I wrote a survey of English-language sources on the ai ai gasa back in February. That survey was inspired by a review of the Teasing Master Takagi-san series-concluding movie. Since writing about ai ai gasa, I have become more aware of the love umbrella’s occasional cameos in TV anime, similarly to how writing about anime hair color made me pay more attention to hair color in new shows. I recently re-watched a 2006 series called Living for the Day After Tomorrow (aka Asatte no Houkou) for the purpose of writing a review, which I published on October 11. I was collecting screenshots for my articles while watching the episodes. Having written about ai ai gasa not too long ago, I could not help but take the following screen capture from near the end of the show.

Ai Ai Gasa drawn in the sand on a beach. Screenshot taken from Living for the Day After Tomorrow.

Ai ai gasa in the sand of the beach! It gets washed away by a wave in the same scene. The names written are not of any characters in the anime. It is an artistic flourish to go along with a story that one character is telling another by the beach.

I just published a review of Living for the Day After Tomorrow (a 2006 TV anime also known as Asatte no Hokou) on The New Leaf Journal. I had planned to simultaneously publish an article about how I first watched the show in June 2010 on Time Warner Cable’s Anime Network on Demand. I was able to pin down the exact week I started watching a 2006 anime in 2010 thanks to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Unfortunately, the Internet Archive was targeted by hackers a few days ago with a pro-Hamas hacker group claiming responsibility (responsibility not confirmed, however). While I could have published my finished draft Anime Network on Demand article today (it is not as if I am expecting it to be a big visit-driver), I decided to hold off until the Internet Archive is fully back online.