With a title of “For the Snark was a Boojum, you see”, this episode had to be different from all the others. And indeed, this one gives a totally new twist to the story. You don’t want to miss this episode. The strangest part is that the first three quarters play entirely inside Tarou’s head. It’s here where he meets Snark, a strange Ghost-like creature who seems to live there. And Boojum… well, let’s say that that guy is still missing, but if we were to believe the title, then it seems that this Snark was a Boojum as well. Let’s hope that the future episodes explain what the heck this means…
In any case, Tarou travels from his last memories with his sister to an old hospital full of deceased people, to Snark’s room, where all kinds of memories of him are stored. You have to love the creativity that the creators have put into the different sections of the guy’s mind. He also visits a certain room that Kei (I think that’s her name) forbad him to go into, and it seems that this is some kind of special fermentation-place where spirits also like to visit. Tarou then faints a bit. I really liked this part, because it shows exactly what the previous episodes have been building up for: Tarou, getting more and more familiar with the spirit-world and his ghost-form.
The episode is more than just that, though. In his explorations, Tarou also saw that Miyako had caught a really bad cold, so he decides to visit her, along with Masayuki, Oogami and Michio. It’s here where Tarou tells Takahito about the things that Miyako said when she was possessed, and Takahito immediately orders them to leave, looking worried. It seems that he knew exactly what these sentences meant. To make things even better: when they descend the stairs of the shrine, none other than Noriko (Makoto’s grandmother’s household) stands there, waiting for him. Makoto of course gets angry and runs away, and everyone follows him, but Michio looks back, and suddenly sees a really evil grin from Noriko’s face. I never expected that even she had some kind of secret. This can turn out really interesting, and you just have to see that evil smile for yourself. 😛
Noriko’s smile definitely wins my vote for Most Evilest Smile of All Time.
Snarks and Boojums are from a poem by Lewis Caroll called “The Hunting of the Snark (An Agony in 8 Fits)”
From Wikipedia:
“There are several different varieties of snark. Some have feathers and bite, and some have whiskers and scratch. Some are Boojums, which appear a more dangerous kind.”
if something becomes boojum it means that that something will softly and suddenly fanish away…
I wouldn’t cling to hopes of much explanation being provided re Snarks and Boojums.
“The Snark was a Boojum, you see” is the last line of Carroll’s poem “The Hunting of the Snark,” which, like his more famous “Jabberwocky,” consists mainly of nonsense– or of a 19th century precursor of surrealism, if you prefer to view it that way.
We never find out in Carroll’s poem what either a Snark or a Boojum is. All we are told is that some Snarks are also Boojums– presumably, others are not– and Baker, a protagonist of the poem, was warned long ago by his uncle that if he encountered a Snark that happened to be a Boojum, he would “softly and suddenly vanish away”– and this is what presumably has just happened at the end of the poem.
In the context of Ghost Hound, one can suppose that Tarou has read the poem “The Hunting of the Snark,” and that is why this imagery appears in his dream experience. This seems a bit more reasonable than to suppose that in the world of the anime, Snarks and Boojums, which were somewhat vague sorts of creatures in their original context, concretely exist. The “vanishing away” consequence would certainly suggest that Tarou’s meeting the Snark/Boojum is not a very good omen, but that’s probably all we can read into the encounter (of course, I may think so only because I couldn’t figure out much of the dialogue).
Are the people in the hospital deceased? I thought they were terminally ill.
Also, I thought that Noriko’s face (as seen by Michio) was the face of a ghost, like one that Tarou (and possibly Masayuki) saw in an earlier episode.