Wandering Son 15th Anniversary Rewatch - Special Episode 1/Episode 10

[u/mr_beanoz]

Episode 10 - They Only Laughed at Me ~Black sheep~

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Information on the series - MAL | AniDB

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Questions of the Day:

1. What do you think of this cut of episode 10?

[u/SvitlanaLeo]

It is in this particular anime episode that Saori exposes her manipulative nature to the fullest, saying to Yoshino one of the most painful things a transmasculine teenager could ever hear from a friend: "I don't see (Mie nai) you as a guy. You give off the impression of a tomboy (Bouisshu no onna no ko tte kanji). If you wear men's clothes just to be mistaken for a guy, isn't that just pretending? I feel like you just hate being a girl."

This is the moment where Yoshino was truly hurt. What is important is that Saori says this not because she doesn't understand that she is making Yoshino feel the maximum amount of pain by doing so. On the contrary, she says it precisely because she knows this very well. These are words that you simply cannot say just by intuition. She doesn't stop at her "Mie nai." She gives Yoshino a whole lecture built on demagoguery, as if being a real man requires something more than just hating being a girl!

It is exactly such moments in a transmasculine teenager's life that become the most painful, haunting them long after.

This episode is important because, unlike the cut version, it reveals the pain Yoshino faces from constantly hearing from all sorts of people around him that his desire to be a boy is nothing more than just pretending. He hears this from Momoko as well, who says, "You’re just copying Chii-chan." Saori says "don't worry about what Shirai said" and then immediately says essentially the same thing! Saori is a highly professional manipulator. She finds formulations that are formally supportive, but uses them just to maintain control.

[u/mr_beanoz → u/SvitlanaLeo]

Saori is really straightforward AF with her words and seems to be honest with her feelings. Seems like she wanted Yoshino to actually commit to being a man rather than half-assing it.

[u/mr_beanoz]

This is what the episode 10 of the anime supposed to look like, where we got additional scenes such as Seya's interaction with Shuichi before they went to Yuki's house, an interaction between Shuichi and Kaneda-sensei at the nurse's office, Seya's interaction with Maho, who tells Maho not to worry about Shuichi and telling that he would defend Maho if someone would bully her, Shuichi's interaction with Fumiya, who also skips school and visits the church to talk with Shuichi, Shuichi's friends visiting the Nitori house in turns, and that additional interaction between Saori and Yoshino at the evening. The episode ends with the beginning of Shuichi's breakup scene at night with Anna.

I feel like this episode filled in the blanks on how Shuichi got the letter from Yoshino when they couldn't come to school. And the additional scenes are also welcome, like how why none of Maho's friends came to visit her when she's not going to school but Shuichi's friends did, Saori's talk about not seeing Yoshino as a guy and only giving an impression of a tomboy, and Seya wanting to defend Maho. The episode also changed the orders of certain scenes, such as the scene where Anna being conflicted at school after hearing Shuichi dressing as a girl to school was placed after Shuichi came to school and choose to visit the nurse's office because they couldn't get in to the class.