This was a weird episode. The first half of the episode tonally was way out of left field and kind of took me out of what was happening, which bothered me a bit. it made the sudden shift into the second half pretty jarring but at least it’s building up to something exciting. Also RIP Sou, I totally expected that answer but it was still a tough moment to watch lol.
I’m still not sure where we’re supposed to stand when it comes to Ushio. It’s possible that she could be a Shadow, but with how innocent she’s playing it may just be that she’s a ghost or something. It’s still really hard to tell because Shadows can easily act like the original, as we saw where the Shadows can copy their memories. This Ushio knows every single thing, except for how she died and what happened during that particular day. She did seem to get being underwater correct, but we’re still not too sure. Again, since we don’t quite know everything about these Shadows or if there are other phenomenon we don’t quite know about, it could be possible that Ushio could be something totally different, like a ghost. But Shadow Shin’s words towards Ushio keep bugging me because it sounds like she is a Shadow…or the real one? And she was supposed to switch at some point but she wasn’t following orders? So she’s like an anomaly of sorts. I’m sorry if my thoughts are always all over the place in these reviews, but there isn’t a single way to look at everything that’s happening. That does make theorizing pretty fun and things a lot more suspenseful.
I’m not sure if “ghost” is the right term or not since she’s seen by other people, namely Shinpei and the whole friend group. That’s why she could easily be a Shadow, or something in between. Now knowing that others can see her, I do find it really strange that no one else at the festival said or reacted at all at the sight of her. Considering it’s a small community and the fact everyone loved Ushio, I find it hard to believe. That and again the super lighthearted tone in most of the episode was very jarring. Again this was a weird episode. Here I am on edge and we got physical comedy and slapstick in between. Could have been handled better.
I knew things were going to get bad but the stakes are actually really high because it sounds like something terrible is about to happen, and the Shadows now know about the looping. These villains are actually really smart which makes them way more terrifying. Instead of killing Shinpei on the spot, they keep him alive because they know that somehow he’ll be able to thwart their plans if he’s given more chances to time loop. It may take five times, or even twenty times, but eventually Shinpei will figure out what is truly going on and mess whatever plans they have. It’s incredibly smart of them to actually keep him alive so he doesn’t have that chance. Though I have a feeling if this time loop doesn’t end up going very well, I can imagine that Shinpei will be forced to kill himself in order to start over. And judging from what’s happening, that might come to be and that won’t be an easy decision to come to. I am curious what info we’ll be able to get from glasses woman next episode as she thankfully was able to take out Shadow Mio.
Things are certainly ramping up! We have a Shadow Shinpei that knows everything, a “Mother”, something is about to happen related to that I think, and there are lots of other Shadows roaming about from what we saw when Shinpei ran into Shadow Mio. And again I’M SORRY but the fact that some huge horrible event is about to happen on the night of a festival just like Higurashi is just so funny to me. I keep saying I won’t compare but the show won’t let me…
