Insufficient Direction

Years ago, when I heard that Hideaki Anno married Moyoco Anno my first thought was, “How the hell did that happen?”  He’s the director of “Evangelion” and a hardcore otaku.  She’s the author of josei manga such as “Flowers & Bees,” “Sakuran” and “Hataraki Man” which feature strong-willed (sometimes to the point of frightening) female protagonists.  One wonders how they managed to hook up in the first place, but they’ve been married since 2002 so they must be doing something right.  “Insufficient Direction” is the story of that “something” which is strange and weirdly compelling to behold, even if you’re still left wondering how they got to this point.

There’s no rhyme or reason to these twenty-one episodes detailing day-to-day life in the Anno household.  It’s just a frantic chaos of vignettes from the wife’s — she calls herself Rompers here — point of view.  Don’t expect a visual feast as she employs a fast-and-loose style which is big on caricature and suggestion as opposed to detail.  That’s why she draws herself as a baby and her husband — referred to as Director-kun — comes off as a very cartoonish version of himself.  Together, the two descend into a loving mess of Japanese fandom that will either repulse or impress the reader with how nerdy they are.

Exactly how nerdy is that?  We’re introduced to Rompers as she’s singing the theme song to the “Sazae-san” anime and steps on a toy from a candy box Director-kun was eating out of.  When she asks him how old he is, his response is a deadpan “10.”  It would seem from that inauspicious opening that we’re in the running for 130-odd pages of, “Husband acts nerdy/Wife takes him to task for it.”  As horrifying a prospect as that would seem, it doesn’t turn out to be the case as by the end of the chapter they’re bonding again over a punchline — “I’m gonna kill you!” — from an old gag manga.

In fact, the most illuminating thing about “Insufficient Direction” is how understanding and nerdy Rompers turns out to be herself.  She binge-watches “Gundam,” sings anime theme songs with Director-kun when they go on a park trip, gets up with him to watch tokusatsu shows, and stops caring when people find out they listen to the aforementioned anime theme songs in the car.  It’s a refreshing change from how you see most women portrayed in fiction when they are forced to confront their significant others’ nerdy hobbies.

That’s not to say that she gets frustrated with him from time-to-time, as Director-kun is also shown to be plenty insufferable even by otaku standards.  This is a man who will ask his wife to hold his life-size Kamen Rider belt across his waist so he can do the hero poses, all due to the fact that he’s too fat for it to fit normally.  Yet Director-kun is also shown to be caring and attentive, as we find out when he nurses his wife while she’s sick.  The man’s laid-back demeanor also looks to compliment his wife’s high-strung nature quite well.  He’s the kind of guy who, after being told by Rompers that all of his swag has to be moved from the living room to a side room, doesn’t call his wife on her hypocrisy when she has to leave her person-sized sauna in his newly designated man-cave.  There’s also his afterword where he hints at his wife’s difficult past and talks about wanting to protect her with everything he has that comes off as genuinely heartfelt.

All of that being said, your appreciation of “Insufficient Direction” will likely hinge on a couple things.  One:  Do you have any kind of interest in the personal life of Moyoco and Hideaki Anno?  Don’t expect any insight into their signature works — this is all slice-of-life, all the time.  Two:  How high is your threshold for seeing nerds act like nerds?  I’ll admit that you’ll have to have a pretty high one to appreciate most of the goings-on here, but that’s offset by how funny they frequently are.  Three:  How much of an interest in Japan-specific culture/fandom do you have?  There are thirty pages of annotations discussing all of the manga, anime and tokusatsu discussed by Director-kun and Rompers.  That should give you an idea of how deep the cultural divide runs; fortunately, the humor is driven by the characters so you won’t find yourself flipping to the notes to understand a joke.  At least, not as often as you would with “Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei.”

I’ve got an interest in all three so I found this to be pretty enjoyable overall.  My biggest issue, as I mentioned back in the opening paragraph, is that we don’t find out anything about how they met.  We get an extra story about Rompers’ efforts to reserve a place for their wedding ceremony (which goes quite badly), but that’s the only hint we get.  The characters’ personalities are so different that I can’t help but think that seeing their courtship would be a fascinating read in and of itself.  Sometimes leaving things out in an autobiographic work can enhance the story.  You can see this in Hideo Azuma’s “Disappearance Diary” as his refusal to address what his friends and family felt or thought about his periodic escapes creates a lingering sense of unease and even dread that effectively complements its whimsical tone.  Here it just feels like we’re not getting all of the story.

In that sense, I know what I’d like to see from a follow-up to “Insufficient Direction.”  If we can get a prequel showing how Rompers and Director-kun got together, I’d love to see that.  As for an actual sequel showing more of their married life?  I don’t think that’s entirely necessary.  We get a pretty good illustration of their relationship and its quirks here, and simply getting more of the same would likely provoke a sense of diminishing returns more than anything else.  Still, “Insufficient Direction” is ultimately endearingly nerdy in ways that will appease its target audience.