from the archives 2020: the tatami galaxy: i’m thinking of ending things
A very dear collaboration of Kaufman and Tomihiko Morimi.
4½ inch tatami is a pattern, if looked at minutely will gradually transform itself into a maze.A maze of infinite possibilities, realities and universes.
Tatami is basically a floor mat used in traditional Japanese households and was originally made of bamboo shoots.
Watashi, which literally translates to ‘I’ is the protagonist living in a square boarding house room looking for the rosy campus life and pursue dreams of his love with Akashi-San, a year junior studying in the Engineering department.
Akashi-San isn’t like any other heroine. Unlike ‘Lucy’ she knows how to say no; she’s a confident and smart woman, she knows what she is doing.
Her gutsiness is a welcome departure from the usual trope of manga heroines.
Ozu, a slippery and shady character, who delves in dualities and grey spaces of life has tied Watashi with the black threads of fate: pulling him down with him into a life of trouble, misery and monotony.
It is particularly an interesting concept; the red threads of fate is a common Japanese belief that 2 people destined to meet are tied by these red threads. It’s an omen of positivity, love and the auspicious. In contrast to the red threads of fate, the black threads do exactly the opposite and the stunning visual of a devil faced Ozu tightening his grip on Watashi and dragging him down to the mossy bottoms of Lake Biwa truly makes you realize the significance of ‘bad company’ in our lives.
The reason why I’ve put The Tatami galaxy and I’m thinking of ending things together is because of the similarities in its underlying thought processes. It’s a strange but humorous and chilly concoction of sanity(?), parallelism, frustration and a uniquely impersonal perception of Time.
Watching these one after the another has been such an enormous delight. Our tussles and struggles with inevitability, cyclical fate and awareness of death cut across barriers of language, culture and artistic/cinematic mediums.
A truly ingenious film.
A truly ingenious show.
