Beautiful, smart, and kind Suzume Kikuo is perfect in every way, the girl of anyone’s dreams. But when she asks out her socially awkward childhood friend Akane, his response is a shocker: “You’re too perfect.” What’s a girl to do, except transform into a giant caterpillar and try, try again?
This is like the opposite of a cozy story. It breaks my damn fucking heart is what it does.
I like to see it as an allegory for some disastrous depression and how unhealthy it is to hold someone on a pedestal and how horrible it is to hinge everything on one person and how terrible it is to change yourself just to get someone’s affection. It’s a sad story, bro, and though there are moderate ups in the tale it doesn’t go up very much. One person finds satisfaction. One.
The rest is perseverance against a sort of self-immolation, the desire to be unhappy, the consuming of the self by depression and angst. How it changes people. How even small things can have big consequences. At first you hold onto a little hope but… in the end, nothing gets better, not really.
It takes and amplifies the main character’s initial feelings. “I’m not good enough. I don’t deserve to be loved.” It magnifies it to be an outward effect and forces him to look in the mirror he created by accident, what could happen if he goes on. He tries his best to overcome it for the sake of the one in despair. And it’s… so hard to watch, man…
