Ah, finally Ghost Hound is back after its holiday-hiatus, and it did a good job of reminding me why it turned into one of my favourite series for the fall-season. It’s so delightfully down to earth, and doesn’t try to force anything. This episode also made things even better when it finally provides lots of answers. And of course, even more questions. ^^;
First of all: the mouse finally appears! Turns out to be an experimental rat from the female scientist (name?), she uses it in this episode in an experiment where she connects the brain to a little robot, making the robot move, based on the rat’s though-patterns. Quite interesting, though I wonder whether it’ll play any future role for this series. Speaking of this doctor, the end of the episode sees her making out with Masayuki’s father. Now that I mention it, we haven’t seen the guy’s mother, have we? Perhaps that would explain why Masayuki hates his father so much, because he forcefully separated him from his mother when he divorced.
In any case, the real meat for this episode was about Makoto’s parents. It all starts when an unidentified corpse shows up in the dammed lake. News like this travels fast, especially with a bunch of psychics like Tarou and Miyako in the neighbourhood, and very soon half of the town is gathered around the site of the murder. One of these people was Makoto’s mother. I actually thought that she died as well, but it seems that they too divorced at some point. Makoto hates her as well.
After seeing this, Miyako’s father (by the way, what happened to his wife?) decided to let the main characters know a few things about his past with Makoto’s parents and the mayor, as they used to be good friends in the past. They too went to visit the old hospital, just like Makoto, Masayuki and Tarou did in episode four. At one point, they found one very strange looking entrance, where Makoto’s father was the only one who entered it. Miyako’s father and the future mayor were too scared to go in, and prevented Makoto’s mother from following her future husband. In the end, Makoto’s father ended up somewhere that made no sense at all, though I didn’t quite catch the exact spot. Still, it has to be quite strange if this is the only thing that Miyuki’s father managed to find weird about the time he spent with the guy as a teenager. Still, he doesn’t know why Makoto’s father committed suicide, but I think that the Mayor can answer those questions.
I liked the small details in this episode as well, like when Masayuki’s bullies returned with their sempai, and this sempai turning out to be the guy from the convenience-store in the previous episode. I also like how he made friends with the fourth guy, and basically involved him with the story. I don’t think anyone would have guessed that the guy would get so much screen-time when he first appeared, and just got bullied by his classmates.
Oh, and it also seems that Tarou can now transform his entire body into his out-of-body experience, instead of the strange babboon-like creatures. I also liked how when Miyuki’s father told is story, Tarou and Makoto (but not Masayuki) got sucked right into the story, as if they were there themselves. It’s interesting how Masayuki didn’t come along with them. After all, he’s probably still in babboon-form in his out-of-body experience, and apart from his little video-game weapons, he hasn’t really tried to search for the borders in these experiences, unlike Tarou, who went to the other side and Makoto, who basically has been running around as a giant ghost hound. The thing also is that we’re only halfway up the series now, so there are still lots of directions that this series can explore.
