Ghost Hunt – 16

Short Synopsis: The actions of the spirits become bigger and bigger, while some of the mysteries about Orikiri-san are revealed. Good: This case is really getting more interesting with every episode. Great mystery once more. Bad: How come nobody has yet to mention the fact that Takeuchi is the one behind all of this? Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 Whoa, that seriously was an intense episode. Especially the beginning. Mai got attacked twice within 12 hour. And this time, it’s more extreme than ever. First, she sees a body, lying in a bed right next to her, making the same movements she does. Then she gets smacked on the floor, which collapses afterwards. A few seconds later, the ceiling collapses as well. If it wasn’t for Naru-chan, Mai would bear many resemblances to a pancake. The spirits eating each other right now bears much resemblances to a ritual named Kodoku. You put a number of bugs inside a pot, and you bury it. In a while, they’ll start eating each other, and in the end, only one of them is left. Using this bug, you can attain incredible wealth, though if you fail to feed this bug with human (!) bodies, it’ll devour you instead. At the end of the episode, it seems that this case is similar, though different in some ways. What we have here all started because of Orikiri-san. It’s actually a tool to kill somebody. If you bury it under a cross-section, the designated person will go mad. If you bury it under a shrine, the designated person will die. Takeuchi couldn’t perform this ritual by himself, seeing as it needs the hands of an expert to do it. Therefore, he found it a good idea to let this ritual be performed by a huge amount of amateurs. I’m guessing that he wasn’t actually that knowledgeable. He was just obsessed over spirits, he tried to learn a few things about them, but in the end, he remained nothing more than a skilled amateur. Because of this, he didn’t know the exact consequences of his actions. I originally thought that he was the ghost expert behind this, but if he was, he’d never let himself get eaten. Takeuchi was just one big wannabe, with an unusual hatred towards his teacher, Matsuyama. If I had to guess, he was treated like a dog by that man. I’m suspecting that Takeuchi liked to share his passion in class. Matsuyama clearly showed that he was against occult in the previous episode. This suggests that Takeuchi’s blabbering about them drove him crazy, which made him do some pretty horrible things to the poor guy in his turn. This was a great episode, though I’d wish that this anime would stop using Red Herrings. A Red Herring is when all attention is drawn away from one event or person, in order to create mystery. Normally, it creates a nice effect, though Ghost Hunt just isn’t good at it, and it makes the story feel a bit unnatural, since nobody has yet tried to identify Takeuchi’s death to the things that happened.]]>