Iseri Nina From Girls Band Cry Is The Utopian Japanese Media Needs

20 10月 2024

This article is a character study of Iseri Nina from Girls Band Cry, my thoughts on what I want out of Japanese subculture media, and it will bring up spoilers from episode 10 and social issues like bullying.

In the world of Japanese animation, we seem to be entering an era of rebellious girl bands that deal with issues relevant to teenagers living in Japan.

For Bocchi the Rock, it's the desire to feel needed and the need to reject the easy romanticism of high school. In the case of It's MyGo!!!!!, the difficulty of expressing oneself in public and the friction within relationships manifest as strength when the characters rock out on stage. And for the purposes of my essay, Girls Band Cry can be summed up as a quest for authenticity in a capitalist world.

All three works not only share similar music backgrounds, but also implicitly refuse the current Japanese status quo through social critique and alternative forms of kinship. They point to a vague desire where people don't have to depend on compulsory state education, nuclear families, and wage labor for their well-being. Perhaps, we could look for something as tightly knit as the rock bands in these shows for our support.

Of the three shows, Girls Band Cry is perhaps the one that tries to capture this desire as concretely as possible. It wants to address the contradictions of working adult life, the need for social change, and much more. But its utopianism veers to a different direction from what I wanted. It irritates me because I can imagine a better version of the show, but it also points me to the kind of subculture media I really adore.

And it all comes down to how the show handles its utopian gremlin protagonist, Iseri Nina.

I originally thought of her as an eccentric character who didn't follow rules for the sake of following them. But as the show progressed, it became clear that her independent spirit stemmed from her experience of being bullied in high school.

Although she dropped out, she convinces her family that she's going to Tokyo to study again and enter higher education. While the momentum of the show forces her to drop that, she also joins the band for a similar reason: she doesn't want to betray her desires.

It's easy to see her moving to Kawasaki as an "escape" from her tragic high school life. My initial reading of her was that she was a victim of the school caste system and wanted to somehow remake her life.

But she doesn't see herself that way. She may seethe at the happy high school kids crowding around the grocery store in the service area, but she doesn't wallow in her misery. What she despises is hypocrisy, that the world is all rosy and fine.

There's a continuity to her actions, and she wants to stick with it as much as possible.

What makes Nina such a compelling character is that she's consistently unwavering in her sense of justice. If she accepts that what she did was wrong, that helping a person who was being bullied by the school caste system ensured her downfall, and therefore she's wrong to do it, then she has to accept that injustice should have a place in our world. She sees the ability to regret as necessarily linked to accepting inequality and injustice.

That's why Subaru calls her a 正論モンスター (seiron monsuta, lit. Righteous Monster) throughout the series. She doesn't know how to mask herself, how to pretend that this is okay. If she sees Momoka refusing to face the music, she'll yell at her in public and ask her bluntly if she regrets her past. It doesn't matter if it's unsightly in the public view -- the important thing is that she gets the answer straight.

Her anger simply cannot be contained. Nina just wants it her way because she doesn't think people should suck up and let things go on as normal. Even if she understands the logic of someone choosing a video game streamer with more views over a smaller one, and how that can be extrapolated to the logistics of rock bands, she can't stand it. She wants unreasonable, necessary changes because she thinks the way Japanese society and the music industry are doing things is wrong. Such demands can only be described as utopian, and that's awesome.

Indeed, the best episodes of Girls Band Cry are impressive because the show allows Nina to be messy before somehow tying everything up neatly with a bow.

Episode 10 is probably the fan favorite for good reason. Before we get to this episode, we learn that Nina's family back in Kumamoto is on the socially conservative side and has ties to education. Iseri Muneo, her father, advises the Kumamoto Prefectural Board of Education and has written a book on education, but he doesn't understand Nina's predicament. Tensions between the family and Nina finally reach a boiling point when the remedial school Nina attends in Tokyo sends them a letter stating that her grades are dropping.

When the family tries to visit Nina in Kawasaki, she tries to hide from them as much as possible. Only until the family changes the locks on her apartment (which seems illegal) and her band members urge her to take the bullet train ticket to Kumamoto.

After an awkward family reunion, Muneo tries to make amends with her by dragging her to the school and forcing them to admit that their investigation of her case was flawed. He even criticizes the principal, who tries to brush off her responsibility for letting this fester. And it is later revealed that the strict family code that Nina and other family members used to follow broke down after Nina moved out of the house.

The episode ends with Muneo recognizing he didn't understand her but he will support her rock band endeavors. And they both hug.

It's an excellent episode that touches on several issues that plague the lives of teenagers, and it lands on an ending that's obviously too neat, but still acknowledges the harm caused by the school and the family. Father and daughter have achieved a recognition of each other's selves that isn't complete, but it's a great first step.

And I don't want to take away from what this episode accomplished with some political arguments about abolishing the family or a need to take public education more seriously. That would be to miss the point of Girls Band Cry: despite the urban realist aesthetic it strives for, the show is a hopeless romantic. Instead, it advocates having impossible dreams: to reconcile with your family, to know that you've always done the right thing regardless of how society looks at you, and maybe you'll get your own way, your own justice, like Nina.

I think those are nice dreams to have. Fiction is a great way to cultivate dreams for an unimaginable future. And the best episodes do that single-handedly: Nina is a monster who doesn't want simple dreams, she demands the unrealistic, and everyone has to deal with it as much as they're able to.

Girls Band Cry is a deeply idealistic show in every sense of the word. Its utopian optimism that everything will somehow resolve itself into mutual understanding is infectious.

I can imagine young people watching it being inspired to follow their creative spirits and ignore the arbitrary rules Japanese society has imposed on them. I'm glad this show exists, and it's fun to marathon this show and think about what it's trying to get across to people.

But while I think it might be the best show this year, and I'm sure I'll check out the gay fanart later, I'm still not satisfied with the show.

I don't share many of the criticisms people have of the show: it should have been longer, there wasn't enough time to build up, etc. The problem with the show's script is that Nina is an overwhelming character, and the 24-minute anime format rarely has time to show interiority. The writer admits as much: there was supposed to be an episode focusing on Rupa, but Nina squeezed her episode out of rotation (and personally, I like that Rupa is an enigma, but that's beside the point).

If I wanted the show to be much more, it would be closer to a literary or visual novel. I would probably want something closer to Overdrive's Musicus, a visual novel that follows the lives of two characters from their late teens to their late 20s. It wouldn't work for the multimedia project that Girls Band Cry is a part of.

Instead, I imagined Nina in an 800-page rock band novel where she smashes guitars or something. Something more punk rock than the idol rock bands the show is going for.

Such a work would have different themes and messages. I don't think episode 10, for example, would work in that context. The family in my imaginary novel will simply not be on speaking terms. I want things to be messy, unpolished, angrier. Nina inspires me because I can imagine a worse version of her working well in another story. And I'm not sure I want to keep that idealism in this book too.

I struggle with this kind of utopianism because I have a hard time imagining things going well. One of the reasons I find Japanese subculture media so intoxicating is that it's subversive and full of contradictions, like its dependence on mainstream corporate media. The chaotic nature creates a different kind of utopianism than the show has: it's full of clutter, and that's the way we like it. The show has similarities to this subculture ideal I have, but because it wants neat resolutions, it doesn't scratch the itch I have.

At the same time, its priorities (similar and different as they may be) clarify so much about what I want from Japanese subculture media. Nina screaming in public? More of that, please. Recognition from rivals? I'm not sure, even though I think it's thematically good for the show.

I think what I want is a work that breaks the peace of the status quo and demands something so impossible from society that the demands require a total transformation of it. And I don't want a happy ending to anything messy. I just want to keep it dirty for people to see and think about.

This is very, very different from what Girls Band Cry does. I can only find it in niches like school caste novels, but it exists. And the show reminds me that I need to look into this genre more.

But I come back to Iseri Nina.

Her commitment to anger at injustice and regret is inspiring, and seeing all the fears screamed out on screen resonates with me. The fantasy of being someone like her makes me want to believe in the dreams the show has about Japanese society.

Maybe I could have been more righteous and angry growing up, and then the world will finally admit that it fucked up. It's a tantalizing dream that I can't shake off. Nina affirms that we should run, scream, and yell to affirm life, even when we face repercussions for our actions. It's an important fantasy to hold as we try to navigate the contradictions that may force us to do wrong things to maintain the status quo. That might not work in the story I want to exist. Nina would be a completely different character.

I cannot criticize Girls Band Cry for giving me such impossible dreams. It's one I keep forgetting to hold tightly. The world needs less dry realism and more wishful thinking because we desperately need dreamers like Nina to call out the injustices of society and cry out for a better world.

Nina is such a wonderful character.