THE NIGHT BEYOND THE TRICORNERED WINDOW EPISODE 7 REVIEW — ATONEMENT

Hello! Welcome to another week of Tricornered with me. Hopefully, you had a pleasant, relaxing weekend and were able to recharge to grind through another week. As for me, I’ve finally reunited with my home. Specifically, my bed. I made it sound like I was away for months while it was a mere 2.5 days, but I’m such a homebody that even spending a night away feels like forever.

But you’re here to read my thoughts on this episode and not to listen to my undying love for my bed. To provide a quick summary; this episode wraps up the ending of the previous episode where Erika cursed Hanzawa’s wife. Erika had some introspection and facing-the-consequences to do, and all this talking and affirmation were words Hiyakawa needed to hear as well. My favorite psychic Miura joins in on the rest to smooth out the plans to get rid of this ‘sensei’, who continues the legacy Hiyakawa’s mother had established with the Palm of the Hand RS. It’s almost spelled out who the sensei is, and we also get crumbs of jokes that lighten up the mood.

At some early point, I had to stop reading the manga both because I had to watch my spending and I didn’t have time to read it anyway. Right when I thought to myself “Oh we started doing those weird jumps again,” I saw this tweet, and looks like they are going to jam all 10 volumes into one cour. I didn’t expect a second season, but I thought maybe Tricornered would follow After the Rain as an example. After the Rain consists of 10 volumes as well, but the adaptation is focused more on relaying the message and characters’ stories than trying to squeeze every little thing without having space for the events to fully develop themselves. There were really important events that contributed greatly to both Kondou and Akira’s characters, but leaving them out during adaptation didn’t take away from the characterization or the narrative. Going at this comparison just by numbers is probably wrong, as different genres demand different approaches, but I thought it would provide a basis.

The episode also continues the conversation on beliefs, the different forms they can take, and even if something you’ve been going through all your life might not be someone else’s reality, it’s still possible to gain strength from them, be respected, taken seriously, and find a middle ground. It was especially moving to see that this compassion she was seeking didn’t come from someone similar to Erika (Hiyakawa) but Hanzawa’s wife. Sometimes there’s too much focus on the “sameness” being a prerequisite to understanding what someone else’s going through that we start to dismiss that even if the feeling or belief comes from a different source than ours, it might take us to the same ending point and enable us to form the same connection.

I’ve previously mentioned I was curious about how Hiyakawa’s past would be revealed to Mikado and how he’d react. Thankfully it’s not a sob story on full blast and instead, a conflict between Mikado’s conscious and his desire the Google the sh*t out of Hiyakawa. His curiosity comes out victorious from the drawn-out battle, and even then, Mikado feels more sorry that he didn’t get consent from Hiyakawa more than what happened to him. That’s so like Mikado, and I love him for that.

His Google’ing session comes to a halt when Erika and Sasaki burst into the office to threaten Mikado for ratting them out to Hanzawa. What follows is something any seasoned anime fan could foresee: her redemption and resolve. That’s why rather than the obvious, I want to talk about something else. Historically speaking, as some of you may know, BL has emerged from shoujo titles and was published in shoujo magazines before it became a genre of its own. And as any demography/genre, the editors and artists have targeted readers in mind. For BL, the people that publishers had in mind were cis women, and having female characters in the story, for reasons, meant that the fantasy world was being disrupted. This belief sometimes comes from the artists themselves, or at times, imposed by the editor. There have been several works where I was reading the afterword part in a manga where the artist shared their sentiment in wanting to develop a certain female character, but the editor insisted that this is a BL and the female character(s) should stay in the background and that was the course the artist took. Thus women in BL usually end up either as a family member, a supporting friend, or a mere tool to provide misunderstanding/conflict for the main couple.

Of course, times are changing, and one of the reasons why Yamashita Tomoko’s works were so dear to me was that they didn’t ignore women as their own characters and placed them accordingly. One of my favorite BL one-shots from them is A Wizard’s Pupil, in Je T’aime Cafe Noir, where a high school girl befriends a “crazy man” who is actually just someone that makes picture books and focuses on their conversation on the past regrets and love. Circling back to Tricornered, while it may not seem like a big deal to some of you who don’t read BL, but having Erika so central to the story feels really nice. Not only that, but I think at this point Erika and Sasaki’s dynamics, especially Sasaki’s protectiveness and fondness of Erika are clear. Having a -future- heterosexual couple, again in an important position in the narrative, feels refreshing. And it’s quite the change. How it’s handled in the adaptation is another discussion, of course.

Oops, I sidetracked once again and talked less about the episode, and rambled more. I’d like to say I’m happy that Mikado, despite struggling with his ‘gift of vision’ and wasn’t able to explicitly tell his mother about what he’s been going through, still grew up in a supporting and loving household. That, in turn, enabled him to extend a helping hand when Erika -and partly Hiyakawa- had doubts about themselves and failed to recognize that their circumstances don’t necessarily need to define who they are. Also a big hug to Hanzawa and Mukae for simply existing. Add Mikado’s mother to the equation, you have my favorite characters.

This is all I have for this week! What did you think about the episode? What do you think Hiyakawa’s plans are with the Palm of the Hand group that’s trying to resurface? What do you think Mikado’s reactions will be when he confronts the ‘sensei’, if he is to uncover the truth behind it all? Let me know in the comments, and have a nice week ahead!