I know I am a little bit behind, but I wanted to talk about these episodes individually because there is so much to look at. And episode 5 is no different. This episode had a lot I enjoyed and a lot I didn’t so much.
The episode first starts off with a fight scene that looked really weird. The animations when Kuro was walking around the ghost or when they were fighting was extremely off pace and janky. Normally, if this were to happen in any show, I would have been really bothered by this. But throughout the fight, Saki and Kotoko kept saying lines like “he has no martial arts experience,” “it looks like he could go down at any moment,” “he’s tripping over his own feet.” So this made the whole clumsiness and the messiness of the animations feel like it was in place, weirdly enough.
Then while Kuro is fighting, Saki starts to have some mental break down after seeing him die once. The dialogue here felt a little bit out of place here. I mean, if someone sees a person killed and gruesomely murdered for the first time, I don’t know how they could even talk, much less about marriage. I think it might have been better to just leave the scene silent, especially when the whole blood returning animation that they did (which was really interesting to look at.) Then she just kind of goes back to being normal immediately after that shock and shivering in that scene. But hey, at least she doesn’t have PTSD.
The show then moves onto a flashback scene of how Kuro became immortal. And I actually kinda liked this scene. The whole scene was created really well to make his past as eerie as possible. There was that mysterious music playing in the background, keeping tension high, with Kotoko narrating the event similarly to how she narrated the case in the Giant Snake arc. The visuals were mostly super gory as well. We saw everyone falling out, spitting blood before dying, and some die ones had their eyes gouged out in all black. That shot near the end of the scene where Kuro stabbing himself painlessly then hiding his hand was really nice to add. The way that the story panned out was extremely believable too without losing shock. At first I was just kind of expecting him to have accidentally run into these monsters and eating them but this knowledge gives Kuro’s actions a little more meaning than before. Though, I wonder how he doesn’t have PTSD from these events or how he is still able to act normally and smile at Kotoko or have different emotions when he seemingly went numb from all the pain. It’s crazy how he hasn’t broken yet.
My only problem with this scene was the visuals. There was that whole monochrome with blood look. I get that being monochrome is like a common way to show flashbacks and singling out the color to the blood gives it impact. It wasn’t extremely bad or anything, but it wasn’t able to I’ve any of the impact that it was probably trying to give because of this. I did like that the colors of the borders got reddish as kids started dying at the dinner table, but it wasn’t anything too special to make up for the mundane look of the scene.
The sound effects are also a problem that is kind of recurring in the show. The sound of the light coming off the knife before the Grandma stabbed Kuro or that sound when Kuro stabbed his hand all sound extremely cheap and out of place. This problem wasn’t just in the flashback, but most scenes in the show with hitting or stabbing sound effects aren’t very good. I wish they’d have got something better, since every other aspect of sound in this show (voice acting, sound track, OP, ED) all sound fantastic.
Something really minor but the way that the other kids that ate the meat started shaking in like this weird 2 frame motion was weirdly hilarious. Same with all the blood colors. It just kinda looked like random red sauce pouring especially with the squirting sound effect. I honestly don’t know why I find humor in these types of things.
The rest of the episode was great. The dialogue with Kotoko, Saki, and Kuro in one room was the exact type of scene I was excited for immediately as I saw Saki even appear in the third episode. The whole scene is actually just exposition of the ghost, but the way that Kotoko tries to explain to Saki how they are in “another world” was so in character. The little doodles that they show throughout the conversation really keeps the dialogue from dragging and keeps the mood light hearted enough. At this point, I’d even watch a new show with the three of them just talking in white background.
I expected the ghost to be more unique, rather than the normal ghost lore of popularity = strength. I mean Hanako-kun already has that department covered. But it was what I expected after seeing that wiki page so it’s not like I’m too bothered by this. I just hope that the way they deal with is clever and it most likely will be given all the routes the show can travel to.
Convoluted Situation 