Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl/Headscratchers

Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl

• Why doesn't Yasuna get psychiatric treatment for her inability to see men?
  • It's quite possible, being Japan, that she didn't seek help because of social stigma. She comes from a quite affluent family who might have felt it better to just whistle and hope it goes away. Of course being a lesbian has more of a social stigma, but whatever.
  • I can't speak for the anime, but in the manga, it appears to be a physical condition anyway. Not that they really explain it beyond the obvious.
    • It's Truth in Television and called Prosopagnosia. It's very, very rare, and based on a physiological defect in the brain. Sufferers can have fairly normal lives, by learning to other distinctive cues to tell one person from another. The manga stretches it to where she can't see male faces, where true Prosopagnosia is the inability to recognize faces as distinct, so there's still that, but the way it's portrayed as affecting a young woman is entirely believable if you can take it as Acceptable Break From Reality.
  • I'm wondering how this would work with traps like Bridget. Or with characters who can switch back and forth between the genders, like Ranma ½? Or characters with an unknown gender (Crona), or who happen to be both genders at once (the manga version of Envy)?
• Near the end, when Yasuna loses her ability to see women as well, can she see herself?
  • The aliens described the blindness as a lack of empathy/caring about others. Emphasis on the others. You could assume she can see herself, you don't need empathy to be self aware.
  • This is all an anime-only plot, probably just to make it so Yasuna is not really a lesbian , guys! She just can't see them and thus can't date them!! In the manga, she has no such problem and is pretty open about what she is.
    • She does have the same problem in the manga. The question is whether it's the cause of her sexual preference or rather the other way around. She appears to be a genuine lesbian to this troper, since she swoons over Tomari a few times too—and of course there is nothing wrong with that in and of itself.
• If Sora and Jan-Puu have the technology to raise the dead, why is it a problem to put Hazumu back to the same state as the beginning? Or, if the gender switch was intentional as part of an experiment, doesn't Hazumu get a vote?
  • This gets some further explanation in the manga: Hazumu has effectively run out of the "fate gene" as a boy, so the aliens had to change the gender to save him. Alas, the new solution limits Hazumu's life-span enormously, until she finds a "donor". Yes, it's contrived, but it's better than nothing, I guess.
    • Or in different terms, he was "fated" to die from some cause when the spaceship landed on him, killing him. If the spaceship hadn't squashed him flat, it would have been some other thing. Thus as mentioned, the gender change gave the aliens a chance to give him more life out of a sense of obligation for having killed him instead of going "oh well, we squished him but he was going to die anyway."
  • They did it for the lulz.
  • They needed an easy source for the DWAMAAAAAAAA~!!!!!
  • Well, as I interpreted the anime, the whole setup was specifically engineered to try and cure Yasuna, as a test to see if the aliens could be similarly cured. Which means the collision was not really an accident, but an excuse to rebuild Hazumu. And they're certainly not going to tell Hazumu it could be reversed in that case.
• The aliens. I don't know what it is, but something about them just rubs me the wrong way. Maybe I just prefer the normal plot. Maybe they just feel tacked on (though I know they aren't). They just bug me, for some reason.
  • It's probably the yellow spandex.
  • Also, they don't blend in particularly well with the rest of the cast. In literary snob-lingo: their dramatic function is not compatible, causing ill-defined interactions. But who cares, when you can have a story about a Love Triangle between devastingly cute Schoolgirl Lesbians.
    • Perhaps they serve as an Exposition device to describe human relationships from an outsider's point of view.
• Why did Hazumu choose Tomari in the manga? Tomari just seemed to pop out of nowhere in the manga. She didn't have much romantic development with Hazuma, unlike Yasuna.
  • This could be because despite the romantic development, Yasuna employs a crappy Ass Pull disease to MAKE Hazumu choose her.
    • Only in the anime. In the manga, Yasuna never went through all of that huge angst breakdown, must be loved OR ELSE stuff.
  • Hazumu and Yasuna seemed to actually have had a good relationship too.
  • Tomari could also be lesbian and simply not have felt anything romantic for Hazumu until he turned into a girl.
  • It could be First Girl Wins
  • The way I look at it is Yasuna fell in love with Hazumu because she became a girl while Tomari loved her in spite of it
  • Tomari flat out says, "I love you because you are you."
• The anime OVA. It's one big Non Sequitur Scene. Plus what was with Yasuna's reason for dumping Hazumu? It went against everything that happened beforehand.
  • Yasuna claims she wants to be independent and not having to rely on someone else. Of course, being in a relationship does not mean you have to give that up, especially not with someone like Hazumu, who seems to be pretty flexible and relaxed. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it looks like they needed an excuse for the switch in the OVA.
• Hazumu. Did her face get larger / rounder or something? I mean, how did she go from permanent hair over eyes to them not covering them? Plus, what happened to her personality? In the flashbacks and first episode she seemed nervous, quiet, and a bit..Whiny at times. She became all peppy and open all of a sudden.
  • Having two cute girls chase you can give you a tremendous boost in confidence.
    • Before that. As in, right after she woke up.
• How did Hazumu and Tomari get married for real in the OVA? They seem like fourteen - sixteen year olds unless they're Older Than They Look.
  • They didn't. It's all symbolic. I guess they're about 17 or so, and you can marry in Japan at that age—but unfortunately same-sex marriages are not legal there.
    • Well, whoever said they legally got married?
• Does Tomari have a little brother?
  • Yes. He was mentioned in the manga but never appeared in person, to the best of my knowledge.
  • There is a fairly lengthy conversation where Hazumu admits to being jealous of Tomari's new baby brother—Hazumu wanted to be Tomari's little brother, and this also meant that Tomari wouldn't be only with him anymore.
• Did no one notice the Non Sequitur Scene in the manga Book 3, during the field games, that involved several male atheletes being eaten by various species of reptile for exactly one page? No one seems to think it was in any way wierd, neither the characters in the manga nor any of my friends I pointed it out to.
• In the OVA is is heavily implied that Tomari and Hazumu weren't on speaking terms after Hazumu chose Yasuna. Why? At least in the manga everybody remains friends.
  • If Hazumu and Tomari had remained friends, their getting together would also have made a lot more sense. Heck, they could even have spent several episodes with Tomari getting to grips with the fact she's still in love with Hazumu, instead of having Hazumu chase after a disgruntled Tomari.