Today on: Overanalysis with Sanchari
You guys remember that anime Ramayana? There’s this clip right after Kaikeyi’s boons are granted and announced where Sita and Lakshmana tell Rama they’re coming too. What I like about it is that they both do it while taking off their ornaments, which obviously symbolises them giving up their status/lives as royalty.
But the difference is in how they do it - Sita takes off earrings neatly, one after the other, and setting them down, all as she explains her reasoning: they are married, the husband’s fate and duties are the wife’s too, and so on. Lakshmana goes after her and his approach is markedly different: he has only one line, that the same soul should share the same fate too (referencing Rama’s earlier statement that Lakshmana is “part of [him]”), which he follows up by grabbing hold of his necklace and yanking on it once, hard enough that the string snaps and the beads go scattering all over the floor.
And I liked the way the makers did that scene, because obviously they were pressed for time - the movie is maybe one and a half to two hours long and condenses almost the entire epic - but in this clip of only a couple of minutes they draw all three characters so well. Rama accepts his fate (seemingly) easily, gracefully, without conflict - we start the scene as he is already folding away his old royal clothes. Lakshmana and Sita, it’s made clear, both love him very dearly, as evidenced by their decision, but they are very different people: Sita is thoughtful, arguments thought out, reasoning clear, mind obviously made up by the time she actually lets Rama know of her decision.
Lakshmana isn’t like that - the breaking of the necklace illustrates that so neatly. He’s more impulsive, more swayed by emotion. His decision comes across as sudden, made in the moment - kind of unlike Sita’s - but when he takes off the jewellery he destroys it. You can’t un-break the thread and gather all the beads and string them back on to it. He’s stubborn, he will not be persuaded to go back on this choice now that he has made it, and he makes that clear essentially slamming the door shut as loudly as possible - through use of force and emotion.
This is not to say that anime Sita would agree to stay in Ayodhya based on her not wrecking her jewellery (“things cost money, Lakshmana!”), only that I feel like her approach, like I said above, would be very different.
(And although this next thing isn’t just an anime thing, I also like that Sita’s jewellery makes a comeback later in the Ramayana when she drops them from the pushpaka vimana as a clue to her whereabouts; I like to see that as evidence of presence of mind even in the face of high distress).
I don’t know, it’s just very well done, you know? I miss that movie what a little treasure it was.
