What is friendship? How do you know when you’re friends with someone? The Christmas episode of A Place Further than the Universe grapples with this deceptively complex topic as Yuzu’s insecurities and past hurts rise to the surface and threaten to cut her off from the other girls, just as they finally make it to Antarctica. The trigger? A birthday cake for Jesus. Yup. But what unfolds over the course of the episode is far from cheesy or surface-level, as the girls—instead of heaping Yuzu with platitudes and assurances—engage with these questions about friendship in deeply personal ways. There are no pat answers here. And as a result, this episode offers a great deal of insight into the nature of friendship—including friendship with God!—and sharing the good news with the broken-hearted.

“You don’t like Christmas?” asks Shirase, noting Yuzu’s listless expression while serving Christmas cake to the Syowa Station workers. “It’s not that I don’t like it… But it’s like a birthday, isn’t it?” This is not a good thing in Yuzu’s eyes. Instead, it’s a painful reminder of just how lonely her young life has been, and the fact that, in all her fifteen years, she has never once celebrated her birthday with friends. More than that, she’s never had friends—and she still doesn’t, as far as she can tell. 

But this is where Yuzu is terribly wrong! She is surrounded by three girls who already consider her a best friend—and so they should! Together, the four of them have traveled all the way to the Southernmost continent on the planet against crazy odds (and fearsome sea sickness)! But Yuzu’s experience of childhood betrayal has made it hard for her to trust or distinguish the hallmarks of genuine, fun-loving friendship, even when it slaps her in the face with a playful snowball. She makes this painfully clear when she asks the girls to sign a Friendship Contract as an assurance of their relationship. Oh, Yuzu! My poor, sweet, naive child actor-idol Yuzu! That’s not how friendship works.

Kimari, Hinata, and Shirase have their work cut out for them. They know that simply telling Yuzu they are friends or even asking her to be their friend will feel insincere at this point, mere words spoken to placate a hurting child (Yuzu is the youngest of the four). But they can’t let things keep on this way, with Yuzu isolating herself, feeling left out and miserable, but also completely clued out of the affection they all have for her. Yuzu’s blindness hurts them in turn—especially high-spirited Kimari. Yuzu needs the good news of their friendship and love, but she can’t seem to see or hear it…

Shirase starts the conversation: “Friendship isn’t about lots of words.” She should know, being the master of understatement—or no statement at all!—and the most reserved of the group. Hinata tries to pick up from there, offering the point that it’s about feelings, but Yuzu still doesn’t get it. Her follow-up questions stumble over one another as understanding continues to elude her. So Shirase goes for complete honesty, “There’s probably no real way to define it. It’s not like a parental or spousal relationship. It’s more vague than that.” And then she adds something completely unexpected, but heart-felt: “No one’s to blame if it fades.” With this, Shirase addresses Yuzu’s fears head-on: what if these friendships don’t last? What if she takes the risk and relaxes into friendship with these girls only for them to go their separate ways once back in Japan? But Shirase is not done. Sure, there’s no guarantee that friendship will last, but that’s essentially what makes it genuine, and what makes it possible for you to throw yourself into it, unrestrained, for as long as it does last. For Shirase, it is the temporality of friendship that makes it so beautiful and authentic.

There’s wisdom here in Shirase’s words, and the way they echo a certain verse, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say to you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” It’s true that Jesus is encouraging his disciples not to be anxious about provision here, but it’s also no coincidence that he uses an example of how much God values beauty—pouring his creative efforts into making even fleeting, temporary expressions of beauty—in order to make his point. Friendship does not need to “last forever” to be beautiful or indeed eternal. It can have a transformative, lasting effect even if it’s short-lived like a day lily.

In the next shot, we see a moving illustration of this truth as the leaders of the expedition, Toudou-san and Kanae-san, quietly toast their lost friend, Shirase’s mother, who inspired the endeavor.

Later, Yuzu brings up the matter again with Kimari, to whom she’s been trying to apologize (over text) after the Friendship Contract fiasco. Kimari tells Yuzu about Megu-chan, her best friend since kindergarten whose parting words as Kimari set off were to end their friendship. But Kimari has been sending her photos and messages all this time, thinking about how Megu-chan might react to this or that, and what she’s up to back home. “I can just tell how she’s feeling,” explains Kimari. “I think that’s what friends are for me. It’s totally vague, I know…” she confesses. 

Her words may fall short, but Kimari’s actions here demonstrate something profound: the grace of loyalty. Despite her friend’s jealous behavior, Kimari has persisted in reaching out to her, inviting her into the adventure and including her in its narrative, while yet also giving her space without pressuring her for a response. Kimari is content for their friendship to be one-sided for a spell, while Megu-chan figures things out. She demonstrates how faithful friendship can be, and she also provides a counterpoint to Shirase, who lets friendships fade more easily. Instead, Kimari fights for them, even though she may not realize that this is what she’s doing.

With this, Kimari is showing rather than telling Yuzu what friendship is. And you know what? That’s exactly what God does too. Here’s the thing, God is trustworthy. But if all he ever did was tell us that in the Bible, chapter and verse, it wouldn’t mean very much. Instead, he shows us, both through scripture but also directly, one-on-one, sometimes privately, other times publicly, over and over again, demonstrating that he is trustworthy for us personally, individually, as well as collectively. He shows us that we can count on him in the context of the little details that matter most to us as well as the big world-changing things. He shows us that he is constant and does not abandon us, even when our relationship is one-sided and he’s the one carrying the burden for both of us. Friendship between God and humanity started out that way, with him as the one who covered the distance, who came to the Garden, who upheld both sides of the covenant partnership with Abraham, who sought out Moses in the wilderness after protecting him his entire life. And so it continues, with each one of us too. When God says to trust in him, it is only legitimate because he has already proven himself to be worth trusting.

Kimari is showing Yuzu that even if they should have a falling out, a misunderstanding, or a missed communication, even should they be separated for a time, pursuing their lives at opposite ends of the country or globe, she is trustworthy as a friend. She will maintain her affections, she will continue to think of Yuzu and to think well of her, keeping room in her heart and the door propped open, ready to welcome her back in. It’s still vague, this definition of friendship that Kimari offers, because it’s an illustration and not a contract to be signed or an oath that binds. But it is a demonstration of character, and that’s exactly what we have from God too. 

But the crazy thing is that we actually get a whole lot more from him beyond just this! You see, friendship with God actually is binding. It is a contract, an agreement signed in blood, no less. But it’s a covenant or an oath that God himself has executed and born witness to, signing on behalf of both parties and promising to uphold both sides. As Abraham and Moses discovered, friendship with God is the kind of impossible contract where we gain all the benefits without having to pay the price. 

That’s not to say there isn’t sacrifice involved though, because there is. There are ties that bind us, heart to heart, spirit to spirit, to our Creator, and we can’t get away from them. When we stretch and strain against them, it can hurt. But it’s an unequal friendship in that God is legally bound to us by his word in a way that we aren’t to him. We can and do break our word. We can and do wander, sometimes in actuality, sometimes in our thoughts and affections. But God can’t. He cannot abandon us, though we can do so to him. What a strange and glorious relationship! What a patient and graceful Friend.

It is true that we love because God first loved us. But there’s more to this than I think we necessarily realize. It also means that God was the first to be vulnerable, the first to open up. He was the first to trust us and reach out to us in hope. He was the first to put it all on the line and risk rejection. He was also the first to experience betrayal, in the Garden. He was the first Friend this world has ever seen, and the first Friend each of us ever had, though for most of us, we didn’t find out until many years into that relationship, much like Yuzu, who is very late to the party! She doesn’t realize that all this time, the four of them have already been friends. So it is with us and God.

I love how both Shirase and Kimari use broken friendships to illustrate what friendship is. They do this because that’s where Yuzu is at: she’s afraid of accepting their friendship now lest it prove a fleeting, easily fractured thing. Instead of pretending that friendship is immune to risk and waving away her fears with a bunch of platitudes, Shirase and Kimari acknowledge that friendship is not just a walk in the park, but they also gently show her that friendship is worth it, even when the worst-case scenario plays out. They start the conversation where she is at, rather than where they want her to be. What a powerful insight for us when sharing the truly good news of friendship with God!

The girls don’t just leave things at that though. In addition to engaging with Yuzu’s fears, showing her that they hear her, they also give her a taste of the glory she has been missing, showing her firsthand what friendship is: a surprise (belated) birthday celebration, complete with a personalized cake (and a candle that she accidentally sneezes out rather than blowing it! Ah, Yuzu…). Actions speak louder than words, after all—or as someone once said, “In all things, preach the gospel; use words only if necessary.” 

The closing montage of the episode speaks volumes about the impact of their efforts to share the good news of friendship with Yuzu, as it charts her efforts in composing a message to Kimari. The day before, Yuzu had sent Kimari a formal apology, which the latter left unanswered (“You had nothing to apologize for,” she later explained in person). Today, Yuzu starts out by typing a formal morning greeting, which she then edits into a formal expression of thanks, before finally sending an informal word of thanks. But it’s what comes next that really clinches it, as Yuzu follows up with a single tentative syllable, ne or “right?” (“eh” for the Canadians!). With this small inflection, Yuzu is checking in with Kimari that she’s understood their friendship: she can be informal and grateful, rather than formal and apologetic, right? Kimari gets it immediately and responds in kind, “right”, to which Yuzu answers, “right”. You can almost feel the joy through the smartphone screen! That single syllable embodies all the confidence and all the vulnerability in Yuzu’s being. And that’s exactly what friendship is, isn’t it? It’s always the two together.

This entire series is such a stunning celebration of friendship—stunning because it shows the downs as well as the ups, the mistakes and misunderstandings as well as the glorious moments where all four hearts are one, in sync and flying high. It shows us the cost of friendship, and the risk of heartache it carries. In this episode in particular, we really get to the heart of the matter, with multiple definitions of friendship layered atop one another—some of them even using words! But most, not. All these different variations capture facets of what friendship with God is like too: it’s not any easier to define or simpler to establish what exactly it is just because God is involved! This means it can feel like there are ups and downs, just as with human friendships and like with the girls here. 

If I’m honest, there are times in my friendship with God that I feel like Megu-chan, slow to respond and reluctant to engage; or like Kimari, sending out messages without receiving the answers I hoped for. Sometimes, I just want a contract to spell it all out, like Yuzu; at others, heavy with lonesomeness, it feels like I’m reaching out to the unknown out of faithfulness to the memory of a friend now lost to me, like Toudou and Kanae. But there are also those times when, like Shirase, I throw caution to the wind and give myself over fully, without restraint, to our friendship here and now, without a worry for the future or regret for the past. Yes, there are ups and downs, even in friendship with God. We see only in part, and this means our hearts waver and our fears and jealousies and other things get in the way sometimes. But our God is like Kimari: always reaching out, welcoming us in, keeping that door to his heart flung wide open in anticipation of our coming in. O what splendor!

After all, what is friendship if not that small sound of acknowledgment and understanding, the sound of hearts realigning after a bump in the road—the ne? at the start of a new day. So this Christmas, let’s remember the Friend whose birthday we’re celebrating, and maybe share a story or two from the heart with someone who is longing for such friendship.

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claire

Claire is a cultural historian by day and anime enthusiast by night. She grew up watching anime without knowing it, misspent her youth studiously avoiding it, and finally came to her senses a few years ago and embraced it. Mostly because of Boogiepop, Kensuke Ushio and Naoko Yamada.

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