Bottle Fairy: Episode 7 Commentary
October
October means bats and monsters, tricks and treats, kids in costumes and haunted houses. At least, far off in another country. In Japan, not so.
For Tama, October marks the autumn of video games, and for the fairies the autumn of poetry becomes the autumn of sports. Autumn seems to be a time for many things, as other series I’ve seen talk about the autumn of reading, and the autumn of eating.
When it comes to the autumn of eating, sweet potatoes seem to always be the sweet of choice. Back when I learned about this, I was told it was improper to buy sweets afterschool, and improper for a young girl to be buying sweet potatoes. I don’t know if that was the case, and if so I don’t know if it still is. This is an area of knowledge I’m lacking in. Buying habits of school children isn’t exactly a priority for me when learning about another culture.
In the relay race, the fairies wear red bandanas. They’ve worn these bandanas in sports scenes in prior episodes as well. The bandana, worn in competative play, marks which team a player is on. In a game of basket ball, for example, one team may wear red bandanas and the other team blue bandanas. This allows a player to immediately recognize which students are on his own team and which are on the opponent’s team.
While the other fairies wear red bandanas, Chiriri of course chooses a red hat. Her obsession with hats is quite clear this episode. I don’t know if wearing a hat rather than a bandana is something with any significance in a class, or if it’s simply a Chiriri thing.
As a final note on the autumn of atheletics, it appears Hororon is the only one to prescribe to Mr. Kimura’s preferred method to have a physical education uniform worn. If you don’t know who Mr. Kimura is, then be sure to check out Azumanga Daioh sometime.
Final thoughts: Tama-chan sure knows how to turn a negative into a positive when playing video games. She’s gaining life experience here. And here video games get looked down upon as simple entertainment. Ha.
