At its heart, Bloom Into You is a story of love.
Not just of the people you care most about, but of yourself.
How does one define,
You?
Based on what others think of us, or what we think of ourselves.
I think deep down we all harbor some fear of how others view us,
A desire to be accepted -
to be loved. The question is whether we let that fear define us.
The truth is,
every person has a slightly different idea of who you are and vice-versa.
The student council's play frames Bloom Into You's second-half.
Koyomi's script weaves a story of an amnesiac girl, visited by a friend, a family member, and a lover.
Each tell the girl who she was to them in hopes of sparking her memory back.
But all three paint a wildly different portrait of her.
Unsure how to define herself, the girl decides
she'll pick one of the three identities, ultimately landing on her partner's.
None of the three can truly say they know who the girl was.
Their images of her weren't wrong,
but her real self lies somewhere in between them all, hidden underneath.
A major theme of Bloom Into You is the Performativity in our connections to others.
The disconnect between how we present ourselves and how we truly are.
The series often uses voiceover during scenes to distinguish its characters presentation of themselves from their actual feeling.
Often juxtaposing the conflicting thoughts between its cast.
Take this phone conversation between Yuu and Touko.
Outwardly, we see a light friendly chatter, but there's much more to it than that. On one end, Touko.
Hearing Yuu's voice calms her.
Her frustrations melt away.
On the other,
Yuu.
Talking to Touko makes her anxious. Her mind running faster and faster.
Yet while they seem to oppose each other - For both,
It's a comforting feeling.
A later scene in episode 11
between Yuu, Touko and Sayaka, drives home
the tangled web between its cast views of themselves individually,
and in relation to each other.
As the three try to sleep,
their thoughts peel back the awkward tension in the room,
revealing each of their anxieties.
Sayaka, next to Touko
wants to reach out and touch her, but fears she'll lose her if she does.
That this is the closest she'll ever get.
Touko thinks of Yuu
wishing she could see her sleeping face.
Yuu looks towards Touko.
Contemplating whether to touch her or not,
but she too, pulls back.
The scene deftly illustrates the battle going on in each of their minds,
that they refuse to let the others in on.
Bloom partly crafts its relationships through its characters inner voices,
but beyond that,
it's this voice that represents their truest self.
When they're at their most honest,
their most vulnerable.
A huge part of Bloom Into You,
is in how the characters keep that voice locked away.
Touko suffers under the weight of the expectations placed upon her to be special.
Like her sister.
We all deal with the societal pressure to be happy.
To put on a face for those around us.
When someone looks down or even neutral,
we ask what's wrong.
Happiness is seen as the default correct emotion.
So we trudge along pretending to be so,
no matter what lies underneath.
Touko can't show her real self to others
because she feels she has to maintain that image.
Everyone has masks we wear depending on the company.
I know I have a public self and a private one.
A me for friends, and A me for family.
An online identity,
and an IRL one.
But in all these versions of myself, who's to say which is the real me?
Can I even answer that question myself?
Or maybe, I don't want to.
Maybe the answer is a reflection I'd rather not see.
Touko turns away from the mirror.
She tells Yuu not to fall in love with her
because she hates herself;
and can't be with someone who loves the things she hates.
Touko attempts to overwrite herself by becoming her sister.
Or rather, her own image of her.
She wants to be that person because she was someone worth looking up to.
Someone deserving of love.
Touko's sister, however, wore her own masks.
Tomoyuki tells her, "The driven hard worker
she strives for", sounds nothing like the Mio he knew.
Is this person she modeled herself after built on a lie?
Touko defines herself by the person she thought her sister to be.
If Mio wasn't that person,
What does she have left?
She says she can't go back to the empty girl
she was.
She has to embody her sister.
Yet, that emptiness has been replaced by a different feeling.
At the core of Bloom Into You,
is Touko and Yuu's loneliness.
For Yuu, it's the isolation from her peers for not sharing this feeling of love.
For Touko,
She feels subconsciously trapped for locking her inner self away.
Through each other, the two begin to fill that hole.
Yuu gradually starts to understand these feelings and even experience them herself;
While Touko finds someone she can open up to, and let that person inside out.
Though it's not as if the two are completely opened with one another.
Yuu lies to Touko that she won't change,
even though she desperately wants to.
Can you ever truly understand someone?
Bloom seems to say,
The answer is not so clear.
The truth of the matter is,
We can never know if the images of people we build in our heads
are their true selves or not.
That person within us is the closest person we have.
At times, that's a suffocating thought.
It can be incredibly isolating,
as if you're awash in a sea, barely able to reach out.
But maybe this isn't about understanding others at all.
If we define ourselves by who we are in the moment,
not guiding our identity by how others perceive us
or by how we perceive we should be,
then that person inside
could be a little less distant.
Koyomi's play needs a new ending.
The girl's true self,
is not the image presented by any of the three closest to her,
But the one she shared with the nurse here.
Where she didn't feel like an actor cast in the lead role of her own life.
Regardless of who she was then,
this is who she is now.
Maybe Touko loves Yuu
not because Yuu understands her,
but because Touko understands herself,
When she's with Yuu.
It's not complicated.
Every moment is one she wishes would never end.
Being open with others starts by being open with yourself.
To that person inside,
I want to bloom into you.
Touko's unsure if she can reach out to anyone,
but she's not alone in this sea.
Yuu's there too.
Reaching out with her,
Together.