I wish I could make a gif set to do this scene justice. This scene, Nikaido Fumi’s tone of voice and pacing and facial expressions, the music, it was all amazing and everything she said struck a little too close to home for me. Sorry this is so long, but I think every bit is important!
During an interview, Nitta Yumi finds herself admitting that she is pretty useless. The interviewer, surprised, asks “Then what are you?”
Her answer:
”I am green. In preschool, there was an anime called Sailor Moon. In the preschool yard, we would often make believe that we were in Sailor Moon, but everyone would pick Sailor Moon or Sailor Mercury, and I would always pick the leftover Sailor Jupiter, whose image color was green. There was a particular order to the colors. Other girls would be in charge of picking red or pink, and I was always in charge of picking green. By picking, I really mean pretending to pick. I was always in awe of those who so frankly picked red or pink. How many lives have you lived? This is still my first life, so I can’t bring myself to say that I want the red one. In the anime, Sailor Moon would fight her enemies, but when we would make believe, we would fight each other. I learned that this was called something different when I became an adult. A woman’s enemy is other women, and because I have been losing from the start, when other girls would pick fashion or love, I picked studying. I didn’t like it, but because it was left over, I picked studying. When I got accepted to college (she went to Tokyo University), my family and friends praised me, but it always came with an underlying tone of “You’re different for a girl”. When I started working, I thought that I could persevere at what I like, but there was a training on tape printing machines - there was a training on tape printing machines only for female employees - and a coworker said “When men win, they are loved by women, but when women win, they stopped being loved by men. Women should abandon winning and losing; the first time a woman triumphs is when she is picked by a man.” What? Then I can never win during my lifetime. Because I’m green. I wish red and green and pink would all be black, I wish there was a black Sailor Moon…And because I didn’t want to see myself like this, I would look down on and look up to many things, many people…but recently, I began working part-time at a restaurant…
- Nitta Yumi, Mondai no Aru Restaurant Episode 04
I love the brutally honest discussion and portrayal of sexism and gender roles this drama brings up. I love that female characters like Nitta Yumi can express how their self-esteem and self-value is so tightly bound by the male-dominant society around them, and how women continue to push each other down when the real enemy isn’t and shouldn’t be each other. But the drama is also clear that the real enemy isn’t simply “men” - it’s the idea that men are superior to women that is so consciously and unconsciously ingrained in both genders, whether they agree with it or not.
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