Hear me out on this. You already knew what Sonny Boy was about.

My first video is filled with technical errors, I hope you can be forgiving. I choose Sonny Boy as my first topic as I found it to be quite divisive. I see Sonny Boy as an easy story to understand, if you are familiar with the context it was written within. This is because Sonny Boy's plot is established by allusion. Allusion is a construct of storytelling that integrates external references and culture. I recognized this and after I found commentary from series director Natsume Shingo, I began to put pieces together so that more western anime fans who watch this anime can appreciate how brilliant it truly is. Sonny Boy is a genuinely unique experience and changed my perspective of anime forever.
00:00 - A boy who can travel between worlds...
01:15 - Understanding the link to culture.
04:16 - A boy meets a girl...
07:05 - They begin a journey together.
16:00 - An Inevitable Seperation
19:29 - Red, Gold, and Lights
30:17 - Red is...
35:05 - The result of understanding the link to culture.
This video is graciously produced with content from the KZbin Audio Library. Many thanks to the artists who provided their work so that my own efforts could be enhanced.
The story of Urashima Taro - etc.usf.edu/lit2go/72/japanes...
Interview with Natsume Shingo - • Video
Gimmieabreakman's personal experience attending a funeral in Japan and information about 香典 (kouden). - • What Happens After Lif...
Wikipedia's references for Japanese flower words in English - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanakotoba

[@hiramrivas1369]

That is a very deep and out of the ordinary explanation of Sonny Boy, you did an amazing job and it is much appreciated.

[@culturalcultist2003]

finished the series just today and this summed it up well for me, sonny boy will definitely go into being one of my faves of all time. thank you for the informative video

[@casuallywatanabe]

Thanks for being my first ever comment.

[@gavinferguson2938]

Thank you for doing the only explanation that anybody ever needed to hear about sonny boy. Nobody needs all this in-depth crazy Albert Einstein level mathmatic formulae to understanding something that appeals directly toward you emotions and perception. This show is something everyone understands, its just one of those things you dont need to 'get' intellectually. I think its something thats meant to be understood intuitivley and on a personal basis even if thats something you cant exactly vocalize or put into words. And thats what makes it a masterpiece in my opinion. As somebody that loves all that crazy analysis and examination, sonny boy is one of those things that I just 'get' without really knowing 𝘩𝘰𝘸 I get it. Myself and good friend of mine watched the finale on call together and not once did we even speak about it, at the end we were both silently crying for reasons we still dont really understand and I think that thats amazing.

[@Qbgarden]

Wow. I've never been in the first few subs before. Lol. Hope you continue to add content. Not bad at all for just starting out.

[@casuallywatanabe]

Thanks now that I have an idea of what I really want to do, it's time to start making things and making things consistently. Thanks for taking the time to watch.

[@Cobra-dc6mf]

great video i just have one question, what does Nagara's co-worker represent in the final chapter? since she also appears when Nagara and Mizuho are escaping

[@casuallywatanabe]

This one took me back for a while after the original broadcast ended, but now that we have this connection to Urashima Taro established, it's a lot easier to piece her existence together. With Nagara established as our protagonist, the co-worker's existence establishes a precedent of failure in this world. As you noted, the co-worker shows up immediately after Yamabiko does during the escape sequence in episode twelve, so let's presume they're all related to Nagara in some way. Recall this, Yamabiko had the power to create and manifest anything in his mind. The co-worker is just standing there ominously. Not much to go off of but simply being there let's us connect some details together. Connecting Nagara, Yamabiko, and this co-worker together to try to figure out who the co-worker might be and why she may be important reaches into speculative areas, but the connections are initially grounded in what happens in the story. Let's try to find the answers using what's already in Sonny Boy. There are two main connections between these three students. One, Yamabiko and the co-worker failed to escape this world on their own. Nagara and Nozomi succeed because of the promise they make to each other and keep throughout the story. Yamabiko fails because he wasn't be honest with Kodama. This co-worker is likely another failure who is one part of a male/female pair in another class. This helps us establish more than one class has been through this world. And if more than one class has been here, there may be multiple people who have failed to escape. Two, the consistency of the powers that connects these three together. The constant that we see is that there is a set of powers that can create and direct. This always belongs to a boy and girl pair. The selected boy creates, the selected girl directs. When one half fails to commit to the other, the pair fails (and subsequently so does the remainder of the class). Nagara and Nozomi - The power to create new worlds and the power to direct towards a path to the ideal new world. Yamabiko and Kodama - The power to create anything from one's mind and the power to direct anything in the world. Co-worker - Let's presume in this pattern that she has some type of power that directs but no boy to pair a creation type power with that we know of. We look at Sonny Boy as the story of a boy who has the power to travel between worlds who then meets a girl. What if this isn't the first time this story has taken place? What happens when you fail in this world? I think Yamabiko and the co-worker are answers to these questions, which also establishes who the co-worker is meant to be. If the principal, who is the gatekeeper to this world, brings in classes who have the potential to escape but only if a boy girl pair are able to recognize something special between one another, then the principal has brought in other classes. Surely some must have failed and those failures serve to warn other classes that are brought into this world. The co-worker is a failure of a past class who remains trapped in this world and is subsequently rescued in the new world thanks to Nagara. In the new world, she takes interest in him for a reason we don't get an explanation for, she can't have knowledge of this world because this is a new world with re-rolled possibilities, but the simplest explanation is often the best. Let's just say the co-worker of the new world likes him. Nagara before the events of Sonny Boy isn't very attractive but the Nagara that returns from this world, the one who Nozomi, Mizuho, and Rajdhani believed in, is a GigaChad! As a new person, having changed thanks to the events of this world, he's gonna get some attention he didn't have before. Getting to this point is all thanks to the link that Urashima Taro helps us figure out by providing Sonny Boy a foundation for it's story. For fun, we can go a little further, if the co-worker is a girl with the power to direct something but we don't know her exact power... We have another character in this story who can also direct the powers that belong to other people but we don't know the identity of that person. That would be Aki-sensei. What we know is true about Aki-sensei of this world leaves open a gap for establishing who she might be, it's this co-worker girl. For one, Aki-sensei isn't who she says she is. And two, she can use her power to control the powers of others, which we see her explain in episode ten while consoling Asakaze. Is the co-worker the person who impersonates Aki-sensei? That's hard to say for sure, but it sure does look likely. We don't know what power the co-worker has exactly, but the potential of directing something means she may be able to impersonate the appearance of a teacher and be able to direct the powers of others.

[@0606Deco]

Do you think about making another video?

[@casuallywatanabe]

Not necessarily about Sonny Boy, but there is so much anime to talk about, it's only natural to be inspired by it all. I want to make a lot of videos about what I see and why I see it that way. Maybe not in the same way that I did here for Sonny Boy, this was an exception as an experience so I wanted to highlight the exceptional nature of the material. Avoiding the messy details, I have started to write in a regular rhythm again, so the next step is to get more ideas out of documents and into video form. It's all up to me at this point and I owe it to myself to get my thoughts out there if I really want to share them. Thanks for checking this out and expect to hear from me again.