Haruka and Michiru: a portrait in one panel.
I was just thinking earlier how much I love the direction in this scene. It is perfect, and reflects their entire future dynamic with such painful accuracy.
I can’t help but feel the way this scene starts off carries a certain sexual undertone. Okay, it might be me just reading too deeply into things, but– Haruka looks down and sees Michiru, below her, on the floor, sitting down. Legs curled below her, hands placed daintily in her lap, her dress spilling on the floor around her. She looks up with Haruka and speaks with the most delicate of smiles and the sweetest tone of voice. The spot she’s sitting in, too – though she set this all up in attempt to corner Haruka into speaking with her, she is physically the one who’s cornered, while Haruka is able to simply turn and walk away at any moment. Michiru is the perfect image of feminine passivity right now, she is all submission. She is offering herself up.
That, she’s definitely doing on purpose. She planned this all in advance, hanging the painting here, waiting for Haruka to come. Because she already gets Haruka so fucking thoroughly. Approaching her head-on like her last attempt got her nowhere – Haruka doesn’t like feeling chased down, Haruka doesn’t like feeling like she doesn’t hold the power. So Michiru gives it to her. Look. You have all the power here. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Won’t you please talk to me? Almost the same way you’d approach a frightened animal.
But it’s quickly made apparent that it’s no use. Nothing will steer Haruka from her way of thinking. Haruka doesn’t want anything to do with this, and Michiru’s desperate attempts of reaching out to her have no effect. Michiru gets angry. She’s done playing coy. She gets up on her feet, looks Haruka square in the eye, drops the honey-coated tone and starts yelling.
The thing is, the gap remains. Even with Michiru standing up, Haruka is towering high over her. And this obvious difference in power is much less intentional on Michiru’s end, now, and kind of tragically indicative of their entire relationship. Michiru can’t reach Haruka. I think, from the start, she’s been putting her on a sort of pedestal, and even though she didn’t express it outwardly so explicitly, it still fed into Haruka’s ego quite a lot. I think that’s how they ended up with the present dynamic they have in S – in this episode, in Haruka’s vision, Michiru is a goddess. And when Haruka sees her fight for the first time, holds her in her arms while she bleeds, that vision seems to sync up with reality. She sees so much strength in Michiru, and her admiration for her, her feeling that she needs to match up to her and pay her back for all she’s done for her– that’s what finally drives her to stop running and accept her destiny.
I think Haruka’s early feelings were definitely I need to become strong enough to be her equal. I want to become someone she can rely on, in turn. And Michiru realized that, and she encouraged that. Because she needed Haruka to become strong, first and foremost, and because god knows she wants nothing more than to make Haruka feel fulfilled – and combined with her inherent feelings of admiration for her and inferiority in comparison, well. She just kept feeding onto Haruka’s desire to be perceived as someone strong and capable until Haruka started seeing herself as too strong and capable. To the point where she feels she’s justified in writing off Michiru’s expressions of uncertainty and doubt. To the point where she doesn’t notice anything wrong with Michiru always hovering in the background, never taking the lead. Michiru is the passive one. Haruka is the dominant one. That’s the way it’s always been, right? It’s only natural, right?
Even now, when Michiru tries to reach out to her – ‘are you sure we should be doing this, is this really the only way’ – there is the gap.
That’s how they’ve ended up in this heartwrenchingly unbalanced dynamic that took until Stars for them to break out of.
And it all started out from this scene.
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