Source: https://ift.tt/2G5hCtC this picture made me want to write this post, because no lie, Sumire Nono and her relationship to Hana (and Ruru, and Kotori!) is one of my favorite things about Hugtto, and I feel like she doesn't get discussed enough.WARNING: Some of the things I talk about below may potentially be triggering.In a show where parenting is a central theme, it only makes sense that the protagonist's mom would need to set a good example... but Sumire went above and beyond. When I saw her embrace Ruru without hesitation, mere seconds after the latter erased her fake memories, I knew she was something special... but this scene, man.School bullying is just as much a problem in Japan as it is here, if not even moreso... but the typical perspective on it in Japan is, to be brutally frank, appalling. Instead of taking steps to stop the bullying, the typical Japanese teacher or adult's approach is to pretend it's not happening and let the kids involved handle it themselves... something about teaching them to be self-reliant, or maybe it's part of the grand Japanese tradition of trying not to stand out for fear of embarrassment or being shamed. Having been a bully magnet for most of my school years, I've always thought of this "policy" (sarcasm mine) as incredibly damaging at best. I don't even want to think of the number of Japanese kids over the years who have been traumatized as a result of not being able or willing to go to adults for help.So, there's a lot we don't know about how Hana was bullied before the series started... what we do know is that she broke a cardinal rule in Japanese school society and made a spectacle when she defended Eri, and that because of that she became a target herself. Succumbing to peer pressure, Eri joined the bullies' side, or at very least did nothing to help.Hana's flashback in episode 23 suggests that it got so bad that Hana started skipping school. This alone is a big deal, no matter the circumstances. We see Sumire stepping up, saying: "It's okay, Hana. You weren't wrong. You don't have to bear it anymore... Your future is limitless!"In a society based around avoiding or downplaying trouble for fear of shame, in a society that encourages adults and children alike to just stand by and let bullying happen, Sumire stood up and said "Fuck that noise." Whether Hana stopped going to school on her own or Sumire pulled her out of it, she took a step that would be almost unthinkable in her culture: she deliberately went against the grain, and encouraged Hana's doing the same. She found out about it and she damn well decided to do something about it. Why? Because it's her daughter, dammit.Japanese parents, as a general rule, don't pull their kids from school for stuff like this. People would talk. It's seen as bringing shame on the family, and as I've said above, shame is worse than almost anything else to a Japanese person. So it's not an exaggeration to say that Sumire risked everything to go to bat for Hana. Do you see how awesome that makes her? Do you see how this shows where Hana got her own awesomeness from? Sumire is the best kind of mom, a badass mom, and it's not just because she became a Cure in the end, oh no. She's a badass for not just being a good mom or good person, but for being those things in defiance of more than a thousand years of deeply ingrained cultural pressure. What better example of motherhood could she set?On a personal note (and here's where things might get triggering):When I was twelve years old, just a little younger than Hana, I started sixth grade at an enormous local public school, which had just opened a few years prior. It had state-of-the-art everything, and it was within walking distance of my house. The student body was something like 800 kids from grades six to eight, with thirty or more kids to a class and eight periods a day. It was only my second year in a public school, and I was the smallest kid in my class, incredibly socially awkward, nerdy and wearing glasses at time when those things made you a target. From my first day there, I could feel something was wrong. For the first time ever, I was dreading going to school. As the weeks went by, the bullies homed in on me, and the teachers did nothing (because either they didn't care or they all had twenty-nine or more other kids to worry over, or both), I became more and more miserable. By end of September of that year, I was depressed bordering on suicidal. In October, my parents pulled me out of that school and saved my life. By December, I had been transferred to a new school that was much smaller, where the teachers actually cared and knew every student by name. Nobody there knew me, and it was a chance for me to start over.Now, when I first saw that flashback in episode 23, saw Hana sitting alone in the center of all those desks... though it's been more than twenty years, my mind went back to that nerdy little kid who felt like everything was going wrong but he didn't know why. When Sumire told Hana that she was right and that she didn't have to bear it anymore, I cried, thinking of my mom when she said much the same thing to me. I already loved Hana, but in that moment... she touched my soul, and Sumire became my favorite Precure mom, hands down. I felt for Hana because I was there, and it felt raw and honest and real like damn near nothing I'd ever seen in twenty years of watching anime, let alone in Precure.So yeah. Here's to Sumire, awesome badass mom, and here's to Hana, forever my best girl. Hooray, hooray. via /r/precure https://ift.tt/33j1HR3
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