At the Center of the World, Shouting "Love"

The title of this post should've clue you in on what I'm about to talk about: the Japanese novel/movie/drama Sekai no Chuushin de, Ai wo Sakebu (世界の中心で、愛をさけぶ -- for translation, see the title of this post... mmm, circular referencing in blog entries). Unfortunately, you're not going to get a deep, moving review of that fantastic jdrama from me -- since it aired in 2004, plenty of reviews have already been written, many of which are far better than anything I could've put together (you do, however, get a courtesy pic. Because I love pics.).


Instead, I'm going to tell a rambling story about a conversation Dave and I had over IM last week. Everything started when an episode of Gokujou Seitokai (good show... I'll blog more about it later) made a reference to it:

Sunday: Sekai no chuushin de, ai wo sakebe!
Cindy: Aye.











Dave points out that this is based on the title of a Harlan Ellison short story. Being the Eva trivia master that he is (sorry about that Rokubungi swag thing a while back, Dave...), he also points out that the quote made an earlier appearance as the title of episode 26 of that show (Shinseiki Evangelion):

The Japanese reads sekai no chuushin de ai wo sakenda kemono, and the "ai" written in katakana here is wordplay -- the English word "I" is pronounced "ai" in the syllabary. It's interesting to see the same basic phrase pop up in all sorts of places -- Harlan Ellison, Human Instrumentality, and a mother-daughter reunion between two people who have very little grasp of proper Japanese (you'll see what I'm talking about later)...

P. S. -- The English title of the Sekai no Chuushin de, Ai wo Sakebu franchise -- "Socrates in Love" -- is just ...random, isn't it?