(I apologize for the grainy photo. I'll add better photos once I get my computer back.)Just imagine yourself attending this high school in a place some distance away from your home town. You have been allocated a room in a two storey dormitory house. Here, you stay together with a few others who attend the same school and would have your meals together. You and the others take turns to do the household chores and do the cooking. Doesn't this feel like... pure youth? Indeed, youth is a point or stage in life when people don’t mind the fuss and inconvenience of staying together and helping each other with the household chores. This kind of youthfulness can be clearly and deeply felt and seen in the ongoing anime series of Sakurasou no Pet na Kanoujo.Some may have realise by this point that the feeling of youthfulness as described above is not really a rare theme in animes. In fact it is sometimes overused to the point it becomes piecemeal and predictable. A classic example of an anime which goes deeply into this theme and leaves a strong impression into its viewers is none other than Honey & Clover (also Hachikuro). In fact, Honey & Clover went a step further by going into adulthood at the end of the story from a humble youthful beginning. In this article I am reviewing not Honey & Clover but Sakurasou no Pet na Kanoujo. Nevertheless, the similarities between the two shows are so striking that I couldn’t help but do a comparison of the two.In Hachikuro, we have Yuuta Takemoto, Takumi Mayama and Shinobu Morita living together in an old, worn out apartment complex whilst attending art college. In Sakurasou, we have protagonist Kanda Sorata being moved to Sakurasou, a school dormitory infamous for its less than sane occupants - Kamiigusa Misaki, a genius anime creator who is hyper most of the time; Mitaka Jin, a top student who is very good in writing essays and wants to be a playwright; Akasaka Ryuunosuke, a genius computer programmer and hacker; and finally Sengoku Chihiro-sensei, the dormitory teacher who is not only lazy, but is also an alcoholic. As he isn’t allowed to keep pets at his then dormitory, Sorata was given two choices: to either throw away the stray cat he has picked up, or to move to Sakurasou with the cat. Sorata chose the latter and moved out of his old dorm and into Sakurasou. As a result, he would end up being known as an animal lover who sacrificed his life of sanity to keep stray cats as his pets. In a way, Sorata is more entitled to talk about animal rights than dear SW1M leader Sharifah Zohra Jabeen.Anyway, back on topic, there are a few major differences between the two animes. First of all is the age-group of the target audience: Hachikuro is listed as a josei (age 15 to 44) anime whilst Sakurasou obviously targets teenagers. As a result, while both animes (age 13 to 18) have certain elements like jealousy, envy, admiration and love triangles, Hachikuro deals with these elements in more detail and seriousness while in Sakurasou it is just touch and go. The second difference is that of the art style and the music. Hachikuro gives a more gloomy and serious kind of atmosphere while Sakurasou gives its audiences a more cheerful and bright kind of scenery. To compare, Hachikuro is like brown and olive green while Sakurasou is more pink and light purple. Both anime is comedic, but as far as laughter goes, Sakurasou wins hands down. Hachikuro’s kind of gags are more of serious gags which makes you think deeply before attempting to laugh, while Sakurasou’s gags are, well, gags which makes you laugh out loud. Not to say Hachikuro is any bad, but as far as cheerfulness is concerned, Sakurasou is more cheerful.Back to Sakurasou, as mentioned above, Sorata was forced to move into Sakurasou after refusing to abandon a stray cat. Shortly after Sorata moved in into Sakurasou, a transfer student by the name of Shiina Mashiro moved in as well. As Mashiro is the niece of Chihiro-sensei, it would seem only natural that she would be placed in the infamous dormitory filled with geeks that nobody wanted to move in. Little did Sorata knew that this girl would have a big impact on his aimless life as a student. Mashiro seemed to be a person who is unable to take care of her own basic needs. She does not know how to cook, nor does she know how to wash her own laundry, and neither does she dries her own hair. She goes stark naked while painting or working on her manga in her room, and does not feel embarrassed about it, or is totally unaware that she should be. As a result, Chihiro-sensei and the others held a dormitory meeting and unanimously made the decision to assign Sorata the “Mashiro Duty”, i.e. he would have to help her with all these basic things. To Sorata, Mashiro is only trouble, not that he would hate her for that, and rather, the opposite is more accurate. The way Sorata had to take care of her every chore made Mashiro seem like she is his pet girl, and thus the title of the anime “The Pet Girl of the Sakura Dormitory”.However soon enough, Sorata found out that Mashiro is an amazing painter who painted expensive portraits while living and studying abroad. He realised that everyone else in the dormitory other than him had a very special talent, and that he’s the only “normal” person, and even the helpless Mashiro is someone of a different world in terms of talent. As a result, he forced himself to take on game programming seriously in order not to lose to the others, and improve himself in the same time. He asked and was given some guidance from Ryuunosuke as to the programming of a game. Soon, he even set a target to enter a college to study game programming.As people grow up, they become more and more matured in that they start to become selfish towards themselves. They learn about how they can become tired of having to deal with a large group of people. They soon realise that they would prefer to stay with only one person, i.e. a partner, under one roof. It is sooner or later that people leave dormitories to find/start their own family, but to put it simply, to stay with friends in a dormitory in school is indeed a valuable experience which can only be obtained at a certain stage of life. You get to learn about how human beings are and how they react to certain things. These are experience that you won’t get in textbooks, but at the same time is important so that you can deal with society when you go out there after your formal education in high school, college or university. Stories like Sakurasou and Hachikuro shows the life of students in dormitory, but sooner or later all these students will each go their own way and the story ends there. But it does not mean that it all ends. Life goes on at another stage of life, but as far as we are concerned, that is to be discussed at another time.
Read the rest of this entry Entry meta