I think I didn’t properly read the summary of Barakamon when I started it. And thus I was surprised, pleasantly surprised, to discover that Barakamon wasn’t only about calligraphy but also about discovering a new life in the country.
I don’t know if you’ve followed because I think I’ve already talked about it but I’ve lived all my life in the countryside except for a brief pause in a city, which didn’t really work for me. As such, somehow, Barakamon really resonated with me.
There are a lot of things happening in the countryside that you can’t know about if you’ve never lived it. Barakamon mostly showed its good sides but at the same time, these good sides are the same ones that can be awfully hard to bear when you’re not used to it.
In Barakamon, Handa gets help the very same minute he arrives. And from then on, he gets that help every single day whether he needs it or not. It can be good, and it’s sometimes true but at the same time it can be very hard to bear the constant presence of meddling people.
Handa is pretty lucky, the ones who keep on pestering him are children. The adults are often a lot less open and a lot more judgemental. Handa is also lucky in the fact that he has a very traditional job, things probably wouldn’t have e gone so smoothly if he was, say, a hard rock musician.
Barakamon was meant to be a heartwarming anime and it did its job wonderfully, and, in a way, pretty realistically.
While it aired I had seen many people complaining about the children’s parents leaving their children running wherever they wanted without anyone to follow them around or make sure they’re fine and not doing anything dangerous. You know what? It’s exactly what’s happening, or at least what happened, in small villages. Just think about it, would you rather have your children run around in the forest with the children of your neighbor that you know well or do whatever in the streets of a city with people you don’t know? Of course you would rather they ran in the forest. Of course it often ends up in big or small disasters (apparently, parents don’t like it when their children jump in mud, don’t know why…) but the benefits of running in the fields are a lot bigger than those disasters.
And it’s exactly what I took from Barakamon. You learn a lot from your surroundings, you just have to pay attention.