What’s it about? When Nakamura Teruaki moves to Okinawa, he immediately falls for the lively and entertaining Kyan-san. Only there’s one problem: he can’t understand her, literally, because of her dialectic. But with a bit of patience and an interlocutor through Kana-san, his friend, these two might be able to bridge their language gap to find love and fun in the sun!
OKITSURA: Fell in Love with an Okinawan Girl, but I Just Wish I Know What She’s Saying (hereafter Okitsura; swear to anime god these long titles are going to give me early arthritis–and yes, that is the title; I don’t know why the subject/verb agreement is like that either) joins the pantheon of noticeably tanned girls that I am concerned with, solely based off the summary of what this anime is about.
When I picked this as a review, it was my sincerest hope that it would be a show that I could really ease into and feel comfortable being in, inclusive of Japan’s fraught history in regard to Okinawa. Instead, I ended up having much more complex feelings about a show that is, admittedly, quite simple and fun in execution…if you don’t consider the colonial implications and can just enjoy the linguistic romp.
But before we get to that, let’s talk briefly about the premiere itself.
Episode 1, “The Girl I Like Speaks in Uchinaaguchi,” starts off with high-schooler Teruaki trying to understand his Okinawan crush, only to end up more baffled than confused. And that’s kind of the joke: he can’t understand Kyan-san, a girl who speaks in a native language that is quite different from Japanese. That’s not to say that she can’t speak Japanese: just that her accent and native tongue are so different that Teruaki is kind of lost at sea.
That underpins the premiere, alongside episodic moments in Teruaki’s day-to-day life as seemingly the only Japanese student in his school. And while his fellow students speak Japanese and exist in a now Japanese prefecture, there’s still a bit of cultural dissonance and fish-out-of-waterness to keeps things fresh. Whether he’s learning about surnames, exploring his new home, or eating scrumptious local food, life on the biggest island in the biggest of the Ryukyu Islands seems to be filled with pleasantly mundane surprises and life lessons.
That said…
…Here’s where I come down pretty hard on this premiere.
Okinawa is not Japan, nor Japanese: at least not in terms of its history and certainly in regard to its people. It’s part of Japan today by annexation and colonization, in the same way Hawaii and Puerto Rico are a part of the United States, as well as Alaska in regard to the history of Indigenous peoples and their stolen land. What I mean by that is that those are similarly colonized. Nowadays, it is considered a favored vacation spot in Japan, marked with remnants of its past as a separate kingdom and country.
In any other case, I wouldn’t bring this up, but a major part of Okitsura is that Teruaki is living in Okinawa amidst loads of culture, including language. Whether that’s by choice or not is unknown: I assume either his parent(s) are there since he’s a minor, though there’s the possibility that this is where he intentionally wanted to go to school. At this point in time, it’s not really necessary to know in terms of the plot. What is known is that Teruaki doesn’t speak a lick of the local dialect and language. He doesn’t even have a little quick tips language book to help him with common words.
It’s something that you can’t help but notice as Teruaki uses a “translator” of sorts in his classmate Higa-san to understand Kyan. And while I understand that Okinawa’s dialect is very different from say, how people might speak Japanese in the Kinki region of a place like Aomori, I also find it deeply upsetting that the entire joke of this show is that Teruaki speaks an accessible dialect and Kyan speaks in an intelligible way.
Therein lies my problem with Okitsura as a whole. While it does name the Okinawan language of Uchinaaguchi, which sounds very distinct from Japanese, it doesn’t seem interested in digging deeper into the linguistics and instead, treats Kyan as being “quirky” instead of recognizing Teruaki as being ignorant. That’s not even mentioning that Okinawa is painted as inherently laid back and freer than the rest of Japan. Worse, Kyan definitely speaks very legible Japanese at multiple points in this premiere, making it clear that Teruaki just actually sucks and that this is just a weird, mildly xenophobic gimmick. This extends to times where Kyan is clearly speaking in a hybrid dialect that Teruaki should be able to marginally understand. Instead, he’s a bit of a muppet about things, constantly leaning on his classmate to translate instead of going out and maybe getting a book to start learning himself.
It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, effectively poisoning what could be a really cute show about exploring another culture by just kind of ruining the watching experience. It doesn’t completely destroy it, but I just couldn’t turn off my brain long enough to just enjoy what’s likely going to be a pretty well-rated premiere elsewhere.
I normally try really, really hard to find the silver lining because even if I don’t like an anime premiere, I still understand that there’s someone out there that does. But I find it hard to really find something positive to say here because I found Okitsura so incredibly frustrating. If I had to choose one thing, it’s the tidbits of uchinaaguchi we get throughout the premiere: I actually genuinely like that element, and would watch this specifically for that. Maybe that will draw me back in to give this a try and see if I can combine my mindset with my appreciation for a lot of aspects of this premiere.
Still, I really don’t like that Kana is the translator/go-between for Teruaki and Kyan. I get that it’s necessary because Kana is translating to Teruaki but…I just don’t like it. It’s a choice that I suppose is necessary, but it just kind of furthers that distance placed between Kyan-chan and Teruaki as an Okinawan and Japanese person respectively. Perhaps if the show didn’t have Teruaki, I’d like it more, but there’s always this element of his presence that comes crashing in just when I start to think, “Oh, I like learning about Okinawan linguistics!”
It’s a shame that this is where I’m landing because I don’t think this is necessarily bad, but I think it’s uncomfortable. I think my lived experience in Japan and my lived experience as a second class citizen in my own home country have left me at odds with being able to igonre the potential for issues when it comes to colonizer student and colonized classmates. Maybe things will stay the course and the crush Teruaki has will fade into the background in lieu of more linguistics and exploration of his time in Okinawa. I have a sinking feeling it won’t, which is why I’ll be saying guburii sabira to my time with this show.
Ultimately, I’m going to leave whether you watch this. I’ve said my peace and probably won’t watch because I’m trying this new policy where I respect my mental health in 2025. This seems like a show that’ll push me too deep inside my head: best to leave it to other folks who have thoughts to add to the overall conversation.
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