[Finished Reading] #118 "The Skit That Changed My Life"

"The Skit That Changed My Life"

Author: Seiya (Shimofuri Myojo)

I had heard the story of Seiya being bullied in high school a few times on TV and elsewhere.

So, I thought I knew it to some extent. But it was completely different.

Reading it in a book, it was much more harrowing than I had imagined.
There is a completely different weight to hearing it as a funny anecdote versus re-experiencing that time as a narrative.

One day, the atmosphere suddenly changes. Desks are overturned.
The way people look at you changes. The classroom where you were just a normal person yesterday suddenly stops being a place where you belong.

I think the terror of a place like school is that it is a closed environment.

There are few places to escape to.
You have to go to the same classroom every day.
You have to see the same people.
And once an atmosphere is created where you are seen as 'someone who can be treated that way,' it spreads throughout the entire classroom.

Reading it, I felt distressed many times.
But at the same time, Seiya was truly cool.

He wasn't just enduring it. He wasn't just putting up with it.
He believed in the comedy within himself and tried to stand up to it somehow.

The scene at the school festival is especially amazing.

A school festival is supposed to be a stage where the class unites.
It's a place where everyone prepares, creates something together, and puts on a slightly youthful face.

But for Seiya, even that stage doesn't easily become an ally.

There is malice from the ringleaders. There are movements to try and ruin the atmosphere.
There is a sense that they are trying to make a laughingstock of him again.

It wouldn't be strange for someone to break under that pressure.

Seiya senses that malice and flexibly turns it into a positive.

This was truly incredible.

He understands what is happening on the spot. He reads the angle of the malice.
He feels which way the atmosphere is leaning. And so that he doesn't end up as the one being hurt, he pulls it in the direction of laughter.

That is not something just any funny person can do.

I think it is something that can only be done by someone who understands the fear, the frustration, and the humiliation, and yet still makes the stage a success.

Being laughed at and making people laugh are completely different things.

Seiya flipped the atmosphere that tried to push him into the side of being laughed at, and turned it into the side of creating laughter himself.

This shift is incredibly cool.

I thought Seiya was the real deal, as he demonstrated the power of comedy to its fullest on the stage of the school's cultural festival.

It wasn't just a simple cultural festival performance.
It was a skit to reclaim his own youth.

He took the very atmosphere that had hurt him and transformed it into something else on stage. That is something not many people can do.

Before reading this book, I felt the title 'The Skit That Changed My Life' was a bit exaggerated.

But after finishing it, I felt there was no other title for it.

It was a single skit that changed his life.
But at the same time, Seiya himself, who went to change his life with that skit, is amazing.

The Seiya I see on TV is always bright, loud, gives his all, and is someone who instantly makes the atmosphere fun.

But after reading this book, the way I see that brightness has changed.
It's not just the brightness of a cheerful person.

It is the brightness of someone who, despite being hurt, brought laughter back with them.

Reading it as a story about bullying is painful.
But it doesn't end there.

This was a story about someone who regained their place through laughter.

And I feel like I understood a little bit more about why Seiya is so serious about making people laugh.

Someone who was made a laughingstock stands on the side of making others laugh through their own power.
That is not just a counterattack.

On the stage of the cultural festival, Seiya turned the very atmosphere that tried to crush him into laughter.

That skit was not just a performance.

It was a grand slam that reclaimed the youth he was about to have stolen from him.

#TheSkitThatChangedMyLife #Seiya #ShimofuriMyojo
#FinishedReading#Reading#ReadingRecord#ReadingDiary#ReadingClub#ReadingNotes#BookReview#LifeWithBooks#WantToConnectWithBookLovers#Bookstagram#BookIntroduction#RecommendedBooks
#JapanBooksellersAward