Miyuki

Miyuki (みゆき) is a 37 episode slice of live romance based on the manga of the same name by Adachi Mitsuru.  The anime originally aired from the Spring of 1983 through the winter of 1984.

 

    Miyuki follows the internal conflicts and pubescent mishaps of high school student Wakamatsu Masato. We begin the series with Masato and his two friends working for their classmate/friend Ryuichi at his beach house. Ryuichi tricked them into the job with the promise of being able to see their classmates in bikinis during spring vacation. Ryuichi invited four girls from their class as guests in order to lure the boys to help him.  Masato and classmate Yoshio end up sneaking into the girls room, looking through their swim wear. When the girls arrive both boys hide in the closet and discover that one of the classmates, Kashima Miyuki, has mild interest in Masato. Masato takes this opportunity and approaches Miyuki later to try and develop a relationship with her. When he asks why she isn’t swimming she confesses that her swimsuit is missing at which point Masato realizes the bottom portion of it is in his hoodie pouch. In a moment of embarrassment he absentmindedly removes it from the hoodie to wipe his forehead, much to both characters horror. Miyuki promptly slaps him and that ends his chances to go to a movie with her. Shortly afterwards a beautiful girl arrives on a surfboard. All the boys are smitten with her and Ryuichi nudges Masato to go get her information. He chases after her into the woods. She coyly plays along with him, teasing him a bit, but does not tell him who she is.

 

     After the day is done, Masato heads to his fathers cabin nearby. His father is supposed to be back in Japan after six years working and living abroad and Masato wants to see him. He arrives at the cabin but the only person there is the mysterious surfer girl from earlier. The girl, whom he has fallen for, given his failure with Miyuki, is none other than his sister Wakamatsu Miyuki. She teases him but they are glad to see each other for the first time in six years. When school starts again Kashima Miyuki makes up with Masato and they again resume plans to go on a date to the movies. At the same time Masato is struggling with feelings for his beautiful and uninhibited younger sister.  Masato must chose who he wants to be with but doing so will be a rocky road on either side as he continues to make embarrassing mistakes with Kashima and can’t let on to his feelings to his sister Miyuki.

 

     OK, so you might be thinking, it’s an incest story, like Koi Kaze, but you would be wrong. It’s a bit complicated how Masato and Miyuki are related, I actually didn’t find out the whole story between them until I looked it up online. Masato’s mom died when he was young. His father married Miyuki's mother, thus becoming Miyuki’s stepfather, making Masato her stepbrother. Miyuki’s mother then died and she decided to live with her stepfather while Masato chose to stay in Japan under the care of a family housekeeper. So Miyuki and Masato are not related by blood, just the bond of perceived relation, which is what causes Masato such a headache when he lusts for his stepsister. To make matters worse Masato, for fear of anyone discovering his feelings about her, does not tell anyone they are not blood related. At the same time he also continues to pursue Kashima Miyuki, to varying degrees of success. By the end of the 13 episodes I had, they were officially dating but not before a number of slapping incidents and misunderstood make-ups. Wakamatsu Miyuki has also enrolled at school and is dealing with her own relationship trouble as well. Ryuichi is continually courting her, much to Masato's dismay and her homeroom teacher; Torao blatantly tries to court her affection. After a while Kashima Miyuki’s father Yasujiro, a police detective, begins to court Wakamatsu Miyuki, even though he is married and has a child.

     So this anime is interesting in the way it shows perceived stereotypes of lust and wanton abandon in Japan. You have the creepy single teacher who is trying to get with his underage student. Then you have the creepy police officer that is trying to get with an underage student. The police officer is the biggest example of this problem in Japan, where you have a middle aged, professional, family man, who is actively courting a high school student. He gives her rides around town, buys her gifts, fawns over her every chance he can get, and hides it all from his family. He even lies to Miyuki in the beginning and tells her that he reminds her of his long dead daughter, which causes him to work fast on his feet when Miyuki questions how she can look like someone who died when they were so young. Eventually Masato realizes who the dirty old man is but seems to only regard the situation as troublesome instead of dangerous.

 

 

The same is said with the teacher’s lust. With the teacher though, at one point you find out he is involved in an arranged marriage to a woman named, you guessed it, Miyuki. Due to a misunderstanding on his part, when he though he was confessing to the younger Miyuki, he blurts out he will marry her and the two are set to be wed. On the last day of bachelorhood he convinces Miyuki Wakamatsu to go on a date with him, so he can savor that which will never have and start fresh with his bride. After the date he goes to a yakitori stand to drown his misery in sake and happens to share the stand with his soon to be father in law. In a drunken rage they fight after he complains that he is marrying an ugly older woman and the wedding is canceled, leaving the teacher to pursue his student once again.

The way this series handles the problems of adult men lusting for teenage girls is both troublesome and understandable given the age of the series. It shows such situations pretty realistically with the exception of the extent of the danger. While all of the characters are cautious and warm against the vultures, it is done with out any real sense of danger or concern. Masato has more concern for his sister hanging out with his classmate Ryuichi than he does with the pedophile cop. If this series were being produced now we would see the situation shown in a different, darker light. Yet this story came out in a more innocent age in anime, where nothing can totally go wrong and everything is clean and friendly to some extent. I won’t know for sure until I watch the rest of the series or read the manga but there is a slight possibility of their being a dark and sinister moment in the series that shows the dangers of pedophile men. I say there is a slight chance of this due to the author who doesn’t always paint a rosy picture, as with the main plot device in Touch, but I don’t see that happening. That would have caused a major stir in Japan during the early 80’s. Instead it was acceptable to playfully show some dirty old men being dirty but clean.

 

 

Miyuki is an old series. It is dated and the animation is low quality by today’s standards. The characters are goofy and fall into stereotypes similar to series of the same period, like Urusei Yatsura. If you are a fan of the 80’s romances, try and check this one out, it’s really hard to find and almost impossible in it’s entirety from what I can see in English. The manga is also incredibly hard to find as it only came out in Japan and I have not been able to find a scanlation version. Luckily, I could easily end the series after the 13 episodes, because the 13^th one brings us back to Ryuichi’s beach business and we can get a glimpse of a possible answer to which Miyuki ends up with whom. Yet since I know there is more, I want to watch more. If you want to deal with a similar series and not run into the hassle of not being able to finish it, track down Touch instead.

UPDATE: This series is still not and will never be licensed in North America.  It is too old and there is too little interest in it.  I will continue to try and find it in fansub form but have little hope in being successful.