Well I can see why people were hyping this episode up. I feel like we’ve seen the endgame of this story but we’re still only in the beginning. There is A LOT at stake here now that we know what will happen on the night of the festival, even if we don’t have all the answers to what these Shadows are and what they are trying to achieve. There’s just so much going on.
Nagumo, the glasses woman, has special bullets that is able to kill Shadows. We still know nothing about her other than the fact that she’s going after them for some reason. Well whatever reason it is it’s a good thing. We see that she’s also able to look into the future even for a little bit, as we saw she was able to dodge the bullets from the Shadow. It looks like it may only be for that short time so there are limitations. I don’t think it’s the exact same type of ability that Shinpei has but there has to be some sort of connection between them. Also interesting that she’s supposedly the author of that book Shinpei read which dealt about this very same thing. She knows a lot and thankfully we now know how to tell Shadows and regular humans apart. Funny that it’s as simple as them not wanting anyone to step in their shadow, though I imagine that’ll be much harder to take advantage of at night. Still lots to uncover with her and it looks like she’s going to be playing a major part in all of this.
I now feel bad that I was suspicious of both Toki and Sou, but can you blame me? I don’t understand what Toki meant before she was killed and it didn’t sound any good, that’ll be another mystery we’ll find out soon enough. Maybe I shouldn’t trust her then. I felt horrible as Sou protected Mio with his own body as he was dying, and for his Shadow to only rub things in didn’t help. It got even more terrifying as we got that shot of the pile of corpses, blood everywhere, and that large Shadow in the middle of it all.
That thing is SCARY. What isn’t scary is their “Mother”. With that large boss Shadow, I was expecting the Mother to look just as creepy and possibly even bigger than him. And what do we get? A little anime girl. ………Sigh. Anyway, we know what she looks like. Again, we don’t really know their plot and what they plan to accomplish after feeding her. World domination? I’m wondering if it really is as simple as that. There does seem to be some sort of connection between Shinpei and the Mother because the boss Shadow pointed out that his eye is hers. That eye is the reason why he is able to manipulate time and go back once he dies. I was getting real nervous once that thing had pointed it out. I was just waiting for it to gouge his eye out and then he wouldn’t be able to reset time. But instead it just left Shinpei there, which I found weird. I mean I knew Shinpei wasn’t going to die because c’mon this is only episode 5, but at least the attempt would have made the scene even more intense. Especially when Shinpei was screaming his ability and what day he would reset to. I don’t think the Shadows will be able to remember any of that since they don’t seem to have the same ability, but just something I thought was a little strange. Shinpei and the Mother also make contact with each other before Shinpei travels back to June 22nd, so it may be that she at least is aware. Though she is only able to appear when the Shadows have gotten enough sacrifices, so what they need to do is avoid her awakening altogether. Which is a lot easier said than done.
Based on this episode, it’s confirmed that this Ushio is indeed a Shadow. There was the traitor line from last episode, but we did see that Ushio’s arm was healed after it was broken and that can only mean she’s not human. Ushio doesn’t seem to believe it though and sees herself as a human and is still so attached to Mio, so I wonder why Shadow Ushio is so different from the other Shadows. And come to think of it, how was Ushio able to know about the conditions of Shinpei’s ability if she wasn’t a Shadow. It looks like maybe she’s connected to the Mother as well, but presently she doesn’t realize that. We see her wash up on the beach at the end of the episode, so I can’t wait to see things from her POV.
I have to say, I LOVE the condition that’s set for Shinpei’s power. With the new time loop, we can see Shinpei’s eye lose a little but of color for a second. On top of what we already know, it might be possible that at some point Shinpei’s ability can just stop working. We know that each time Shinpei has looped, it’s slowly moved him ahead of time. Like starting from the ferry, then to the dock, to now walking on the hill with Mio. There’s going to be a limit to Shinpei’s power, where he can’t keep looping until the night of the festival when everyone dies. He can’t just die when things don’t go the way he wanted them to, sort of like Subaru in Re:zero. There’s actual consequences here and makes things even more dire than they are already. Shinpei needs to plan things out really well and find answers as fast as he can, lest he has to keep using his ability and losing time, and getting closer to that fated night. And I love it because it makes things a lot more suspenseful and terrifying, especially when Shinpei only has three days to solve everything. That’s hardly enough time so losing any more of that is basically a death sentence. Now how the heck did he even get this eye in the first place?
Again, a fantastic episode. If Shinpei wants to use his time wisely, he’s going to need to find Nagumo as soon as possible like she told him to. Then we’ll probably get some much-needed answers.
