Aoi Bungaku
This anime has been staring at me from my plan to watch for at least 8 years since it begins with "a" and is always the first one to show up. I had no idea what I was in for, and I was pleasantly surprised! Aoi Bungaku consists of 12 episodes, divided into 5 adaptations of Japanese modern literature classics. "No Longer Human" by Osamu Dazai, "Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees" by Ango Sakaguchi, "Kokoro" by Natsume Soseki, "Run, Melos!" by Osamu Dazai, "Spider's Thread" and "Hellscreen" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Each story has a different artstyle, and the character designs were provided by big names (especially at the time it came out) like Takeshi Obata and Tite Kubo.
All of the stories were written in a ~30 year period after the first world war and as such most of them deal with the concept of fast arriving modernity vs. tradition which reflects the general vibe in Japan at the time. Well I'm simplifying it a bit but that seems to be the most common theme along with an individual's stance towards his nation, loneliness, love and regret.
Out of the five, I enjoyed Kokoro and No Longer Human the most. Kokoro I believe was the most uniquely presented story (all of them take a lot of liberties with the story - of course since they're so short! I've seen people get all negative about it which I don't get), consisting of two episodes that retell the same events but from different perspectives. The two perspectives are entirely different - even the environment and the weather seasons, which reflect the inner worlds of the two protagonists. I think the two episodes take a different direction from the original work (I never read it, but I did have it summarized to me at some point) and put their own spin on it but in the most meaningful and interesting way.
Complete spoiler about Kokoro below, where I talk about the plot and character impressions:
So the story revolves around Sensei, who is the main protagonist in the book, K, his frighteningly stoic and strange friend whom he invites to live with him in the boarding house and whose perspective we get to see in the second episode, Ojousan - the girl they both fell in love with and lastly Ojousans mother, the lady who rents them the rooms.
From the first episode we get the impression that Sensei is kind and a bit awkward and indecisive, while K is scary, imposing, almost like a feral animal. All of K's interactions with Ojousan in the first episode are like something from an ugly bastard NTR hentai storyline and Sensei gets angry that K is stealing his love interest away from him so he decides to finally confess to her. K ends up talking with Ojousans mother about how she purposefully set K and Ojousan up to make Sensei confess his feelings as he was too indecisive before. This breaks K's heart and he kills himself. Sensei ends up marrying Ojousan.
In the second episode the story is a bit different. K is actually shy, awkward and kind while Sensei is cunning, annoying and is low-key flaunting his wealth status over K who is poor. The part about Ojousan being set up with K is true, but as we know it seems her mother was goading her to do it to make Sensei jealous. Despite that she ends up actually falling in love with K and urges him to run away with her and to meet up at the train station before it's too late. As K is getting ready to leave to the train station, he has the talk with Ojousans mom. In this episode she says things differently. She tells him he should plan on moving out to make room for the newlyweds, teasing him. Sadly, it seems like it was too late and Ojousan never managed to come as Sensei probably proposed to her at this point. K comes back to the boarding house and kills himself.
I was unsurprised, but still disappointed to see people blaming Ojousan for being a thot heartbreaker or whatever. This was clearly your typical wrong place wrong time love story (between K and Ojousan) which ended sadly. A lot of people complained about how the episodes aren't just from different perspectives, but are entirely visually different with a lot of differing dialogue too. But frankly, I enjoyed it. I watched this under the assumption that the first episode, being from Sensei's POV, obviously couldn't have objectively and accurately retold moments where sensei wasn't present (like the few moments between K and Ojousan where he looks like a creepy fucker) and the convo between K and the mother. It's not rare to see people have low media literacy but maaan. Disappoints me nonetheless. The visual differences were also great representations of inner worlds, mental states, whatever. It was a good touch.
All of the other adaptations were also pretty good, but haven't left too lasting of an impression. Still I recommend you give the whole thing a watch.
