Five hundred people have probably posted about this, but let me make it 501.
I love this image. love it. It’s one of the two images in the ED that are the most telling, because they aren’t promoting themselves–it was taken by the Nishigori triplets–and they don’t seem to realize they’ve been caught.
If you’re not aware, body care like this in Japan is a BIG DEAL because it’s something married couples do. One of the most enduring images of domesticity in Japan is, strangely, a wife in seiza with her husband’s head in her lap while she cleans the earwax from his ears.
So this is meant to reflect a similar quiet, matrimonial domesticity–one party caring for the other’s health and cleanliness in an intimate act of touching.
The expressions on their face, the lack of any light save perhaps a lantern or hearth, the shadows and the concentration and that bliss we’re all aware of when someone massages our head or brushes our hair, like a parent might with a child.
We’re absolutely supposed to take it that way. And I love that one of the most suggestive images in the entire series so far lacks any sexual overtones whatsoever.
