So we come back to the question posed right at the start of the show – Yuuko is a ghost that knows she’s dead, but how did she die? The answer: you don’t want to know, Yuuko-san. You really don’t.
Summary
Teiichi is sucked into Shadow Yuuko’s memory of the events that occurred in the village near the school 60 years ago, the year when an epidemic killed many of the villagers leading them to stray to superstition, calling for a human sacrifice to appease the spirit of the shrine that the school was built on.
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Impression
Recently, this show has been becoming more and more like the show I’ve always wanted it to be. This week, everything was from Yuuko’s perspective, and was pretty much the chain of events leading up to her death. The Yuuko when she was alive is just as kind as she is now, but most noticeably she displays signs of getting frustrated, worried, and angry, the latter of which she clearly displays when slapping her sister Yukariko, (Kirie’s mother?) who even gladly returned it back in kind in the bath. Yuuko is looking at the bigger picture and is trying to remain positive and helps everyone, while Yukariko is quite like the villagers in believing they should do their best to survive by themselves, trying not to catch the disease. All Yukariko is doing is caring for her onee-chan’s safety though, which Yuuko seems to ignore.
The villagers are prats. Complete prats, who end up panicking and relying on superstition, making themselves feel better by sacrificing children. Great example, guys. I bet you anything that after Yuuko died, the disease stopped only because of coincidence, or because they believed it stopped. The Akahito-san thing made a reappearance, once again brought up by mob psychology, except it was the little girl, Asa-chan that became Akahito. Yuuko clearly thought Asa-chan was going to be sacrificed, forgetting the Akahito-san part that she overheard, and sealed her own fate.
Obviously, when you’re trapped in some underground place with no light source at all, you start playing the blame game very quickly. Whose fault is it? You could say it’s Asa-chan’s fault for saying Yuuko’s name, or Yuuko’s fault for overhearing the thing in the first place. I’m amazed at how she still retains her sanity (though she doesn’t look like she has) and convinces herself that no-one was at fault – and all those bottled emotions became Shadow Yuuko. Teiichi has felt it and we as viewers have felt it – all this hate and insanity is all that Shadow Yuuko can feel, and I’m starting to sympathise with her. Yuuko eventually lost her mind down there, and died horribly (anyone would prefer a quick death). Unlike what we thought before, she didn’t go willingly at all, and was probably the worst victim of the epidemic, even though it wasn’t the disease that killed her.
