It’s only natural to be a little anxious in the last year of high school but a collection of his school students are in danger of giving up before their lives have even started in Hideo Jojo’s zeitgeisty dramedy On the Edge of their Seats (アルプススタンドのはしの方, alps stand no hashi no kata). Adapted from a stage play written and performed by a high school drama club, the effortlessly witty dialogue has a lived-in quality while pregnant with its own anxieties as the teens each deal with their private disappointments while wondering if there’s any point in trying when all their efforts are doomed to failure.
Best friends Asuha (Rina Ono) and Hikaru (Marin Nishimoto) for example are still dealing with the fallout from losing their place in a regional drama competition when one of them got sick and couldn’t perform. Fujino (Amon Hirai) quit the baseball team after realising he’d never be as good as the lead pitcher, and the shy Megumi (Shuri Nakamura) struggles with social interaction while unexpectedly having her thunder stolen by popular girl Tomoka (Hikari Kuroki) who not only beat her to first place in the last exams but is also dating her crush, Sonoda who is the star of the baseball team.
None of them exactly wanted to come and watch their high school baseball team anyway which is why they’re way up in the bleachers. “Is the fabled last summer of high school meant to be so boring?” Asuha sighs, reflecting on the disappointing ordinariness of the end of her youth. It’s just one more thing she claims “can’t be helped” like the cancellation of the play or life’s myriad other disappointments. The ironic thing is that they’ve been bussed all the way into school in the middle of summer to watch their team lose, badly, to one that reached the national finals the year before. Perhaps you can’t blame them for their sense of futility.
Yet it’s just this kind of defeatism that they end up facing, encouraged by their over-enthusiastic English teacher and the school band to shout their hearts out for their friends on the field. “Life is all about swinging and striking out” their teacher tells them, trying to reassure the teens that it’s worth taking the risk as they continue to meditate on disappointment and inertia. Fujino quit baseball because he thought it was pointless to continue when he’d always lose out to Sonoda, but his teammate Yano, who is objectively bad, stayed on and continued to train intensively despite his low prospects of ever being allowed on the field. He wonders who had the right idea, him or Yano, and whether it’s wiser to switch tracks when something doesn’t work for you or really it was just petulant resentment that led him to give up without putting up much of a fight.
Though none of them were particularly invested in the game to begin with, when they talk about “baseball” they’re really talking about a lot of other things and gradually begin to rebel against the “can’t be helped” philosophy that led them to give in to disappointment. The shy and secretly lonely Megumi discovers that Tomoka doesn’t have it all that great either, eventually forging a spiritual bond in their shared desire to support Sonoda who after all is not having a great day on the mound. There’s something a little ironic in the choice of Sonoda’s favourite intro song, Train-Train by the Blue Hearts, which neatly reflects the teens’ internal anxiety along with the messages of living in the moment.
What they learn is in essence that if you’ve done your best and it still doesn’t work out then that’s alright and there’s nothing to be afraid of so you might as well swing for the fences even if you miss. They remain “spectators” in one sense, but in becoming emotionally involved in the baseball game that we never see but only hear about the teens regain the courage and desire to take a more active part while gently bonding in their shared sense of solidarity and renewed hope for the future. Witty and warmhearted, Jojo’s innovatively lensed coming-of-age drama has a poignant quality of youthful nostalgia but also genuine heart in its gentle advocation for the art of perseverance.
Original trailer (English subtitles)
Train-Train by the Blue Hearts
Windows on Worlds 