Then there’s only one answer—action!
Editor’s note: A modest offering, in hopes of prompting something better. Submitted with fear and trembling.
Come to think of it, it’s White Album season again. So there can only be one—
“It’s White Album season again…” / “Yes, that would be me.”
Literary theory has a concept called “intertextuality.” Roughly, the creation of a text is influenced by other texts, so to understand Text 1 better, we may need to know Texts 2, 3, and 4 and consider Text 1 in their light…
“Text” here does not mean only novels: films and anime have texts too. And today’s subject fits the concept of intertextuality more immediately, since it began as a text-based adventure game—or visual novel. That subject is White Album 1, the story of the troubled romance between its protagonist, Tōya, and the idol Yuki in the late 1980s…
Let’s look at an exchange from 4Gamer’s interview with White Album 2’s writer, Fumiaki Maruto:1
4Gamer:
I understand that WHITE ALBUM 2 (“2” below) began as a proposal you brought in. What made you want to make a sequel to WHITE ALBUM (“1” below) in the first place?
Maruto:
Well, of course, I really loved “1.” But what got things started was Aquaplus approaching Kikakuya, the writers’ group I belong to, when they were making the PlayStation 3 version of Tears to Tiara: Kakan no Daichi. I happened to let slip, “I really like WHITE ALBUM, and I’d like to try making a story like that.” Things got rolling from there, and when I wrote a proposal, it went through just like that. (Laughs.)
Clearly, how far WA1 and WA2 resemble each other, and in what respects, is a complicated question. Still, WA1’s influence is there in the work of Maruto, WA2’s creative heart. We can therefore say that knowing WA1’s text will help us think about WA2’s. To take the simplest example:
“Actually, I’m more in Rina’s camp than Yuki’s.”
When Tōma says this, it is not just an Easter egg that gives WA1 fans a knowing smile. It also matters to how we interpret her character. Without knowing WA1’s story, Yuki, or Rina, we find ourselves at a loss as to how to read this remark.
Those White Album “scholars” who have so far known only WA2 may now feel an urge to explore WA1. But there is an unavoidable concern: as a work in its own right, is WA1 any good? Maruto has already given us a nudge: “I really like WHITE ALBUM.” If he thinks that highly of it, we ought to sit up and investigate.
“Where is it sold?”
White Album was released by Leaf in 1998. Remakes followed for PS3 in 2010 and PC in 2012, with the script reworked by several writers. This article, however, chiefly concerns the White Album 1 anime, which began airing on January 3, 2009. Being an anime, it offers an easier way in. On its tenth anniversary, I offer this short, spoiler-free piece in hopes of encouraging further discussion—and letting more readers discover the delights of WA1’s world.
1. Let’s Begin with the Music Connecting WA1 and WA2
When we talk about White Album’s music, the first song that comes to mind is naturally its namesake, “WHITE ALBUM”—supposedly “a must-sing at winter karaoke.” In the WA1 anime it is Yuki’s debut single; in WA2, Setsuna covers it at the school festival. In the WA1 anime, “WHITE ALBUM” is sung by Yuki’s voice actress, Aya Hirano. If you have watched The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Lucky Star without following her work any further, you might be astonished by just how well she sings. Just what you’d expect from Brigade Chief Haruhi, who dazzled the school festival audience in a bunny suit!
Then there is “Shin’ai,” the opening theme for the WA1 anime’s first season—another enduringly fine song, sung by Rina’s voice actress, Nana Mizuki. Nana is a standout among voice actors who also sing, as her repeated appearances on Japan’s Kōhaku Uta Gassen, the Red and White Song Contest, attest. And “Shin’ai” was the song she performed on her first appearance there.
Other songs, including “Maiochiru Yuki no Yō ni” and “SOUND OF DESTINY,” have their own merits, of course. But space—and my complete lack of musical knowledge—obliges me to stop here. A natural question nevertheless arises: why did this work produce so many good songs? Because WA1’s two heroines are idols of the late 1980s. Which brings us to our next subject:
2. Japan in the Late 1980s
The story is set in Japan in the late 1980s, a very particular moment:
From 1970 to 1985, gross national product grew by 450%. Tokyo property values doubled in 1986 and again in 1987, bringing rapid development of a mass-consumption society and an astonishing growth in wealth…until the Japanese stock market crashed in September 1990 and the property bubble burst in 1993, ushering Japan into a lost era.
—John Nathan, 无约束的日本人 [The Unbound Japanese], East China Normal University Press, 2005.2
Rapid economic growth, culminating in a bubble, brought Japan into the full flowering of a post-industrial consumer society in the late 1980s. The WA1 anime reflects this in its backdrop of inflated asset prices, in scenes showing the Japanese public’s growing taste for luxury purchases—including art—and in everything from its telephone props to its male protagonist’s state of mind:
“But if it’s genuine…”
A little more about the telephone. Calls and answering-machine messages serve several purposes here: they move the plot forward—I can practically see the choices popping into my head: [Answer / Don’t answer], [Attend to the call / Attend to what’s happening right here]—and reveal character through the different ways people word their messages, among other things. This device, a little unfamiliar to readers of the smartphone age, draws us back into a strange era without portable mobile phones or Wi-Fi. Unable to communicate instantly wherever they happened to be, people had to get out a phone card, make a call, and speak their hearts into a receiver. If the other person was out, they had to leave a message. All this leaves considerable uncertainty over the question “Have they reached you—my words and feelings?” Indeed, whether a call is answered straight away affects quite a few developments in the anime, leaving viewers anxious about the characters’ fates.
Let’s also take a brief look at the protagonist, Tōya Fujii. Here is Maruto’s assessment:
“I liked the way the protagonist was swept along by circumstances. He can’t do anything, and he doesn’t even try to resist. I was strongly drawn to that hopeless, aching frustration.”
We can read such a character as more than an empty shell designed for the player to identify with: he also bears traces of people in Japan who, within a mass-consumption society, have gained the freedom to consume yet fallen into a crisis of meaning, bewildered and unsure of their place. In one respect, Tōya is very good at helping those around him: whenever the women in his life are in trouble, he can step in quite decisively. Yet apart from wanting to keep his relationship with Yuki, he seems to have no goal of his own and nothing to do.
At this point, I should explain a notorious label Tōya carries—one even better known than he is himself: one of visual novels’ “three great good-for-nothings” or “four great scumbags,” alongside our man Makoto Itō. Let me protest on Tōya’s behalf: “I’ve been screwed over by player choices and an anime adaptation that combines several routes!”
But then, taking the anime on its own, Tōya certainly does have his “scumbag” side. What is excellent about the adaptation is that, in most places—not all—its treatment gives those “scumbag aspects” a painfully real sense of life’s frustrations and constraints. They provoke less shocked anger than sighs of sorrow and regret. This is absolutely not a justification of his conduct. Yet this artistic reality also leaves a profound and rather heavy impression.
3. Idols and Romance
Since we have reached Tōya and Yuki’s relationship, let’s turn to what Yuki and Rina are: Shōwa-era idols of the late 1980s. As it happens, a recent, excellent idol anime also discusses Shōwa- and Heisei-era idols:
Junko is one of the group’s best singers, but her dancing is a little less accomplished. This reminds us that the expectations placed on idols in that era differ from what we now imagine when we think of mainstream Japanese girl groups. Although idols were indeed regarded as distinct from professional singers and actors, audiences and idols themselves still placed greater emphasis on singing ability than they would later. The idea that idols should show their best, perfect selves still governed both sides’ expectations. In the WA1 anime, we see no handshake events or other forms of close contact between fans and idols. The emphasis instead falls on how well an idol sings, and on her being presented as nearly flawless as possible:
One further distinction of this story deserves mention. Both its romance and its protagonists’ activities extend well beyond the university campus, into social relations at many levels. This puts it a considerable distance from most romance anime, which concentrate on high-school life. That real-world social setting takes concrete form in the obstacles and setbacks Yuki, an idol, and Tōya, an ordinary young man, encounter in being together: her developing idol career, the disparity in their social standing, the logic of money governing the company’s operations, the repulsive ways of rich heirs…The heavy presence of these realities makes the love in this story feel more real and harder to come by. Because it isn’t easy, it is worth cherishing.
4. The Anime’s Distinctive Features and Staff
The WA1 anime, first broadcast ten years ago, is an excellent work and then some. Catching up with it was also what prompted me to write this article. Let me finish by showing you a few of its highlights.
Allow me, in my ignorance, to gush about the few things I actually understand:
The mysterious director credited as Akira Yoshimura left us only this work. Quite a few people reasonably suspect that this was an alias used by Hiroaki Satō, responsible for the scripts and series composition, for some unspecified “grown-up reasons.” Satō himself is something of an enigmatic heavyweight: besides the WA1 anime, his best-known work is Akira, on which he served as assistant director. Fans generally regard this director and (that is to say) series-composition writer, Satō, as the person most responsible for the anime’s success. Here’s hoping he returns to the fray!3
Kō Yoshinari, who handled character design and contributed storyboards, is one of Japan’s finest key animators—and the older brother of another celebrated animator, Yō Yoshinari…Um, do I go straight to extravagant praise, or is there a procedure to follow first? This is one of the very few works for which the multitalented Kō has done character design. For his fans, that alone makes it worth a look.
Table in the image, translated:
| Episode | Title | Storyboards | Episode direction | Animation direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Page 1 | “Yes, I think the switch had already been flipped by then.” | Hiroaki Satō | Kōta Okuno | Osamu Sakata |
| Page 12 | “Binding. Deceiving. Taking. Giving. More painful than any of them is waiting.” | Tetsuya Watanabe | Tetsuya Watanabe | Kazufumi Takano; Fuyumi Toriyama |
| Page 13 | “Didn’t you notice the vessel was tilted? There wasn’t a drop of water left, after all.” | Hiroaki Satō; Taizō Yoshida; Takahiro Toyomasu; Kō Yoshinari | Kōta Okuno | Osamu Sakata |
| Page 25 | “Other people are to blame. I’m not at fault. Only other people are to blame. Only I—” | Naokatsu Tsuda | Naokatsu Tsuda | Masaru Kawashima |
Naokatsu Tsuda, a major director of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure anime series—director for Parts 1–4 and chief director for Part 5—also quietly worked on this anime. And the episode titles in the image above are all rather poetic sentences, part of the literary air that runs through the series.
“You’re strong, Yuki. Since when have you been so…”
5. Conclusion
I have tried to introduce the WA1 anime’s various strengths without giving away any major spoilers. With limited energy and ability, I have found it quite a struggle, and left out far more than I have included. The anime differs from the remade game. Overall, its greatest attractions remain the emotionally gripping development of its story and the many-sided characters it reveals. Yuki, for example, might initially look like a sweet, gentle airhead, but she has intelligence and thoughts of her own. She is certainly not just a yamato nadeshiko—the traditional ideal of Japanese womanhood—for others to manipulate as they please.
So I have talked about practically everything while leaving out the most important things: an interpretation of the story and its characters! But those are for you to discover firsthand. On the WA1 anime’s tenth anniversary, I hope more people will get to know this fine work, left a little forlorn in WA2’s dazzling light. When we say “It’s White Album season again” once more, let it bring both of these excellent works to mind.
And now for that familiar final bit:
“Rina always gives it everything she’s got.” / “She’s wonderful. I love her so much.”
“Kazusa, if only you were a boy.”
Editor’s note: I’m the author too; there’s no editor left worth noting. Attention that never reaches me is no longer worth loving. Don’t be one of those fans who has to turn everything into a contest. Once again: WA1 and WA2 each have their own strengths. The Maruto interview was reposted from Sumisora; the original link would not open. My thanks to the translator.