Note: This is a delayed post from 15 May 2007I was thinking of writing something for Mothers’ Day yesterday. As I was having my haircut at a barbershop in Donggonggon earlier before dinner, the idea of writing about Asa’s mother, Ama, happened to suddenly strike me like a blast of lightning. Indeed, I have been planning to write about them for the past few days since I have finished watching Shuffle!. Somewhat, it happened to be a coincidence that Mother’s Day had been around the corner. I was thinking of choosing several mothers like Akiko-san from Kanon or Yuji’s mother from Shana to write about, but as I made some deep thoughts and considerations, I finally came to the conclusion that I should better let Ama have the entire spotlight alone, for once, at least. She had been through a lot being a single mother of a sickish, spoiled child. Funny, I don’t know whether this should be a pun or this was done intentionally, but doesn’t ‘Ama’ sound like ‘Ah Ma’?Although I do wish you could, I’d warn you not to continue reading on if you haven’t watch the ending part of Shuffle!. Major spoilers of the anime would surface. You have been warned. *a no entry signpost to those who haven’t watch episode 23 and episode 24*Now now, where should I start telling the story?Maybe I should start with the history of the Yggdrasil cloning project. So, what has Ama to do with the project? Well, in fact, she was the first ever one to volunteer as the test subject to be cloned. That’s right. We’ve heard that the first experiment went berserk and the whole laboratory as well as the test subject went *kaboom* and evaporated. The lab did disappear, but the truth is, the test subject survived, and ended up in the human world. She was badly hurt, naked without any clothing on and was covered in blood. Back then, nobody knew demons existed. Luckily, she was rescued by a man, a man who was strong, a man who could protect her, a man who was about to change her life forever. She and the man finally got married and had a child. The baby girl was given the name, Asa. When Ama told Rin the whole story, she said that it was better if she had died then. She couldn’t see her future and her everyday life in the Demon World was a struggle, and that was why, she wanted to become the test subject. The experiment failed because the researchers had tried to force too much magic powers into her body and she wasn’t able to withstand it. Back to Asa, she was admitted into the hospital after she suddenly fainted after helping Rin move to his new home. Doctors claim that that was their first time seeing symptoms like hers and wasn’t able to do anything to better the situation. Ama told Rin that Asa was a normal human and not demon like she was. But however, Asa inherited two traits, one of them was Ama’s magic which was strengthened by the experiments, and the other one, a human body which wasn’t strong enough to contain it. The magic power from her body was starting to overflow, but her body wasn’t able to handle the strain. That was the main reason why Asa would fall sick every now and then, until she was finally hospitalised. Ama said that there was only one way to cure Asa, and the way was to convince Asa use magic. However, she admitted that it was also the hardest way...Asa probably didn’t realise what her mother had been through... No, wait. Come to think of it, she was actually fully aware of it. She got to know about the whole story the rough way. Asa had been a spoiled little girl. She didn’t seem to have any respect for her mother at all. She had always been blaming her mother, asking why she had given birth to her with such a weak body. Unhappy with her condition, she even said that if she knew that she had to go through so much pain, she’d rather not be born. Ama wanted to keep the whole thing as a secret to herself, but couldn’t help herself revealing what she really was. She revealed her demon’s ears to her daughter as she told her that it was because she was a demon and not human like she always thought she would be. She told her about the magic that she had received from the experiment where she had passed on to her. Asa was stunned to hear about the sad story and she felt shameful of herself for treating her mother poorly when there’s a reason behind her weak body. Ever since then, she treated her mother better even though she would become sickish every now and then. Now that if I were to compare Akiko-san or Yuji’s mother to Ama, I can see a vast difference in between them. I used to think that Ama’s only reason for existence was to assist her daughter in capturing Rin’s heart (most mothers in harem animes would), but now, after being revealed with all these touching scenes, I am starting to respect Ama a lot. A whole lot more than mothers from other anime series. My salute to you, Ama!Well, last but not least, here’s a late “Happy Mother’s Day” to all mothers out there who are reading this. Don’t blame me for this delayed update as it is unavoidable. This should end my Shuffle! rambling for a while, and I might do an overall scoring of the anime before I officially burn and zip up the Shuffle! episodes into my disc holder.
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