Love is Possession/Koi ni Tsukimono 恋につきもの

Happy New Year dear Readers!

What a bumpy year 2015 was! There was a great deal of yuri (which I think was the best year in yuri actually) but at the same time never have I had such a bad year as well! 2015 just went and proved to me the laws of the universe, about things being in balance and all that. I mean I was so happy last year but at the same time the pain I felt was equally as strong. In other words, everything cancelled out each other and it feels like it was a absolute zero year!

Weird!

We all know what stuff happened so I won’t bore you with them anymore. This is a new year and thus new beginnings and those who always live in the past are always left behind so on forward we go. This year is going to be one life-changing year for me. I am graduating this June meaning that my life is about to do a 180 on me but I await that challenge with open arms!

There are a few promises I made that I have yet to fulfil so I thought this might be the year that I see about doing something about them. So, if anyone still remembers, please do remind me and I will start a schedule. For now, I will start with the latest promise about this movie of Itoh Sairi’s – Love is Possession AKA Koi ni Tsukimono.

This is a three part movie with three different stories about three different couples and in fact different kinds of love. Ibara no Bara is the first and most relevant story. This is the one our girls are in but sadly, it is also the shortest one coming in at under 30 minutes in a 105 minute movie.

Not gonna say that I felt cheated because if the movie had gone on any longer, i feel like the story would have just been dragging because let’s be honest, the only way any more time would have been relevant was if Ibara and Ruka finally got to 2nd base but this is not that kind of movie so…

Matsumoto Hana as Ibara

Itoh Sairi as Ruka

 

 
 
 
 

 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 

What a short lovely movie. Okay, I might not feel cheated but I still wish it was a bit longer.

A yes, Itoh Sairi plays Ruka, a girl with a condition where her skin grows glass sakura petals. She is one crazy girl but I think that it was just that time for her where her hormones were just into overdrive. Her emotions were always at an all time high throughout the movie.

Meanwhile, our main girl is Ibara and she too has a skin condition but unlike Ruka who has no control over hers since she was a child, Ibara’s condition seems to come and go dependant on her emotional state, well, at least that is what it seems likes most of the time. Either way she has no control over her condition as well even though it is tied to her emotions for sure. As for what this condition is, well, her skin sprouts thorns when her emotions spike, mostly due to Ruka making the moves on her from what we see. We later find out that these thorns are the same as those found on roses when she sprouts a rose bud at the very end.

I have seen this movie a couple of times and I have to confess that the very first time I didn’t like Ibara no Bara that much. Ruka’s character was so annoying to me the first time I watched her that I believe I actually skipped through it a few times. Also the fact that it seemed like nothing was resolved, this is during the first watching, I kind of hated the movie because I felt cheated, in that it was just another typical tease from Japan where they tease then turn the character shitty in order to justify them not making out couple have a HAPPY END!

Yeah, thinking of it now, I really hated this movie, which is why I guess I did not blog about it. I mean those days I was really on fire if you remember! In case one doesn’t remember, those were the TGS 5Tsu, Flare, Shishunki Gokko days! But I watched it a couple of more times because I just couldn’t handle me not liking it as it seemed in line with my tastes in yuri (light).

Turns out I was very wrong to judge it, especially when the movies released at the same time made the feelings clear, even if they all didn’t deliver! I was so wrong in fact because this movie actually had a HAPPY END when everything is said and done. It was actually pretty clever!

How? Well, to lay it out blankly, nothing actually changed from their relationship at the beginning and at the end of the movie! Now while this fact is almost always a negative and would make many shake heads wondering why they had spent their precious time watching the damn movie, the story was actually pretty clever! Yes their relationship did not change from how it was at the start but the thing is that you don’t actually know what their actually connection is until the end.

Get what I mean? To us the viewer their relationship does change because we see their real feelings as the movie goes on but the characters themselves nothing changes for them.

Yes, there was a confession, a couple of confessions in fact so some might argue that their relationship did change for them as well but that actually isn’t the case. Upon the confession nothing changes at all! Ibara doesn’t treat Ruka differently after the fact and neither does Ruka change at all! I am loving this little thing more and more the more I think of the story.

I mean on the outside a lot of things happened to their lives during this time period. Not only did Ruka confess but their relationship got tested by the arrival of a rival in a boy that was crushing on Ibara but here is the kicker! While in any other story this would have spelled disaster, either changing out lesbian into a psychopath or eliminating the chances of yuri by having our main character end up with said boy, that is not what happens here!

In fact what happens is what we usually wish is what would have happened any other time our ship was a triangle with a boy involved (ReiUsagi, TomoyoSakura, etc, etc…). Ibara has no feelings for the boy whatsoever! It is all a misunderstanding on Ruka’s part and rightfully so. I really loved this! Ruka loved Ibara so much that any thing like that would have been taken the wrong way. She of course jumped to conclusions whenever she saw the two together. To her she saw Ibara embracing a boy seemingly okay with the hug when whenever Ruka hugged Ibara, Ibara would grow thorns all over her body.

It did not help matters too that this all went on after the two had just had a fight. Ruka wanted so badly to jump Ibara’s bones but the fact that Ibara’s thorns activated whenever she got an emotional spike, which if doesn’t happen when someone is trying to smooch you I don’t know when it should, but Ruka always got hurt. And although she did not mind, Ibara did not want to hurt her and both having different views on the same matter, the matter of both loving the other so much, in Ruka’s case loving Ibara so much she doesn’t mind getting hurt and Ibara loving Ruka so much she doesn’t want to hurt her, the two have difficulty trying to convey each other’s feelings. Especially with Ruka being so out of control with the sudden urges to bed Ibara!

I also love the fact that only one side of the heart is explicitly mentioned and even shown and that is Ruka’s feelings for Ibara. Ever since that day when they were only kids when Ibara comforted Ruka seemingly not being afraid of her despite everyone else being terrified of her or bullied her, Ruka has been in love with Ibara since then. The movie is also about Ruka expressing her love for Ibara both through words and actions too.

Meanwhile Ibara’s feelings as seemingly a mystery but in actual fact they are not! They are there to see as plain as day and they are actually kept that way through out the movie. Ibara doesn’t say ‘I love you/I like you’ to Ruka at all but she doesn’t need to. It is there, the love for Ruka, only Ruka did not see it until the very end. We as the viewers are given little clues to it like that smile that breaks out on Ibara’s face when she reads Ruka’s note of apology, or the way that she still lets Ruka try to make out with her despite being very capable of fending her off if she wanted like she did the boy, who turned out to be a Dick! Or the way that despite how many times Ruka has those emotional moments and lashes out at her, she still always forgives her because that is who she is showing that she accepts Ruka for all her flaws and everything!

Okay, I really love this little thing of a movie! It was quirky, was light, crazy, deep, funny, mysterious, fantastical, dramatic, really, it was everything!

Just go watch it yourselves…

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                 Possess Some Love

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I left the other parts it as well because I know some of you will enjoy them! I know not everyone is like me and avoid het like it was a plague or something. Actually the last part – Koi ni Tsukimono, it kind of relevant, glass door relevant in that it is yaoi! So…

Anywa, let’s have a blast this year, shall we…