Sonny Boy: Integrity and Her Benevolent Sandbox
This anime is a gift that keeps on giving, huh? Two episode in and we are already balls deep into the meat of it; We have not only gotten a continuation of the 'Sandbox' idea I coined last essay, but it has even been integrated into our character arc this episode. As someone who loves story structures, themes, symbolism and character explorations, this anime has somehow managed to knock every single one of my interests out into space thus far.
And thus, I am back. Fully loaded and equipped to once again dissect what this show has to offer. Before we jump right into it however, I will once again be taking the approach I took last essay. I won't be eager to break down every single detail present in this anime; If I did, this would probably turn out to be a real mess owing to just how many ideas this show has thus far. Thus, my philosophy for this analysis remains the same: One stone at a time.
Disclaimer: This essay would heavily borrow ideas of the 'Sandbox' and would even have its own section dedicated to it in the second half. Thus, before reading this essay, I would highly recommend reading my last one, called 'The Human Sandbox'.
More disclaimers: I prefaced by saying that we are turning one stone at a time. For this essay thus, I will only be focusing on the character arc of Mizuho and then link it to my 'Sandbox' idea afterwards. I will still be holding off from fully exploring the characters of Nagara, Nozomi and Hoshi as while there are a lot of new details we can dissect this episode, I want to keep this essay simple and sweet; After all, every episode has me super confused during my viewing so I would not want to impede the same confusion with my essay.
I will instead leave a thought-bubble for everyone who came in here interested to learn about those characters; Thus far we have seen a lot of symbolism that draws parallels between Nozomi, birds and freedom. However another interesting idea we can consider is how Nozomi, our champion of freedom, may be built up to clash with Hoshi, our rule-keeper thus far. Well, that's all for the thought-bubble this episode; Without further ado, let us jump straight into episode 2!
The Concept, named Mizuho
In our last essay, we discussed the idea of how our 36 students may no longer be human; Having no fear for scarcity, lacking personal identity and also now given god-like abilities, I theorized that our characters may be the pure personification of concepts, a "humanized" symbol for our writers to explore, reflect and project onto. One of the examples I brought up was how Cap and Asakaze represented the conflict between anarchy and order; Their battle was as much a teenage squabble as it is the peoples' revolution against the government.
This episode though, we dial it back a notch. Instead of battling over freedom, we explore something much more personal and relatable to us; The concept of integrity. And you guessed it, our dear Mizuho would be our champion for today. With ego-centric concepts, comes ego-centric powers; What does Mizuho's power tell us about her character?
She has the power of infinite Nyamezons! Everything you want, she can immediately order it; Cake, make up, clothes, radio equipment and even a goddamn castle; You name it, Nyamezon would ship it. What a nifty power to have! However, with a castle fit for a princess, it may be surprising to us that Mizuho doesn't seem very happy. Her castle, as we have peeked into, doesn't house any other students other than herself; In fact, for all the abundance of comfort items, it almost seems isolated.
Is this a case whereby Mizuho rejects visitors, or a case whereby our students shy away from her presence, or a case of both? Whichever is the answer, I think we have gotten a glimpse into her mental state; Despite her material abundance, she is unhappy and she wishes to be isolated from everyone.
The reason rears itself in the flash-backs to the real world. Mizuho was a mere bystander; In fact, she wasn't involved in the race for the student council elections, she had no stakes in the battle and she didn't even seemed to care that much about how the winner would affect her school life; Even so, she cared about how the winner won. Somehow or another, she had gotten hold of the dirty trickery that Machi (or Pony) performed with Hoshi and she couldn't stomach it. On 6-Chan, she thus begun posting slanderous rumors, 'facts' as she calls it, in hopes of spreading the 'truth'.
Once again, she had no stakes in this; She was a mere by-stander and she didn't even seem to portray any previous grievances with Machi. Was it jealousy? Was it just done out of some impersonal spite, a faceless target board for her to vent at? The reason wasn't actually characterized and remained even now, incomplete. But to be honest, do we even need to define her reason?
If we take less of a 'human' perspective on Mizuho and simply viewed her as a 'concept', what can we see? We can see that she mimics all of us; And I mean us as in you who is reading this now and me who is typing this very sentence. Often times in our own lives, we have come across Mizuho's very same situation; A situation where we may not have completely foresaw a shady deal, but have at least felt that something was dishonest. For me personally, I once worked as an intern in a start-up company. This company provides products that can be relatively expensive, ranging in the hundreds of dollars, and for me, I was one of the sales pitcher, the one responsible with getting in touch with our customers and reassuring them about the product they are about to buy. At many times, I even needed to convince them; Many a times, due to our start-up structure, we lacked the necessary supply or manpower to bring quality to the product they are buying, but even so, even then, I needed to convince. I needed to tell the customers that it is fine and we will make sure they receive a quality product, even though deep down in my heart, I had never believed that our company actually had 'quality' to begin with.
I stayed in that job for a month and a half, and after that, I couldn't stomach it anymore and I left. It was exactly like how Mizuho herself described it: "I just can't let this go", "Even so, I don't like it."
In my story, I was directly involved more so than Mizuho who was a by-stander. But even so, I think her reaction doesn't even need further justifications. She is just someone who couldn't stand that such a dishonest act was slipping under everyone's bare eyes and she felt partially responsible for it; To her, the idea of being just a mere by-stander, was enough to make her stomach churl. It is for this reason why I find her to be the perfect champion of integrity; She didn't stand for something personal like jealousy or personal grievances, she was purely mad at the act of dishonesty itself.
Our sensei added a much needed nuance to her entire mindset. In response to Mizuho's uncomfortableness, he stated a rather neutral opinion on the entire matter, saying how there might be "extenuating circumstances on both sides" and stated how even though the situation may look dishonest superficially, "there are times when just being right isn't always the best". For us, we can even take a pot-shot at why Sensei said that. After all, comparing our two presidential candidates via posters, one seemed to be all about "F.U.N" while the other actually seemed responsible for the job. Either way, the most important thing to take note of is this: In response to Mizuho's insistence on honesty, our Sensei remarks that "it may still be a good thing that she is still a child."
Sensei here, thus is a representative of adulthood. In fact, it is because of him that we can even have a micro-cosmic view on this entire conflict here; Sensei speaks for adults who sometimes may be pinned by their career responsibilities or family responsibilities. In that state, an adult may come across similar acts of dishonesty but the question becomes whether they should adhere to 'integrity'. Take for example my own story; I was still a student, someone who didn't need to care about money at that point and thus the internship job of mine was as much of a job as it is just some low stakes venture I can bail on anytime. But what if I was older and I had an extra mouth to feed in the future, two or three if I wanted children. Can I then tell them that I want to quit my job simply because it felt dishonest?
We mentioned in our previous essays that these students here weren't human and could fully embrace their identity as 'concepts' but this episode expands on that further; They are much less students because 'anime', but more so students because being an adult would 'humanize' them too much. It is like the saying -- Youth is when we can truly be 'ourselves' and make any mistakes and it wouldn't matter as much as when you become an adult.
Or at least, that was what I thought until it backfired. Machi and Hoshi discovered her slanderous rumors and begun targeting her and her teacher with blackmail; The real world has consequences and had come to punish Mizuho for being 'herself'. However, I want to note that at this point of time, the consequences weren't drastic for Mizuho. After all, this was just attempted blackmail and Machi and Hoshi hasn't truly brought down the hammer. They even presented a simple solution to her: "Why don't you apologize to the student council president?" A simple proposition; Retract your slander, apologize and we would consider dropping the issue.
However once again, we shouldn't forget who Mizuho is. She is the champion of integrity. Even though it may be something as simple as saying a few sweet words to lie her way out of trouble, she simply couldn't stand it. Thus, she double-downed and afterwards paid the full price; Her teacher was fired. Nobody needed to get hurt, but Mizuho was simply too naive and childish for her own good. This same proposition would come full circle when Mizuho was blamed for the blue flames -- Just apologize and --
This time, it is even simpler for her. After all, even she herself knows that she wasn't to be blamed for the blue flames. Shouldn't it be simple for her to just be honest and say that she didn't do it? Well, for Mizuho, it probably was much more complex.
The incident with her teacher scarred her deeply. Mizuho has gotten paranoid of the people around her; It is for that reason that she didn't press the issue with Nagara and tells him: "Sooner or later, they would've been suspicious of me". She didn't speak up not because she couldn't but because she didn't believe that everyone would trust her; A jaded view of people. From a conceptual lens, you can further read this as a battle against the integrity of people. After all, what did the classmates do but immediately pin all the blame on her without listening to her or finding concrete evidence? They did it less so to resolve the conflict but more so because there is comfort in having a target to shoot at.
On a more personal note, what about the battle for her own 'integrity'? One should take note that integrity often can be more nuanced than the concept of 'honesty'. While having integrity would often pertain to being honest, one should also take note that you need to "walk the talk". Meaning, you can be honest about championing some social rights movement but if you don't participate in the rallies or actively promote its ideals, then you aren't actually "walking the talk".
This was a problem for Mizuho. After the incident with her teacher, she no longer upheld integrity. She isolated herself from all human beings and more importantly, she kept the truth of the blue fire from everyone due to her own paranoia. She also misused her powers; Her act of raining money on everyone can be said to be a humorous prank, but it was done from her own pre-conceived notions: Everyone is dishonest, everyone is greedy, they will all probably take the money. This litmus-like prank, of course, would be the second lie she told everyone. She has now found herself hiding the truth, using trickery, and even possessed backhanded desires to cause harm. It is not to say that a person of 'integrity' wouldn't cause harm or protest, but a true champion would've protested honestly and justly. And thus, she has failed to "walk the talk".
However, what can be a better foil to that than with Nagara and Nozomi. They passed the test and didn't pick up the money. They even understood deep down not to jump to conclusions with Mizuho and tried to understand her situation first. In fact, some lessons of integrity can even be reflected on both of them this episode but we will leave that discussion for another time. The most important gesture is this: Nagara goes up and reveals his own mistakes to Mizuho and Mizuho also was truthful about her own feelings as she finally vented them out. The flames get extinguished, the students escape harm and hopeful music enters to break the silence.
Afterwards, Mizuho gained back something that she lost; In front of the entire classroom, she, in no vague terms, dispelled the falsehood of the initial blue flames and admitted to her own trickery with the money. But one of the most important thing to note is that she didn't lie about her feelings; She didn't just fake friendship with everyone and she even remained somewhat spiteful, telling everyone that there is "no way!" before stomping off. You can't blame the girl; I wouldn't instantly forgive the people who falsely accused me either.
And thus, our champion of 'integrity' stands tall and strong, having overcame all dishonesty that fought to undermine her!
Mizuho's Benevolent Sandbox
Last essay we talked about the idea of the 'personified concept', and this episode we get just that -- A concept fully explored through the lens of a teenage girl. However, while this alone is enough to make me love this episode, I am far from done. We have thus far explored the 'what' and 'why' of Mizuho, but now I want to dive into the 'how' of Mizuho. For this, we will once again get pretty meta and question some of the decisions that the writers make.
See, for a simple story about integrity, there didn't need to be all this "who-ha". This story could've existed in a normal high school, in a town named 'Japan', with the same characters and we still would've gotten the message, right? In fact, isn't all this blue flames, and crazy imagery, only self-serving for stylistic point which could ultimately confuse more so than it informs?
To understand why the writers might have wanted such an amorphic setting, we will once again explore my concept of the 'Sandbox'. So, what new details did we get this time?
For this we will once again discuss about consequences. We made a big deal last time and even discussed this briefly this time that in the real world, there are consequences. Adults face consequences, and while teenagers have less of that, they still have their own pressures and responsibilities they have to juggle. In the real world, how would it be taken if for example, Asakaze smashed up the windows like he did last episode? The results probably wouldn't be stellar. What about Mizuho? What would be the consequences of her setting everyone in fire in a fit of rage? Well, that is an exaggerated example on my part, part of its essence has already reared its head with the real world conflict of Mizuho where she lost her teacher.
I theorized last episode that violence wouldn't matter and I was happy to have read that; In this world, violence doesn't matter because at every dawn, everything resets. Meaning, no actions here have any real consequences. And I will even go as far as to predict that mortality or all concepts promoting it would become obsolete. After all, we quite possibly had every single student set on fire. However the consequences of that was that the blue flames strangely didn't harm people more so than just being very hot. Painful as can be, you won't ever need to worry about it. The island is similar having been entirely burnt down. However the consequences of that is that we have literal Jesus Asakaze here who can split water and create rain; Island saved, I guess. And let's not forget that none of that shit even matters; Rajdhani literally informs us that injuries reset and we see the island blink back to life faster than the FGC can say "frame data".
It was just last week that I half-seriously joked that Sonny Boy was Minecraft but by this week I am convinced; Remember to sleep in your bed to set spawn, baby! Create new world goes BRRRR! And believe me when I say that the writers of this show literally read my essay as well. Shingo Natsume and co was probably in the office, reading my shit and going: "Damn this dude is 5Head, we need to reaffirm his theories". And then Nagara this episode proceeded to say: "Yep the world doesn't change, nothing matters, and its okay my dawg!"
Okay, I'm done tooting my horn. I am just way too happy that my predictions came true. Now, I want to touch on what may be the real intentions of the writers for creating this 'Sandbox'. Nagara's reflection of this new world draws some stunning comparisons with our real world once again. The story thus far, at least explicitly with Nagara and Mizuho, reflects a common emotion that many teenagers probably have felt -- The fact that the world is much bigger than them.
It is with this powerlessness that Mizuho almost forget about her own 'integrity' after all and I suspect the over-aching story would begin exploring about true freedom and expression through Nagara as our POV character and Nozomi as our role model. However while consequences exist in real life, they don't in "this world". A reason why Nagara tells Mizuho that "it's okay", can be read multiple ways. Maybe he was reassuring her that everyone would forgive her if she tells the truth, or maybe it was him coming to a realization on the broader implications of a world where nothing matters. Another way we can read this is to tie this to the possible philosophy of this show going forward; In this arc, we have seen Mizuho making mistakes but she learnt a valuable lesson, got to reflect upon herself and got to vent all her emotions -- All in a way that was basically "free".
In real life, we learn from our mistakes and we grow from them, but they aren't "free" as much as we just stomach it and move on; Consequences may still haunt us afterwards. But here, our students can express, vent, fail and forgive each other as much as they want; This 'Sandbox' here is a 'safe' environment for them to do so. And it is for this reason why I call it 'benevolent' -- It's infinitely forgiving.
However, we shouldn't mistake a forgiving environment for an easy one. We might start to form misconceptions thinking that our characters may have gotten it easy but the fact of the matter is, they still need to take that leap themselves. In our conflict with Mizuho, no one actually guided her hand and while Nagara and Nozomi did offer reassurance, it was Mizuho who ultimately came to her own conclusions; The lesson was provided for her but it was up to herself to make it something valuable to internalize. This is why her final apology wasn't initiated by some "talk-no-jutsu" but by her own initiative and in her own unique spiteful flavor.
Why did the writers choose such an environment for our characters? There might be some in-universe reason for it, but for now I am convinced that the writers of Sonny Boy has no intention to make this anime anything like 'Drifting Classroom' or any other survival shows. The intention is something much more creative and wholesome, with a tinge of style points as well; They wanted the perfect bubble to tell their coming-of-age story. Hence, the overly-optimistic title.
Before we conclude though, I want to hit one last point home just to show how far the writers are willing to take it. Once again, this 'Sandbox' we have built has come under threat. For at the end of the episode, Rajdhani introduced a vicious, real-world concept that would knock the morals out of our 36 students; A cash-based economy!
Oh, jobs with career responsibilities! The horrors! Oh, competition and monopoly! The capitalistic terror! Oh -- Wait what? Waddaya mean they don't matter? It's money! How can money not matter? I mean, I guess money wouldn't matter when supply is infinite and will always meet demand. And I guess jobs has been rendered obsolete when students have superpower to get everything they want... Why the hell did we even need to introduce the concept of 'money' then?!
The answer is very wholesome and cute. Like, seriously, diabetes kinda cute. And it's all for this --
By quantifying an exchange with money, we are given a sweet conclusion to Mizuho's character arc. Remember another one of her big conflict that I regrettably didn't touch on so much, is that people were somewhat over-reliant on her superpower. In fact, we even see a girl who stole her make up in her castle without consulting her, much to her literal 'honest' dismay. Seeing her finally be freed from that was a small victory for her and for all of us. Secondly and much more importantly, by quantifying an object, it adds meaning to the hat that Mizuho gave Nagara.
This hat, while should've have burnt up without payment, doesn't. And all because Mizuho considers it "a treat". This means that while money seems to be a stop-gap for this weird island rule, a much more respectable "currency" is perhaps just simple "sincerity" and "gratitude". Isn't that freaking wholesome?! The writers are literally telling us "treasure love, not money!"
And what better way to utilize this confusing-as-hell setting to literally create a silly island rule for the very sake of telling us that sincerity triumphs money! And double-whammy, sincerity and gratitude is the natural extension of integrity; Both being the purest form of honesty and of "walking the talk" -- Integrity wins the day!
Conclusion
So there you have it, you got diabetes yet? Cause that is Korone levels of wholesome. And what can I even say at this point? We are two episodes in and this anime has proven to be a thematic goldmine. In fact, these are the type of shows that even seem less focus on the narrative as much as the symbols, themes and message. But even then, its narrative by itself is still solid, even if a little confusing. Who, after all, wouldn't feel cathartic when Mizuho vents her emotions or when Mizuho gave her hat to Nagara as a treat?
Not going to lie, but I was slightly afraid that this show's need to be mysterious and symbolic, might quite possibly stump its core human narrative which is equally as important. But by this episode, I think I am no longer worried. This show will deliver some finger-lickin' coming-of-age stories, and I can't wait.
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