14th March is truly an embarrassing day.
On 14th February, people confess to the persons they like. On 14th March, those lucky fews are expected to do something in return if they accept the confession. Accepting an confession is easy, but how about rejecting? Rejecting someone’s confession is really embarrassing. Is “I am sorry” enough to make that person understand it’s a rejection? What if that person doesn’t know how to give up?
Don’t worry! This is what anime is here for. The series below may teach us a thing or two. To sum up, there are three levels of rejection.
1. The nice way – Usefulness: ★
Sakamoto from Sakamoto desu ga? (坂本ですが?) must be the nicest guy ever. He does not hate on people. Even if someone intends to hurt him, he can turn that situation into a heartwarming experience. Needless to say, he rejects girls’ confessions very often in a nice way too.
The first time he rejects someone is his classmate’s mum, Mrs. Kubota. She falls in love with the high school boy at first sight as he resembles a handsome Korean star.
And of course Sakamoto does his best to avoid the lovestruck obasan.
As much as Sakamoto is not interested in Mrs. Kubota, he doesn’t want to hurt her with a direct rejection. He makes use of Mrs. Kubota’s love for Korean dramas, and plays a video of himself on her TV.
He explains that he is not real, that he lives in the world of TV drama. By faking he does not exist, Mrs. Kubota has no options but gives up on this impossible TV-human relationship.
Sakamoto turns unrequited love into impossible love. It hurts less, and it ends the relationship once and for all. Useful!
Later, a ghost tries to confess to Sakamoto by mouthing “I like you” in a series of photos taken. Sakamoto is almost like a god who cares about every little living thing, and that includes a freaking horrifying ghost.
Sakamoto does not exactly reject the favour, and he does not accept it either. He takes it lightly. He takes it as if someone tells him “you look good today” casually.
Yes, he only says “Thank You” in the end, no heartbreaking phrases like “I am sorry” or “I don’t like you”. He even photocopies himself saying it. This is tactful and creative, a way which I believe to be difficult to make someone incredibly sad over being rejected, but this is definitely not enough to convince someone to give up.
2. The cool way – Usefulness: ★★
The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (涼宮ハルヒの消失) comes off as quite a depressing movie. Kyon wakes up to a world without Haruhi, but this is actually the result of Yuki creating a parallel universe where none of his friends except Yuki remembers him. It is unsure whether Yuki does this out of her feeling for Kyon (still, no one is sure up to this point).
Given that Yuki rarely expresses her feeling, she must like Kyon so much that she creates the world for just the two of them and tries to stop him from leaving her side. After a lot of struggling and breakdowns, Kyon decides that he cannot live without Haruhi and rejects this world. By rejecting this world, it means rejecting Yuki.
In this scene, it’s not Yuki who lets go of Kyon. It’s Kyon who frees himself from her grip. There is no words. There is no facial expressions. There is only this action that explains everything. It looks cool. It looks handsome doing it. It gets you out of an embarrassing situation effortlessly. But at the same time, it hurts the person who confesses. It hurts to be ignored. It hurts to be not taken seriously. It just hurts a lot.
3. The heartless way – Usefulness: ★★★
In Hyouka (氷菓) , Satoshi does not intend to be a jerk to Mayaka, the girl he has feeling for. He is in the same embarrassing situation like most people do. Mayaka confesses to Satoshi by putting a heart-shaped chocolate in an empty school club room. Satoshi, being confused by his mixed feeling about starting a relationship, does the following.
He takes the chocolate away by making it like someone steals it, and by doing this he thinks he does not have to answer to Mayaka’s confession. Since the chocolate cannot fit into his tiny bag, he does one cruel thing – he breaks it. He bangs it hard on the table and breaks the heart.
Unfortunate for him, the others find out what he does. When he breaks the chocolate heart, he breaks the girl’s heart as well. What’s worse is that he makes up a whole drama just to avoid a girl’s confession, and in the end the said girl finds out about the whole scheme. When you have to do this much just to avoid a person and even let her/him find out, this means she/he must be a very undesirable, disgusting sight in your eyes. I can’t imagine a more heartbreaking way to reject someone than this one, honestly.
In the series, Mayaka still hasn’t given up on Satoshi after what he has done. But I doubt this will ever happen in real life.
P.S. I hope you don’t get slapped for trying the last two methods.
P.S. If no one confessed to you last Valentine’s Day, I am sorry for having you read this post.