Kuragehime Ep3: Beauty and the Beasts

November 5, 2010

Kuragehime Ep3: Beauty and the Beasts

It’s one thing to be afraid of beautiful people, and it’s another to be afraid of the concept of beauty altogether.  While beauty itself is in the eye of the beholder and thus probably never the same between any two people, beauty in its core still refers to those you find aesthetically and visually pleasing.  So why fear beauty when it is supposed to be a good experience?

Would it be correct to say that everyone on the apartment really have fears regarding the issue of beauty?  It might be because we haven’t heard their sides on the issue yet, but Tsukimi makes it rather obvious that she has an issue with beauty that goes beyond mere distaste, but beauty itself seems to rock her to her core.

It must run in the family.

The radical differences in Tsukimi and Kuranosuke’s lives are made apparent when we finally see the political dynasty that runs in Kuranosuke’s blood.  His uncle might be eccentric, but it’s clear that the family generally frowns on his cross-dressing escapades.  It is still his personal choice however, and it is revealed that he has a true knack for fashion with people actively seeking his advice and help.  In the end he refuses when he considers Tsukimi to be his ultimate challenge: to turn a cloistered nun into a fantasy princess.

With rather stellar results I might add.

Blinding flash of the obvious.

It is easier to assign Kuranosuke’s cross-dressing ways as a form of rebellion in his dynastic family.  An heir of a powerful political clan, he is expected to act and dress accordingly as a groomed successor, a possibility he ultimately rejects as he himself states.  He’s a college student I presume no older than Tsukimi so it’s sort of natural to want to rebel against a controlling family, but of course some would think that cross-dressing is a bit to extreme, especially when there is really no indication that he is an open homosexual.  He clearly doesn’t really like is current life, but there seems to be more to it than a rejection of a predetermined fate.

In this episode it is revealed that his mother is gone and he wants to know what happened to her.  From that point of view, when he remembers seeing the closet full of fashionable clothes his mother had, it is rather likely that his lifestyle isn’t merely a rebellion but his own way of reconnecting with his own mother.  We still don’t know what happened to her, but his fondest memories of her are of her mother’s own fashion sense, and thus this is his starting point in reliving the life his mother had.

As to why he feels the need to extend it onto others, especially Tsukimi, that is something that interests me.

The princess evolution.

I’ve called it before, that really Tsukimi has the potentially to be really beautiful, and this episode proves it with Kuranosuke’s magic touch.  Even then she insists on denying what Kuranosuke has tried to prove to her, even when his own brother fell head over heals after seeing her just once.  He manages to bring out the hidden potential in her, the diamond in the rough as he says, yet she becomes so hell bent in erasing the makeup in a complete panic, as well as fearing the rest of the apartment tenants may reject her.

Why is she so adamant in even rejecting the beauty she herself possesses?

She convinces herself so hard that she’s ugly, that beauty is beyond her grasp, yet she even denies it when she sees her own self become that which she fears and rejects the most.  This isn’t simple lack of self esteem; this feels psychological in its core.  She seems to completely and adamantly reject beauty in any and all its forms within her, and sees it to exist only outside the real world.  It extends towards the outside world, that she fears beauty outside.  This makes me think without a doubt that it must be a real psychological issue she faces, and probably the rest of the tenants as well.  There is something about beauty itself that she thinks must be feared.  Again, this may extend towards an unresolved issue with her parents, but it’s becoming clear just how deep the roots of this fear are.

Head over heels.

There seems to be the likelihood that this issue is not only with Tsukimi but with the entire apartment as well.  As a ragtag bunch of women who fear beauty and fashion beyond what is probably rational, they have already be shown to share the same reactions and defensive mechanisms when faced with fashionables and Stylish.  On the other hand, they’ve seemed to have warmed up a bit to Kuranosuke while Tsukimi is still problematic with her relationship with him.

The apartment was clearly developed as a safe haven for people like them.  I don’t know if this is really such a real and profound social phenomena, though I won’t deny there are people who really act as such.  It all feels like a very organized and constructed lifestyle, so it all seems to go deeper than initially thought.

His real intentions.

Tsukimi is clearly unused to the way of love, and has begun to think that the shared look between here and Shu might be it. Dear God I hope not because if there’s any pairing to be made here, I don’t want it to be them.

This might be the focus of the next episode though, and I hope it doesn’t go down that road.

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