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EPISODE 72: THE COMING OF HIKARU
Hikaru and Koji arrive at the lake and he comments joking about the fact that they seem to have a dreamy expression.
Maria Grace answers that they were talking about Planet Fleed. Hikaru turns, looking at Daisuke, who is sitting facing the lake, and he simply nods without a word.
  
At this point, while Koji and Maria Grace are looking at her, and Daisuke, instead, is still playing his guitar, Hikaru builds a bamboo boat saying:
Hikaru: It’s your homeland, would you have nostalgia for it?
 
While Daisuke closes his eyes continuing playing, she kneels on the lake shore, letting the grass boat flowing in the water and, looking down, she closes her eyes too.
  
Thanks to Jerome and my stepsister, we know what the meaning of the grass boat is (note by Gerdha: this topic had been discussed in the French forum a few weeks earlier). It’s a reference to a typical Japanese traditional gesture for recalling deaths (equivalent to the western tradition of bringing crisantems on graves). Maria Grace and Daisuke were talking about Fleed, so the explanation to Hikaru’s gesture is, in my opinion, that she wants to give an homage to the dead population of his man’s native planet. She closes her eyes in a silent prayer for all the innocents killed by Vega there, and Daisuke does the same, as he knows the meaning of what Hikaru has done. According to my Japanese relative, it is a Buddhist tradition in Japan that - usually at the beginning of August - Japanese families carry bamboo boats to the river, placing them on a lit candle and they let it flow in the stream to the sea, in memory of their own dead peoples; since the last postwar period, this ritual has also taken on a special remembrance of the victims of the atomic attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In various episodes of Ufo Robot Grendizer, there are explicit references to the fact that both Umon and the Makiba family (Hikaru's family) are very related to Japanese cultural traditions, so you can safely assume that they have regularly performed this traditional gesture, even though the event is not shown in any episode. It is legitimate to assume that Daisuke, at the time of ep72, was aware of this recurrence and it is therefore normal for him to understand the meaning of Hikaru's gesture. Please, also note the particular appearance of the bamboo boat built by Hikaru, which reminds exactly of a candle transported by the boat itself, confirming the reference to the scene in the traditional gesture and its interpretive context.
I find this scene terribly emotional, wonderful, exceptional. An incredible script, which, without words but through little visual references, is able to let understand those viewers who would like to scratch the surface what is going on from a psychological perspective in the characters. In fact, in my opinion, Hikaru’s behaviour is the proof that her link with Daisuke is so profound that she feels confident in doing an homage to “his” deaths (which in a Japanese perspective is a “familiar” thing); maybe she feels even them as “her” deaths too now, particularly if he has decided to stay on Earth with her forever.
See how perfect is ep72 script, from a narrative point of view. The image of a praying Hikaru fades in the image of a red-haired girl who is observing a Japan map at the Moon Base.
 
 
This is not TTOTC 1 ( ), but I find the director’s choice of switching the image from Hikaru to Rubina really powerful. The girl from the countryside versus the princess: usually this is what Grendizer fandom think ep72 is about. Well, I disagree. The contrast between the two female figures is not about their roles, but on their personalities. A generous girl versus a selfish one;
 
a girl who has spent months aside a sick guy, trying to support and comfort him, versus another one who does not even ask “How are you?”, when she meets him again after 8 years;
 
a girl who would be available to take care of the people of another planet in the name of love for her man, versus another one who betrays her father and her own population because she wants her charming prince to believe her.
Should I go on with the list? How it’s possible to believe that a man like Daisuke Umon could be in love with a woman like Rubina is totally beyond me.
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1 TTOTC: The Trial of The Century. It was a sort of role-playing game, in which a trial was performed on the characters. Gerdha had the role of Prosecution, Agnès was the Defense Counsel, the Judge was Jerome, the Jury were Suzi and all the other members of the forum who wanted to comment on the various posts.
Edited by joe 7 - 24/11/2019, 19:28
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