In the previous part of this analysis, I examined the impact of Melissa’s attack on Misa when she related her two losses, the absence and coldness of her father, and her second thoughts on her choice to join the military. Here’ I’ll discuss how Misa’s emotional and mental state impacts whatever plans her father may have had for her future.
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In the previous part of this analysis, I examined the circumstances of Sakiko’s death and how they, combined with the circumstances of Riber’s death, triggered a cascade of events that demolished Misa’s perception of her enrollment in the Far East Officers’ Academy. Here, I’ll discuss how the effects these events had on Misa impact whatever plans her father may have had for her future. This post will be one of the longest in this series, because it discusses one of the most pivotal parts of the narrative in White Reminiscences, where the foundations for the uneasy relationship Misa has with her father in SDFM.
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Both White Reminiscences and the TV series make it abundantly clear that Riber’s death was absolutely devastating for Misa and that she carried her grief over his death well into the series. In the previous part of this series, I mentioned that she couldn’t help noticing her father’s emotional absence during Riber’s loss. This, I think, contributes to the formation of a first “crack” in her perception of him and even her relationship with him. Takashi’s behavior during Sakiko’s last days and the period after her death does nothing to repair this harm. What makes the reader question the salvageability of his relationship with Misa, however, is what these events trigger in the academy.
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Ōnogi provides strong hints that Takashi had a positive opinion of Riber and that he, at the very least, didn’t object to the idea of a possible marriage between Misa and the young Fruhling. One could plausibly wonder if the idea of facilitating a marriage between Misa and Riber had the additional appeal of a formal Hayase-Fruhling connection. This, however, was not meant to be, as SDFM and White Reminiscences narrate.
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For a novel narrating a series of pivotal events in a teenage girl’s life, the absence of references to its protagonist’s social and family circle makes White Reminiscences seem like an anomaly. Among other things Ōnogi narrates in often overindulgent detail, we’re told that Misa attended Toyo Eiwa Elementary School and the first two years of Toyo Eiwa Junior High School. In these eight years (ten, if we also count the two years of kindergarten – if she attended one, which is very likely), she’s bound to have made friends from school and her neighborhood, with some being her best friends.
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The “spoilt girl” hypothesis developed in the previous installment of my analysis is further weakened by Takashi’s conduct while Misa is in military academy. During this time, her correspondence with Riber includes commentary on, among other things, in-universe events and subjects of a military, political, and geopolitical nature. Among them are a huge, top secret military project that eats up the UN government’s budget, the launching of the first Oberth-class space destroyer, and the assassination of Harlan J. Niven, the first Prime Minister of the UN Government.
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In the second part of this analysis, I set out to understand why Misa is portrayed as a young adolescent without any aspiration for her future. For the sake of completeness, I need to examine another possible explanation: that Misa is, in fact, merely a spoilt girl. It’s a convenient read, really: she was born into a household possessing power, privilege, connections, and money, and her parents could let her have and do anything she wanted. As a matter of fact, they proactively provided things unaffordable to the masses, such as a skiing trip to Nice (yes, there are ski resorts in the arrondissement of Nice; Ōnogi has Misa vaguely refer to Nice in a letter to Riber). What incentive, then, would she have to bother imagining a future where she’d be an autonomous person, earning her own life?
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The creative team has gone to considerable lengths to portray Takashi Hayase in as sympathetic a manner as possible; Chronicle attempts to retcon him as a single widower parent who raised Misa all alone after her mother’s death (DeAgostini Japan 2013), even though White Reminiscences contradicts this. Incidentally, Macross Perfect Memory’s write-up on Misa says her parents had divorced and that she was subsequently raised by her father (Minori Shobo 1983), but this would’ve been an unusual outcome in Japan, as it would most likely require her mother to agree to cede custody.
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