12 Days of Anime--#8: Haru Snaps

I still can't watch this without wanting to give him a hug.


I touched on this moment when I was blogging the series, but I feel like it was glossed over by fans of the show. I saw a lot of statements on Twitter and Tumblr to the effect of "omg he's yandere" and I don't think that's what happened here. Condensing it down to an anime archetype is easy to do, but it's not reflective of what really happened. All things considered, the lead-up to him screaming at Yuki (and getting a slap in return) is probably the biggest moment for Haru's character.

To avoid repeating myself, I'm going to pull a bit from my post on episode 9:

When I say snapped, I meant he finally got serious. He (potentially) lost something that was important enough to him that he decided that he wasn't going to screw around anymore or hide. If he can't stop the dragon, then he can at least protect the people he cares about who are left. If that means acting like a jerk, feigning hatred, and breaking his promise to not use the mind control water gun to get people off the island and away from danger, so be it.

And in that split-second shot when he hears Yuki's voice and realizes that he'd failed, my heart broke for him. At its core, Tsuritama was a show about friendship, and a huge chunk of Haru's character development revolved around him realizing that his original plan was the best one, and that he can trust the people around him. And that moment of realization happened in this scene. It's an awesome moment, and a great example of the layers of nuance Tsuritama used in its characterization.

It's okay... Just got something in my eye...

Images from Crunchyroll.com.