A calm episode of Boku Machi this week but certainly a very strong one. The teacher looked to be removing suspicions on him this episode with his efforts to get child services to finally catch Kayos mom. However my prime suspect remains him and if anything I think hes proving his guilt. Removing the camera shots that make him look suspicious; we have some things here linking him to the killer. For one, the kids discovered that the bus they were keeping Kayo in was also being used as the killer’s hideout. Kenya mentioned that the bus was used by the school and abandoned. Which stands to reason that the killer knew that the bus wasn’t being used as well and is connected with the school. The teacher is the one calling social services on Kayos mom; which stands to reason that he’s the perfect person to tip her off about the visits. But then why get social services to investigate in the first place? Well it looks like he isn’t the only one concerned with Kayos situation and Sachiko is involved as well. He might be doing it for the sake of appearance. His knowledge that Satoru had hidden Kayo is also suspicious; it’s possible to come to that conclusion but I feel he was so certain because he knew that they were using his hideout as a place to hide her. You can’t fool me, mister teacher. You are still my prime suspect.
Satoru thankfully takes my advice and decides to trust in his mother after the base is compromised. If Sachiko hasn’t won the award for best mother in anime before this; she certainly has now. Taking Kayo in and giving her all the care in the world made the second half of this episode truly heartwarming. Also a bath scene that wasn’t pandering fanservice. See anime? You can do it if you try. It could be argued that we are spending too much time on Kayo and putting the main storyline to the wayside. Especially as we are reaching the end of the series and still have a large amount of material to cover. I do have my concerns about that but frankly this was an excellent episode. In particular the scene with Kayo crying at the sight of a lovingly made breakfast was truly powerful and moving. Truly masterfully done. The thing that makes it all the more effective is that Kayo up till this point had been very mature child. She never cried at being abused by her mother, or at anything she would have every right to cry about. But when faced with genuine unconditional love, all the barriers she set up melted away and she became a kid once again. I am impressed by that scene and particularly annoyed when Yuki Kajiura wormed her piano song into in and started get me thinking how it’s too damn similar to Fate/zero and that using piano for this scene is so damn lazy and goddamn it Yuki! Gah! Personal gripes with that aside it was well executed scene.
I remain in a strange position with this show. For you see I do think this has been done wonderfully so far and I want to lavish praise on it. But part of me is reserved on doing so because this show isn’t over and I feel if I begin to push it as anime of the season I risk jinxing the remainder of its run. Then there is the big worry, the fact that this anime has been confirmed to portray the manga ending, yet it has only covered about half the manga so far and we have only four episodes left. I am praying in my heart that there is a second season in the works or at least a small series of OVA episodes because no matter how good the execution has been so far, I cannot see the situation of shoving twenty one thirty page chapters of manga into a short time frame ending well. Of course, I want to be wrong on that, I want this to all work out. Well in coming back to the episode we have Kayos mom getting antsy now that Kayo isn’t around to let her take out her frustrations. But this episodes cliffhanger looks like she will finally be getting some just desserts.
My main gripe is how Satou doesn’t show any reactions to the other kids that also were killed and that are also being saved indirectly by his actions. I mean one of them is also a kid (which tbh I don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl) he has out with.
Also yeah the scenes with Kayo are cute, though I do think they also feel in partly pandering (of the emotional variety) do to her having such a passive role. And to be fair shower scenes are common because we expect them but it’s not simple making them add something to a story. I mean it’s possible like making someone look vulnerable, or when the character is pondering about sexuality, and or being a romantic moment. I suppose the problem is mainly how shameless ecchi anime have gotten (It’s both fun and sad how some ecchi anime have been having better sexual scenes than hentai. Maybe that’s were the sales are).
The main character’s name is Satoru.
It took 8 episode reviews for me to finally see that I have been misspelling his name…bloody hell how does the written word make such a fool of me.