Re-Kan! Episode 6: A Super Awesome Holy Night

And a very Happy Mother’s Day.

It’s Christmas time in the world of Re-Kan…though they’re about 5 months too late. But we had an emotional moment with a mother, which actually tied in nicely to Mother’s Day which just passed. So this is oddly fitting. But the theme here would be parents in general, though mothers played a bigger role in this episode as they were really emphasized.

Amami and Inoue are out shopping, and Amami takes out a flyer for a sale at a store, where she goes to with a bunch of older ladies. Inoue tells her to act more like a high school girl, and then the next day we get bad-girl Amami. Except it’s not really her. Her body has been possessed, only partially, by the ghost of a teen girl. That night, Amami met with the girl and the girl made a deal with her. She’d help her act like a normal high school girl, if only she would let her possess her body so that she can pass on into the afterlife. So Amami agrees. I only say partially possessed because the ghost girl can leave Amami’s body whenever she wants and Amami can go back to her usual self, and that’s when she explains everything. It’s pretty funny how the ghost girl changed Amami’s hair to a ponytail and tying up her bangs in the front. She actually looked pretty cute. It was very entertaining to see the ghost girl in Amami’s body, and her interaction with everyone was funny. I know she was supposed to pass on, but I hope we get to see her more later. Amami is a little ‘meh’ to me so far, so it was entertaining to see her with a different look, attitude, and voice.

To pass on, the ghost girl said she wanted to meet up with someone on Christmas. One day, Inoue and Uehara run into each other and see “Amami” sneaking into a building and Inoue tackles her, but they find out she was just there to send a letter. Of course for the person she wanted to meet. They leave the building and find themselves accompanying Amami’s old lady friends to a sale, and that’s when Amami was back to her normal self. A lady came over to Amami and handed her a recipe for a stew, giving hints that it’s a recipe for three and she always makes extra. Also to note, the ghost girl was oddly quiet the whole time. Well, that was a huge clue.

Yes, it turned out that the woman is the ghost girl’s mother. The ghost girl repeatedly spoke ill of relationships with parents, when Uehara’s parents were mentioned. That it was a pain and dumb and all of that. Of course she didn’t really feel that. The person she wanted to meet was her mother, and they met up. She lashed out at her for not having another child after her death, and she ran off. Thankfully, the mother ran after her. She caught up to her, happy and sad she was talking to the ghost of her daughter. The problem the ghost girl had was that she thought her mother was stupid that she didn’t move on and forget about her. She still made extras of the beef stew, she never had another child, still kept pictures of her, etc. She was just angry that her mother was still sad, and didn’t move on with her life. She wanted her mother to forget everything, to stop clinging to the past.

But this is the thing with mothers, just as Amami said, and that I can agree to. Mothers never forget. They have a lot of strength to watch over and take care of children. They also have a lot of strength to still remember their own child after their death in a building fire. No matter what, mothers are always going to remember the memories they had raising their child, whether they were good or bad, or tragically put to an end. That’s just a mother’s love. And so after realizing that, what the ghost girl really wanted to do was apologize to her mother. And she was finally able to bring peace.

Another character of interest in this episode was Uehara. Her parents are journalists, and when Yamada complimented her on how dedicated she was with her blog, saying she was like a journalist, she was happy. But the thing is, she basically lives alone. Her parents are always busy with work, so she never has someone to go home to. Her parents were supposed to return home for Christmas, but Uehara brushed that aside for a Christmas party instead, because she’s used to her parents also leaving her alone on Christmas. The ghost girl was encouraging the party idea, but in the end, when we find out that she really hasn’t passed on yet, she tells Uehara to see her parents. And thankfully for Uehara gets home, her parents are there.

What a great episode. Re-Kan is definitely dishing out that emotional stories that I wanted to see happen, and they’re done well. The message about mothers in this episode was very sweet, and very true. For personal reasons I know this with my own mom, who never wants to forget hurtful things. Moms seriously are stubborn. Though I found it interesting to hear Amami explain to the ghost girl about mothers, since Amami herself didn’t grow up with a mother. It wasn’t made too clear whether the ghost girl really passed on afterwards. She wanted Uehara to go home to her parents, which she did, so maybe she did. But since roll-call samurai and the other ghosts are still around, maybe she will be too just to make things fun.