadow. She is alone with her feelings

She cannot help but blame her mother for leaving her alone

Nice depth-rich composition as we return to Asa on the train. Good still forms for the passengers behind her, whose well-illustrated manners of inhabiting their clothes give them an inherent sense of vitality

A clear distinction between Asa and Makio as Asa discusses visiting her grandmother’s place. The visit seems perfectly normal to Asa, while Makio idly reveals that she hasn’t been home in about five years. Well, at least that’s one aspect of my life that I’m keeping together better than Makio

Upon reaching her mother’s place, Makio instantly excuses herself to go sort through her things. Waving off the offer of tea, she says “that one cup of tea will take forever” – which is of course the point, as the tea is just an excuse for family members to catch up. But Makio doesn’t want to be caught talking about her life, and thus seeks to minimize all the moments she’ll be forced to socialize without some clear goal in mind

Returning to her childhood room conjures memories of Makio’s sister, chiding her as usual for her ostensibly childish tastes

But there are happier memories, too. They once enjoyed playing games together

“Have you decided on college yet?” “Grandma, I just started high school!” As the patterns repeat, the details get lost. And as we age, time compresses, with the high school years of a child feeling like a brief turn in the road

“Minori was always my best listener. We used to chat all the time. Unlike, you know…” Little wonder Makio hasn’t come back

But at this point, Asa feels more kinship with the outsider Makio than this confidant of the mother she lost

“But I have to admit… she’s become dull and snide.” Makio as ruthlessly precise as ever

“Before, she used to compliment us. She’d say Minori was caring and I was self-sufficient. But somewhere along the line, it turned into Minori lacking independence and me being cold.” The same contradictions that frustrated Asa regarding her own mother. Have we changed, or just the observer’s perspective on us? Why do the qualities we are admired for eventually become intolerable faults? Is it wrong to keep holding onto a dream?

“I thought she really cared about Mom.” “If you felt that, that’s what matters.” That’s all we can do, in the end – believe in the interpretations that give us hope

“Remember her as the mother you love. I don’t share my subjective view of her for that reason.” In Makio’s distance, there is actually a form of compassion. She knows she has sharp edges, and does not want to cut the people she cares about

Thus Makio consents to having some tea with her mom, and Asa determines to believe in the happy memories that can guide her forward. Even in our own minds, we can choose how to memorialize the people we’ve lost, and what of their presence we carry alongside us

Lovely conclusion to their visit, as Makio awkwardly offers to lend an ear if her mom needs it, and her mother knowingly tells her to pull herself together before considering anything like that

The bags of gifts from Makio’s mother form a visual barricade between them as they drive home, a barrier echoing their unique interpretations of this allegedly mutual bond

Brief moments at school emphasize Asa’s increasing recognition of the social distance between herself and Emiri as they each fold into their own class dynamics. Japan’s insistence on keeping classes united has some interesting social side effects

Makio’s entirely reasonable policy of ignoring unknown phone numbers ends up coming back to bite her, as she is confronted at her apartment by Tono, the man overseeing her guardianship

Apparently there was a withdrawal of three hundred thousand yen from Asa’s family account

Nice effect of Makio’s own voice getting muffled as all these accusations and responsibilities start to overwhelm her

Asa reveals the withdrawal was to buy a laptop, so she could make music on her own. She feared Makio would object to her joining the band club – or rather, she reassigned that fear from her mother to her guardian. And yet even this is a way of keeping her mother alive; even the unhappy things, like her mother’s contradictory restrictions on her behavior, still feel like a fragment of home

It’s a nearly impossible situation – Asa is attempting to work through her own feelings of resentment regarding her mother, but Makio is actually even less sympathetic to Minori’s choices, so she’s not really a useful confidant in these discussions

“Allow me to help from now on.” Tono actually seems like a lovely man, just understandably defensive of Asa in the context of a potentially exploitative caretaker

We then come full circle, with Kasamachi’s side-hug offering another demonstration of our inherited gestures while that song Asa enjoyed plays on the television. We can’t help but suffer through changes, but we also can’t help but carry fragments of the past

And Done

God, this show seems so effortlessly graceful. The formal parallels here weren’t just natural and elegant, they basically offered a secondary conversation of their own, framing the ways we carry on the expectations, habits, and beliefs of those we’ve left behind from every possible angle. And our core subject this time was already incredibly rich in its own right – the ways we internalize and hopefully move beyond the grudges and regrets instilled in us by our parents, feelings we can never fully extract from our happier memories. Grief is an endless sea, and inheritance an unsolvable puzzle; the best we can hope for is to internalize that advice Makio offered, and embrace the memories we think will actually carry us forward. There is no honest or dishonest when it comes to remembering the people important to us; the past is the past, and what is left for us is to carry that inheritance forward, and hopefully get it a little more right for the next generation. We are only ever human.

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