The Daily Almanac: The Bra Strap
Monday, February 22nd, 2010So you all remember my manifesto on the greatness of Chu-Bra a couple of weeks ago, right? Well, to sum it up, I thought the series was actually really well done because it combined the visual sexiness of lingerie with a very unique (and serious) take on the awkwardness of puberty. I feel that if you write the show off as being nothing more than lolicon fodder, then you’re doing the story a great disservice.
Well, Ed Sizmore of Comics Worth Reading still wasn’t quite convinced that there was more to this series than its sexy exterior, and he requested that I write up episodic reviews on what I was seeing when I watch this series. While I don’t plan to do this for every episode, I’m going to try to do it for all the really good ones from here on out.
So let’s focus on episode 7, since it is now streaming for free for anyone within the US. While the series has been focusing on puberty through the female point of view up until this point, this episode really centered around the male’s experience via its only boy character, Komachi-kun. As a male, I found myself able to easily identify with him as he struggles to keep his hormones in check while still trying to remain a “good boy.”
I thought this episode summed up the male middle school experience perfectly by centering around the all too familiar event we see pictured in the screen cap above:
Staring at the bra strap showing through the shirt of the girl sitting in front of you.
As the Chu-Bra girls go into the summer, they change into their lighter school uniforms, and with the lighter fabric comes the opportunity to catch a faint view of the bra straps underneath. Everyone notices this the first day, and as the boys gossip over this new development, Komachi does his best to not think about it.
But he can’t help it, none of us could at that age. And whenever he sees a bra strap through the uniform, he takes a longing notice to it. There was still this huge mystery at that time about the complex female undergarment and the unknown holy grail that was contained underneath those tiny belts and latches.
Watching this episode reminded me of how much I was enthralled with this idea during my adolescence, and how this strap has somehow become completely unattractive to me in my adulthood.
Perhaps the mystery is solved the first time we reached second base with a girl. Perhaps we simply desire something more than just the strap after a certain age. Or perhaps girls just learn how to hide their strap better as they get older.
But either way, this episode completely captured that awkward feeling we had with our hormones running wild in middle school, and that is why this series deserves more credit than it is currently receiving from the fan community.