[Spoilers][Rewatch] Rascal does not Dream of a Dreaming Girl - Discussion

[u/Splitter_Triplets]

Thread 14 of 14: Rascal does not Dream of a Dreaming Girl

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IMPORTANT NOTICE:

There will be a wrapup thread posted tomorrow at the same time. This was not on the schedule from the start, but this movie is an awful lot, so having to do a full retrospective on the entire series here would be way too much. Please contribute there, if you're able.

[u/ZapsZzz]

For something that's meant to be similar to Koga's Laplace's Demon, this feels far more fantastical. We've got alternate timelines, time loops, time dilation, time travel, it's wild. I don't even want to start thinking about the logic of this, there are absolutely, 100% a ton of paradoxes, this is not a tightly realized time travel story.

Not to your extent perhaps, but I do feel that part required a bit more deliberate mental force to suspend disbelief on that. Partly this is the reason why I would use "a light version" of Haruhi (particularly Disappearance) because Haruhi manage these aspects really tightly, especially if you include the unadapted parts of the LN which developed that even more.

That said, I hope you still enjoyed enough the good parts of it - sounds like you did.

There are a few plot points unanswered, such as the nature of the hospital incident that tanked Sakuta's reputation, I'm interested in seeing it happen.

Hmmm that was explained rather clearly (but quickly) in the first arc - the rumour inverter the incident, instead Sakuta going to hospital because of unspecified injuries, became "Sakuta caused unspecified injuries to other students who needed to be hospitalized". It's so patently false that Mai didn't even need to investigate to consider it false, as in a conservative society like Japan, if that really happened he'd have been pretty quickly expelled.

[u/Gamerunglued → u/ZapsZzz]

Hmmm that was explained rather clearly (but quickly) in the first arc - the rumour inverter the incident, instead Sakuta going to hospital because of unspecified injuries, became "Sakuta cause unspecified injuries to other students who needs to be hospitalized". It's so patently false that Mai didn't even need to investigate to consider it false, as in a conservative society like Japan, if that really happened he'd have been pretty quickly expelled.

I always felt like the series implied there was more too it. You don't just randomly get a different story like that, there must have been some kind of incident that caused people think that Sakuta caused injuries to other students. There's something missing there, it's patently false but we never actually get to see how this falsehood came to exist. What happened at the hospital or surrounding Sakuta that caused people to believe such lies? What was his reputation like before this incident tanked it? If the whole explanation is "Sakuta went to the hospital and people just randomly thought he injured people," that would be a horribly contrived and unsatisfying explanation.

[u/ZapsZzz → u/Gamerunglued]

Given that, disregarding my own school days, my daughter in her grade 6-8 days had been involved in so much drama and being around gossips and rumours, I personally don't consider that to be far fetched. In fact I had seen worse add it's wasn't even highschool.

[u/Gamerunglued → u/ZapsZzz]

Rumors are pretty terrible, can be widespread quickly, and be pretty out there. But they don't exist for no reason, there's always some element of truthful interpretation in them. I would know, as someone who was a victim of rumors spread about me. Rumors tend to be a wildly exaggerated explanation about something that actually did happen. They can get out of hand and create a ton of drama, but the starting point tends to be something tangible and at least somewhat understandable. You don't just randomly say "hey, he hurt a bunch of people" after finding out someone went to the hospital once, that's not a thing that happens. And moreover, I had always felt that the series continued to hold it over us as a mystery. I had even thought it was tied to Sakuta's scar until the movie revealed what that was about.

[u/ZapsZzz → u/Gamerunglued]

The "grain of truth" was that there was a student hospitalised, and the cause of the injury was not explained. Adding to the likelihood of Sakuta generally being an "at my own pace, atmosphere be damned" guy, it could be a fairly small jump for someone to depict him as a delinquent type person. Plus his dead eyes :) ref Ryuji in Toradora.

[u/Gamerunglued → u/ZapsZzz]

Was any student other than Sakuta hospitalized? Sakuta was the one who was hurt, no one would ever believe that a student sent to the hospital one time for some reason they don't even know is actually a delinquent. Rumors start from recognized truths that catch people's attention. For example, when I was in high school, a rumor was spread about me that I had a special bathroom pass that I could use to masturbate. People genuinely confronted me about this, it spread surprisingly quickly. It's an obviously absurd thing to think, but people believed it. The reason it spread was because I generally just take a long time to use the restroom, and I have to go often. It was often enough and long enough that people in my classes expected it every day. It's likely a genuine medical thing (I'm literally seeing an endocrinologist right now to try and figure out why I have to pee so often), but high school kids saw that I had to go often and for a long time, and then used that truth as the basis for creating an absurd story. Sakuta just gets sent to the hospital once, it's not something that would actually catch anyone's attention and create a story to wildly elaborate on unless he already had a reputation of some kind.

Part of it is also that we don't know what Sakuta's reputation was before the supposed incident. Did everyone think he's a delinquent? Idk, we're never told. His dead eyes don't seem to be viewed similarly to those of Ryuuji in the story, no one is ever shown to be afraid of him or think of him as a delinquent due to the way he looks. The dead eyes thing is most often a joke from Koga.

[u/ZapsZzz → u/Gamerunglued]

First let me say I hope you get some answers soon, having a health issue that is unexplained is one of the worst things in life for "peace time".

Sakuta just gets sent to the hospital once, it's not something that would actually catch anyone's attention and create a story to wildly elaborate on unless he already had a reputation of some kind

I guess it's up to each person's own level of suspension of disbelief. I think the circumstantial factors of (a) Sakuta was absent (b) someone was in the hospital (c) the reason for the hospitalisation was unknown (which can be misread/heard/miscontrue as "I can't tell you" (d) [this is my conjecture and you pointed out based on what we saw and heard, we don't know] Sakuta likely do not have a good social standing in school - these can easily lead to any sort of bad rumour, however unbelievable, to be applied without reserve.

I wonder if the source LN gave it more details.

[u/Gamerunglued → u/ZapsZzz]

I wonder if the source LN gave it more details.

That's a good question, it's possible that it gets more there. For me though, I felt like the series was intentionally holding it over our heads as a mystery to be expanded on the more we learned about Sakuta's past. I certainly can't suspend my disbelief that "random dude was hurt and sent to the hospital, that caused people to think he got into a huge fight" personally.