It looks like I had the pacing wrong. I thought it might be fun to cover the show by cases instead of episodes, seeing as how the previous case only lasted 1.5 eps, but the story has switched and it looks like Nanase will be around for a while.
I mean, first we gotta talk about Kuro’s family because I feel like that was so short but had so much crazy stuff contained in it. I initially thought Kuro was crazy for being a 11 year old who took it upon himself to eat yokai flesh. I was also giving him a bit of shit about being wishy-washy with his unemotional state when he seemed very different most of the time. That all makes sense now. His grandma unknowingly feeding him (and all 7 of his siblings?) mermaid and kudan meat makes a lot more sense than a kid stumbling upon them and deciding to chow down. And his state of indifference is only because his grandma gave him mortal wounds on the daily to test his powers. I mean, he seems to have handled better than I would think an 11 year old would? He still has an older sister who was alive, so I’m assuming she also has passed some sort of trial. I can only expect she’ll be important in the future. That reveal also seemed kind of out of nowhere. So can Kuro see into the future? Kotoko says if there’s a good chance it will happen he can kind of guide it to that future. So maybe he can only influence events, not see definite final outcomes. And him doing that is what’s keeping him aging as well. I would like to say that doesn’t really make sense, buuuuut it’s mermaids and myths so I can’t really call foul play.
I forgot how absolutely ugly most mythical creatures were/are. I’ve been watching so much animated stuff, that when I think of human-animal creatures or demons I think of like… fox girls and Nezuko. Nah, this is a mostly fish with a bit of human features. Or nah, this is a cow with just a humanoid face. Whelp.
Kotoko and Saki’s lovers quarrel just turned into Kotoko looking like an absolute child throwing a temper tantrum. I guess that is her character though. I like how her new approach is to scare Saki off by showing how different they are. Uhhhh, you did see her charge a ghost carrying a steel beam without hesitation right? She’s been slowly collecting herself as she dives deeper into this new world and I don’t think she’ll be running anytime soon. I mean, I think Kuro is going to stay with Kotoko, him and Saki are over, but it is nice to see Kotoko taking heat. With how things left off between them, it’s also kind of nice to just see Kuro and Saki getting closure. They obviously still care about each other, but the initial shock of seeing what she saw made her leave out of fear. Real quick though, it seems like there were at least 3 incidents. Cuts healing, fingers reconnecting, Kappa running. Was the Kappa the last straw? I’m sure she was questioning reality at that point but I’m curious why she decided that was the finale.
Saki asked a question halfway through the episode that really feels like it needs an answer. NO. It’s absolutely not strange to reconsider marriage with someone after watching their fingers get sliced off and reconnect. Their whole family is suffering from mysterious illness and/or mortal accidents and this man scared off a turtle monster that popped out of the river. 100% NOT strange to maybe give that relationship a little thought. And Kotoko acting unimpressed with Saki when she was horrified when Kuro got his head decimated by a steel beam… Oh, you’ve never seen him die before. Wow, loser.
Ok, on to Steel Beam Nanase. We now know basically everything except how to actually beat her. The idol Nanase had some very intricate checkered past, but none of that really matters apart from the fact that the speculation is what caused her ghost form to be so strong, so fast. One thing that bugged me was that Saki was saying that the statement of her sister was ‘off’, but then she got interrupted by Genichiro, screaming his lungs out. She never got back to it because of everything that happened. Maybe in episode 6.
Oh, oh. The other thing about her past life that we really need to discuss is that just superber opening song to her late night drama.
I want to take both the scalding pain and the burning pleasure and share them with you.
Love can be naked, let’s burn it (burn it) all of it (all of it).
I’m not saying I’d watch it if it was a real show but, let’s be honest, I’d probably watch it.
But I digress. I continue to be impressed with the cops of this show. Obviously Saki has real life experience now, but her boss is also giving so much credit to the ghost theory. They used the world ‘probable’ in the context that Nanase’s death would be a good catalyst for a ghost to come back. And his point about how fan-servicy the ghost was actually was right on the money!
So all this speculation and theorizing on this wiki page specifically ended up creating Steel Beam Nanase. It reminds me of Toilet Bound Hanako-san from this season and also of Re:Creators from a while ago in terms of having people create the monsters through stories.
Snapping her neck didn’t work, props to Kuro for trying and it’s always interesting to see a ghost being put into a stranglehold (especially because why the heck would they need to breathe??). Is the solution then to just try to decredit her legend? Put up counter-information that makes her weaker? Delete the wiki site? Maybe her sister is the one who’s running the site and they’ll need her to say it’s fake and shut down the wiki.
The pacing is interesting. I’m staying spoiler-free but my understanding is that there is a bigger plot than just cases. And the way the show is going now we’re not really going to get to any of that assuming this is only 12-13 episodes. Well, no point worrying about that now. I’m enjoying this show so much.