Uramichi Oniisan – 08

「忖度と良心」 (Sontaku to Ryoushin)
“Surmise and Conscience”

This week’s installment of Uramichi Oniisan decides to take a more introspective look at what Uramichi has had to contend with all these years. While previous episodes gave us a general idea that there is a kinder side to Uramichi, this one sheds light on the bursts of motivation that Uramichi gets to want to show enthusiasm at work.

In his own way, Uramichi has enough of a soft spot for his audience that he is willing to place himself in uncomfortable and embarrassing situations for them. One of the episode’s funnier moments came from when he had to carry and be ridden on the GM’s chubby grandson. But Uramichi’s unique method of pushing the children to have fun kicked in when he scared Kazuki into playing with the other kids by acting as if the poor kid could relate to his own personal misery.

At the same time, there is melancholy loneliness in much of Uramichi’s mindset beneath the surface. As he was conversing with Mitsuo, Uramichi wanted to let him know that even with the strain he places on himself to work out on his own time and act for the show, he places responsibility on himself to create a space where the kids can be themselves.

Although it’s usually a set-up for a self-deprecating punchline, Uramichi takes it upon himself to constantly remind the kids to make the most of any innocence they come across and not to squander the youth they have. It is expected for Uramichi to be the buzzkill, but his tendency to revel in his pessimism makes it all the more depressing when he does get bursts of positivity that he channels as part of a coping mechanism to help him stay in a happier mood.

It also makes the Father’s Day Concert a rough experience for Uramichi. After seeing Uramichi genuinely tear up when a boy used his father’s lessons to thank him for his efforts on “Morning with Maman”, it was alarming to see the show take a serious turn when the actors were told to draw pictures of their fathers. The scene catches you off-guard with the humorous moment where Usahara and Mitsuo have to draw their characters’ ears on sketches of their real fathers so that the audience knows they didn’t have human fathers, but then, we get a glimpse of Uramichi’s drawing.

It makes far more sense that Uramichi would try his hardest to apply his acrobatic skills towards recapturing his lost youth knowing that his drawing revealed that his father was abusive. Not only had he let his strictness dictate how much abuse he’d give to a young Uramichi, but his parenting methods caused Uramichi’s sister to run away from home at 16. It brings his daily misery into perspective knowing that the only way he could reclaim his life was to take on the one dead-end job that could give him an opportunity to bring happiness to somebody’s life, even if it is at the cost of his own.