We continue from the ending of last episode, where Kou encounters a rather strange and rude ghost. This ghost boy is called Mitsuba Sousuke and while he continues to insult Kou, nice boy Kou still decides to help him move on by asking him what regrets he has. He can’t really recall anything except photography.
I did not expect this episode to turn really dark in the second half, and just be overall emotional. I quickly warmed up to Mitsuba as a character and was really liking his little friendship with Kou. And I’m not going to lie, I was seriously getting some BL vibes from them too. Mitsuba tells Kou that he wanted to take a picture but never got to, so he asked him to get his camera so he can snap some photos. He took pictures of nature and animals, but it turns out that important picture he wanted to take was of what was most important to him – a friend. And that friend was Kou. They had met each other as first years when Mitsuba was alive and Kou was the first person he reached out to, before tragically dying in a car accident. Mitsuba was always bullied as a child for being cocky, rude, and girly so in middle school he decided to change his image completely to that of a calm and “normal” person. He didn’t get bullied but he was never really noticed by anyone else, so he had no friends. The one thing he wished was to have a friend, and he made a nice little connection with Kou.
I really liked seeing them interact with each other, but this episode also had the same problem as last week’s. While I liked everything that happened this episode, it still felt rushed to me. I was still very upset that Mitsuba seriously “died” since I was looking forward to seeing more of him and Kou hanging out, as I thought he would be a recurring character like the other apparitions. And I also thought that Hanako would be able to bring him back, but nope. It was really sad, but it was hard to really feel emotional over what happened since I felt like it happened too fast. I’m sure I would have gotten a bigger reaction if we saw Kou and Mitsuba interact more, since this whole thing took place on the same evening on the same day. They both got really close a little too fast? That’s my biggest gripe from this episode.
But man is Tsukasa terrifying. He absolutely takes pleasure in hurting others, which…should have been obvious. I don’t even want to imagine the horrible things Hanako had to endure from this guy. But his role is pretty interesting. Where Hanako grants the wish for the living, Tsukasa grants wishes for the dead and Mitsuba was one of them. It’s really unfortunate what happened to him, and it was really sad to hear Hanako say he and the other apparitions are basically nuisances. I’m really liking the darker direction the story is taking so far, but ever since I feel like there have been some pacing issues, as well as some animation errors. Still, I’m looking forward to more of the Amane/Tsukasa drama as well as looking into their pasts. I feel like that’ll be hard to watch, but I’m curious either way. Tsukasa is to be feared…
Also, again, it was really nice focusing on Kou. It was mostly a Kou/Mitsuba episode and I really like this guy so it’s nice to see him in the spotlight with Yashiro and (mostly) Hanako not in it. I will admit that it was a little off not having Yashiro in the episode but was a real nice change of pace.
