MISS DERMARK'S LITERARY RAMBLES: THROUGH A LOOKING-GLASS DARKLY

All right... Live from Gothenburg, the much expected Yukakira-centric episode that would become another Shakespearean-style review... and that provides as much food for thought as it releases endorphins, actually!

Kirakira Precure à la Mode
My Own Review
Episode 29

Beautiful and Exciting

Through a Looking-Glass Darkly

Dramatis personae:

Yukari Kotozume, a wistful heiress.
Akira Kenjo, a strong, earnest warrior.
Elysio, a feminine villain.
Yukari's Inner Child.
Shino Kotozume, matriarch of her clan, grandmother to Yukari.
Ciel Kirahoshi, an experienced pâtissière prodigy.
Customers, high-schoolers, primary-schoolers, three secondary-school KiraPâti employers.

Beauty... and... Excitement!
Let's la mazemaze!
Cure Macaron,
ready to serve!

Calligraphy, archery, piano, violin, foreign languages...

Remember when Cure Chocolat fought off Giulio, anyone?

MY OWN HUMBLE OPINION:
The feels, the feels, the feels, the feels, the FEEEEELS!!
You know what makes an OTP an OTP. You know the Good Book says precious metals are tried in the furnace and understand the metaphor. But this version takes it up to eleven...

The initial disagreement between introverted Yukari and far more outspoken Akira... Elysio and that mirror into the dark side of Yukari's heart... it gives me such Snow Queen vibes that I see it was no mistake at all to make a Macaron de Chocolat fusion with the fairytale. That mirror containing a hall of mirrors of a child Yukari trying her utmost to be perfect in every way to please her elders... and also the lonely inner child striving for recognition... Again, like the Prince to the Princess in the Fourth Story, winning her through his clever liveliness in the fated test-interview, and also like Othello and Desdemona to one another (she loved him for all of his misfortunes and her compassion made her heart be his), Akira sees Yukari for who she is as a person instead of for what she is as the Kotozume heiress. Warts and all.
But, overall, there is this Ralf-Hart-style ennui over Yukari that she is overcoming...
"And what about me? I have my creativity, I have my paintings, which are sought after by galleries all over the world, I have realised my dream, my village thinks of me as a beloved son, my ex-wives never ask me for alimony or anything like that, I have good health, reasonable looks, everything a man could want ... Do you know what loneliness is?
But you don't know what loneliness is like when you have the chance to be with other people all the time, when you get invitations every night to parties, cocktail parties, opening nights at the theatre ... When women are always ringing you up, women who love your work, who say how much they would like to have supper with you - they're beautiful, intelligent, educated women. But something pushes you away and says: 'Don't go. You won't enjoy yourself. You'll spend the whole night trying to impress them and squander your energies proving to yourself how you can charm the whole world. So I stay at home, go into my studio and try to find the light, and I can only see that light when I'm working."

Ralf Hart, world-renowned artist in his twenties, from a wealthy background in hinterland Francophone Switzerland (and my favourite Paulo Coelho character).

It's not hard to think of why Ralf Hart is my favourite Coelho character. Young, healthy, wealthy, renowned, artistic, intelligent... and still feeling empty, yearning for something more somewhere over the rainbow. Just like me. We are kindred spirits. Ralf is 29 going on 30, I am 23 going on 24. Both of us are only children from sheltered bourgeois backgrounds, with toys and books for friends (Ralf had his trains, I had my dolls and plushies), who have finally made it to have a social life thanks to their creative talent. Yes, Ralf Hart (like to put more examples: Cassio, Portia, the princess in Story the Fourth of The Snow Queen, Brienne of Tarth, Ada Goth, Luna Lovegood, Chamsous-Sabah, Oscar de Jarjayes, Jacinto [in Doña Perfecta]... add Yukari Kotozume to the list!) is a favourite of mine because I see myself reflected in that character. The words Ralf Hart says about his emotions and his past always bring me to tears. This passage in particular, if translated into French and put into verse, would make a great chanson.

There is a relevant verse from Christian sacred texts that can be applied to our oneesama's character arc, from which I took the title of this review (I'm referring to the significance of these verses not as religious text, but as inspirational literature that people of any faith or creed can identify with):
When I was a child, I thought as a child, I spoke as a child, I acted as a child. When I came of age, I cast aside all childish ways and childish things. Still today we see through a looking-glass darkly, but one day we shall see face to face. Now I know but in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. Only three things remain: faith, hope, and love. And greatest of these three is love.
(Coincidentally this "love" in the source text is agape, or unconditional love: ai in Japanese!)
As Yukari and her inner child debate: the darkness within will never fade away from any person, even though being in the light makes the sorrow stand out... Which reminds me of The Chasm of Confusion/Le gouffre aux chimères, coincidentally:
La douceur du printemps ne te semble agréable que pas qu'elle succède aux rigueurs de l'hiver. La lumière n'éxiste qu'en opposition a l'obscurité. La vie n'est précieuse que parce que la mort est inévitable. Toutes les choses possèdent son contraire. Ce sont les forces positives et négatives de l'univers qui s'équilibrent sans cesser.
(The warmth of springtime is less pleasant than the fact that it comes after a harsh winter. Light cannot exist if there isn't any darkness. Life is precious just because death is inevitable. Everything has its opposite. These are the positive and negative forces of the universe, endlessly balancing each other.)

Life's a great balancing act.

CATHARSIS. All this trial will leave you as purified as Yukari herself as she symbolically embraces her inner child, reconciling with her past self while defining her own pathway.
Catharsis is in Greek what Vishuddha is in Sanskrit: thorough purification, especially through fiction, be it literature or performance. To purify what we take in (through both our throats and our ears) as well as what we give out (through both our throats and our fingertips), to purify both our expressions and our impressions, to express ourselves freely yet not hurting anyone... mind where the freedom of the self ends and that of the other begins! Self-expressions of one's own feelings and enjoying the expression of others', held up as a mirror to our own self-impressions (the reason why we have favourite songs, plots, and characters!). We are free because we are able to choose right or wrong, those labels being relative of the context, and are not forced to take a stance against our will. Utter selflessness is as pernicious and as inhuman as utter selfishness. At throat chakra height we find Chesed (kindness, mercy) and Gevurah (force, severity), both pernicious extremes of these emanations flanking the middle ground like a metaphysical Scylla and Charybdis (the proverbial deadly opposites or "hell and highwater"). We can let our temptations rule us, we can let the system of society rule us, but the last word is our own at the end of the day.
Odin, the archetypal sage or mentor, had two raven familiars: a male called Hugin (thought: left-brained, logical, Gevurah) and a female called Munin (memory: right-brained, emotional, Chesed). Both of them are always mentioned together, as a twindividual. Our own eyes, ears, vocal folds are Odin's ravens, and not only because they come in pairs. "The Larynx was known as EHMH's Philosophers' Walk. The river of Trachea divided it between the False Cord Quarters (ventricular ligament) on the left bank and the True Cord (vocal lig.) on the sophisticated right." Like the Seine in its course through Paris or the Vltava through Prague, the entrance to the trachea is a middle path between the mirroring left and right sides (rive gauche, rive droite) of an impasse.
In spiral dynamics, the fifth stage of consciousness is the Modernist stage: scientific inquiry is freed from the dogma of the Church, the rising bourgeoisie gains influence over both the Crown and organised religion (neither sword, sceptre, nor cross rule the world: research and achievement do). Individualism, the idea of the self-made person, secular humanism, revolutions like the French one... but this stage maybe already began with the 30YW era, when the scales tipped against the Habsburgs. Maybe earlier than at Breitenfeld (Wallenstein being the epitome of self-made)? As this age of revolutions unfurled, dynastic states gave way to the free parent nation, la patrie that was the new France. This stage quite obviously corresponds to the fifth chakra at the throat and to self-expression.
So where both Chesed and Gevurah are placed flanking this ideal? These two extremes, like (never a better example!) Romanticism and the Enlightenment, are a product of the self-same freedom attained by achievement. In the French Revolution, the head-chopping (!) left-wing Red Terror was worse than the monarchy; and the right-wing White Terror of the Directory, when the exiles returned and killed innocent commoners in revenge, was worse than the Red Terror. The circle of violence spins on and on in any epoch of conflict, no matter if the oppressors are far-rightists or far-leftists. Tyranny or anarchy, utter power or utter mercy, all take or all give, the dream of the right or that of the left, Gevurah or Chesed: this impasse is very hard to get through, but we are all, no matter if rulers or ruled, tasked with navigating it and finding the middle ground.
Anyway, let's stop rambling and get to our OTP, which, like any good OTP, shows the middle way through this impasse towards vishuddha/catharsis!
And the battle, Chocolat carrying Macaron as a bridegroom would carry the bride... and those dance steps they carried out... my craving for fight-or-flight reactions is as satisfied as my craving for existential philosophy.

Chesed and Gevurah (kindness and severity), aestheticism and realism,
give and take, detachment and friendliness,
consummating their marriage through chant and dance.

No life can escape being blown about
by the winds of change and chance,
and, though you never know all the steps...
you must learn to join the dance...

Anyway, next up is yet another review in the same Shakespearean tone, for the spotlight has shifted to our resident bifauxnen, the other half of our OTP! It appears that Elysio will capture our faint-hearted little girl as a lure for her older sister... I wonder if Yukari's sang-froid will temper Akira's impulsive way of doing things, especially when Miku is on the line...

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