Sloths

Sloths provide Sanada Chiaki with a remembered comparison for a man whose movements seem slow and awkward. The recollection gives the animal a concrete predicament of its own, but the moment’s humor does not ease her response to the man: she is fixed on the way he looks at her, a gaze unlike any she has encountered before.

The sloth on the ground

Sanada Chiaki recalls a sloth she once saw in a Disney movie. The narrator in the film explained that sloths spend their lives hanging from branches and that the ground presents a serious danger because their muscles are not built for life there. Having fallen from a tree, the animal struggles to get back, moving slowly and making little progress.

Its efforts are awkward and uneven: it clings to the ground and waggles one arm or leg at a time. The account makes the mismatch between the sloth’s usual life in the branches and its difficulty on the ground the basis of the scene’s comedy.

Sanada Chiaki’s comparison

After the man lowers his arms, Sanada Chiaki thinks of the stranded sloth. She sees a resemblance in the man’s primitive-looking, halting movements, recalling the animal’s slow and comic struggle to return to safety. Yet she cannot take pleasure in the comparison at this moment.

Her attention shifts from the resemblance to the man’s gaze. The comparison therefore holds two responses in tension: from the outside, the movements might seem comical, but Sanada Chiaki’s immediate encounter with the man leaves her unable to appreciate the humor. She registers his look as unlike anything anyone has directed at her before.