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Information

• Member: Rorschach
• Studio: Shoestring Films Inc.
• Title: Impossible Request
• Premiered: 2009-10-26
• Categories:
  • Drama
  • Serious
  • Romance
• Song:
  • Alison Krauss Forget About It
• Anime:
  • Strawberry Eggs (I My Me!)
• Comments: I had not originally intended to make an I My Me Strawberry Eggs AMV; I was working with the new Vampire Knight series, and just happened to get distracted. What got me interested in IMMSE is that I heard from others it was a lot like another one of my favorite series, Onegai Teacher, but with all the roles reversed and a cross-dressing masquerade (a la Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie") thrown in. These descriptions proved entirely accurate, though I think the cross-dressing plot device was over-emphasized in the reviews; as Hibiki himself concludes, the disguise really is just a disguise. The difficulties this disguise brings him are mostly played for laughs, and therefore in my opinion the many AMVs of this series set to Aerosmith's "Dude (Looks Like A Lady)" have mostly said everything that needs to be said about that already.
  
  More fascinating is the story itself and how it ends. While IMMSE truly is a romantic comedy and does have a more-or-less happy ending, it does seem to demonstrate a remarkably cynical view of human nature. The romance develops rather gradually and is, I contend, subservient to the main ambition driving the plot: Hibiki's determination to show the misandrist administration and staff of a girls' school the error of their ways. The old Hollywood sentiment that "love conquers all" is decidedly absent from this story; indeed, the story itself seems determined to refute this maxim. Moreover, whether Hibiki succeeded in his ambition is open to debate: while he seems to have made his point to everyone else, the antagonists continue to resist the moral of his story to the very end.
  
  What really tugged at my heartstrings, though, was seeing so much romance end so abruptly in so much futility. That these outcomes are entirely realistic--that they follow quite logically from what preceded them--just makes them that much more heartbreaking. As with all failed romances, the big lingering question for everyone is where they go from here. While the story does hold out some slight hope at the end that some previously unrequited desires may now be requited after all, it leaves everyone holding a lot of emotional baggage in the meantime, especially the viewers. This abruptness is what I chose to explore in this AMV.
  
  Choosing a song to fit the theme was as great a struggle as ever; popular songs about failed relationships are pretty common, of course, but finding one that's just right for the specific circumstances one sees in these anime series is always a struggle. My search took me, appropriately enough, to that great repository of musical tales of woe, the genre known as Country Music; doubly appropriate, since the background music for I My Me Strawberry Eggs anime is filled with rockabilly banjos, fiddles, and steel guitars, and most of the characters speak with the rough Japanese equivalent of a rural "hick" accent.
  
  Alison Krauss is, of course, famous for her contributions to the soundtrack of "Brother, Where Art Thou?" and has had several major hits on Country Music radio stations. This particular song seems to be a bit less famous than some of her others, and I've heard an earlier rendition of it from the somewhat less well-known Suzy Bogguss (which also has a few interesting differences in its lyrics from this version). Nonetheless, I would say Alison's version is done to perfection, her crisply sardonic admonition to forget about the unforgettable rendering it a powerful tearjerker.
  
  While I can't think of anything specific this AMV might be spoiling, it does draw mainly from the last few episodes of the series and reveal the outcomes of several romances, so I've marked it as a potential spoiler just in case. As I felt the rather pervasive fanservice of the series undercut its message and tended to be distracting, I have been careful to exclude that from this AMV. It should therefore be safe to show in the presence of children, though I doubt any of them below the age of understanding will get much out of it.
  
  Aptly enough, this AMV comes at a time when I'm on the rebound from several failed ambitions--romantic and otherwise--myself. I dedicate it to everyone who's ever been in the same condition.