Category: Finished Series: Mystery/Suspense

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 09

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~


A few episodes ago, I remember noting how I’d like to see the focus of this series go away from Aoki a bit, because the other characters hardly got any attention because of him. It seems like the creators answered my prayers or something, because that’s exactly what the past two episodes have done. While the previous episode was a bit*cough* extreme, this episode gives interesting insight into Nanako, how her parents divorced when she was young, and she grew up without her father.

This episode deals with a serial-killer, who in the end turned out to be a regular salary man who killed off his victims in order to vent his frustrations about his job. The interesting part was his wife, though. We all see this case through the eyes of one of his victims, which turns out to be the father of said wife. He divorced his wife a few decades ago, and he didn’t see his daughter ever since, but when he learned that she got married, he wondered whether she married the right guy, so he went to investigate, and found blood-drenched coats in the guy’s garbage. He couldn’t face his daughter, so in the end he tried to calm down her husband, which got him stabbed in the back.

Nanako thinks that she understands the feelings of the daughter, but instead the daughter starts yelling at her, asking her to leave. It’s not like she forgot about her father, but rather she wanted to forget about him, while Nanako has never attempted to forget the loneliness of missing her father.

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 08

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~


OMG! WTF! When I started watching this episode, I had totally forgotten that this series comes from the same production-company as Shigurui. This episode was utterly incredible, but let me put up a warning: if you can’t stand gore or are female, then stay far, far away from it. God, that was disturbing. Here I was, believing that this series wouldn’t go beyond the incest and homosexuality of episode three.

I don’t even want to fully understand this episode. Even without knowledge about what was being said, the themes and messages are rock-solid, and they hit you incredibly hard. I refuse to spoil things, but let’s just say that Madhouse is an animation-company that doesn’t care about censors. Really, even Shigurui didn’t freak me out this much!

God, I love this series.

xxxHolic – 33

by psgels, posted in xxxHolic


Hmm, for the first time in the second season, an xxxHolic episode disappointed me a bit. It surprises me a bit, since this episode goes back to Kohane’s arc, but somehow this episode felt off and among the least interesting episodes of xxxHolic, along with the one about superstition.

I think my biggest problem was with how it just felt that Clamp tried to shove down it’s message through the viewer’s throat. The usual subtlety in this series was gone entirely, and instead we get an obvious story with an obvious message: “Here is Kohane! She’s hated and disliked by both her viewers, colleagues and mother! She receives death threats and gets beaten up! But she has special powers, and she’s always right! Now feel sorry for her!” Sorry, but I’m not buying it.

One series that I can think off that successfully dealt with the topic of psychics and the media was Ghost Hunt. Okay, Ghost Hunt had its own problems, but none of those lied in its themes and messages. The arc about the spoon-benders was really good at showing the relationships between kids who claim to bend spoons and the media, and the people who watch it.

I really hope that the next episode will offer a clever twists to the whole story, because I really know that the creators can do better than what they’ve shown here.

Kaiba – 07

by psgels, posted in Kaiba


This episode was absolutely incredible. There’s probably no better way to say it. It’s one of those very rare episodes that just blew me away due to its sheer awesomeness. Everything Kaiba has been building up to has come together perfectly. Seriously, Kaiba right now has actually a chance of surpassing Haibane Renmei as my favourite 13-episode series, if it continues on at this pace.

Seriously, in seven mere episodes, Kaiba did what other series usually takes other series 20. When I first learned that Masaaki Yuasa would direct this series, I had my doubts, seeing as Kemonozume, Mind Game and Cat Soup were all good, but seemed to lack something, though Kaiba really shows that he’s evolving as a storyteller, and Kaiba is the work of a genius.

Vanilla, sacrificing himself for Kuroniko indeed had it coming, and I haven’t forgotten the horrible things he did in the first and second episode, and yet his end was so incredibly sweet. The guy knew full well that Kuroniko didn’t like him, and he only got this confirmed with her disgusted look after he kissed her, after which he planned to send her away, back to the planet where it all began in the first episode.

And then Neiro’s past. Her memory is a bloody mess, and it’s especially interesting to see Hyo-hyo being so shocked about it. We now know that it’s got something to do with Neiro, but it wasn’t aware of what exactly was done to her. There are also more Hyo-hyos than just Hyo-hyo, so I guess that it was just assigned to do a simple task: keep an eye on Warp, and I have reason to believe that that ostrich was also part of the complot.

I suspect that, assuming that everything Kaiba saw inside of Neiro’s memory came in chronological order, Warp once got attacked by Kaiba, and got his memory copied of some sort. That’s how Kaiba was born, and Kaiba was the one who got close to Neiro and fell in love with her, at the displeasure of Warp, so he tried to shoot her, like we saw in this episode. I have no idea how Neiro managed to survive, but if I had to guess, then Popo came to their rescue. He then messed with the memory of both of them, in order to manipulate them. I’m not sure what kind of purpose Kaiba has in his plans, though.

Oh, and I HATE TENNIS. Two freaking weeks without Kaiba!? $#!!$#$!@!@!!!

xxxHolic – 32

by psgels, posted in xxxHolic


Another very solid episode from xxxHolic. This one too goes back to the first one, and is another one in the collection of “stories about girls and women with mysterious problems” that were featured in many of the episodes of the first season. It’s episodes like these which are especially important for this series, because they take the focus away from Watanuki and instead are all about their characters. This makes the viewer both enjoy the character in question more, and look forward to seeing the next serious story about Watanuki. Besides, I love it when main characters end up taking the roles of mere spectators.

The case this time is about a girl whose house is being haunted. She can hear sounds, as if people were living there. What’s actually happening is that she’s the ghost, and doesn’t realize that she’s dead. In the end, Yuuko gives the girl a number of bells that would amplify her presence in the house. In this way, the real residents would be so freaked out that they’d call an exorcist.

I must say that that was a very interesting way to exorcise the ghost. Yuuko refused to let the girl know that she was a ghost, and she refused to exorcise the ghost herself, and I wonder why she did that. Is this called “thou should never kill thy customers”, or something? Or did she decide to just leave things to the professional exorcists, who know how to properly get rid of a ghost?

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 07

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~


I’m not sure if I’m the only one in this, but so far I’ve found the one-episode stories of Himitsu more interesting than the arcs that took up two episodes. Okay, that may be because the shorter stories were easier to understand, but the shortness of the one-episode arcs also has something appealing to it: it’s episodes like this one that are short and sweet, and still pack a punch. I’m interested in whether this’ll remain the same during the second half of this series (assuming of course that Himitsu will have 24/26 episodes. It would obviously be awesome if there turn out to be more episodes).

In this episode, an important businessman dies. He has a large family, but the most peculiar thing is that he can’t see people’s faces. His entire life, he’s been working hard, though he never could enjoy much social interaction, especially in the later half of his life, I believe. AS a result, he never had a good connection with his family, and refused to put his family into his will, because they’ll just waste the money he worked hard for. Instead, he left all his possessions to the one girl whose face he could see, and whom he met ten years before. That meeting made a huge impact on him. But as a result, his son got jealous and decided to kill him over it.

It’s a bit hard to imagine how someone wouldn’t be able to see faces, but you can also see this in symbolism: the guy was married, he lived with a large family, but there was no attempt made to connect to him, which in his turn didn’t give him much motivation for social interaction. I think he felt like everyone around him was around him because of his money, and not because of himself. That’s why the innocence of this little girl made such an impact on him, because she was too young to really care about his money or status.

Judging from the pattern of this series so far, the next episode is probably going to be two episodes long again. This time, I’m going to try and understand it immediately, instead of finding that I missed some huge plot-hole later. The power of Himitsu really emerges when you see the big picture, and not the smaller ingredients. Though I do hope that the focus won’t be on Aoki so much. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good character, but he has a nasty tendency to overshadow all of the other characters, who are just as interesting as he is. 😛

Kaiba – 06

by psgels, posted in Kaiba


Really, is there no end to this series awesomeness? This was quite possibly the best episode of Kaiba yet, for very obvious reasons. For the sake of spoilers showing up in the blog-aggregators like animeblogger antenna, this sentence is meant to fill up space. This one is meant to fill up space as well. So, this should be enough.

Kaiba finally meets Neiro! Although under very strange circumstances. She spends this episode in the form of a huge male cyborg without any hands. The thing that made this so awesome was that both of them were struggling with the feelings of being in the body of another gender. Kaiba has his first period as well, while Neiro has trouble with the male hormone-impulses.

As it turns out, Warp was the worst kind of king. He killed Neiro’s family, imprisoned thousands, and he was also probably responsible for the huge gap between rich and old, and several of the memory-clouds we see in space. That makes me even wonder why Neiro fell in love with him in the first place, because right now she seems to consider him as an enemy.

What’s more: in this episode a strange plant appears, which sucks out the memories of nearby persons. Neiro calls it a KAIBA!!! Could it really be that Warp fell victim to one of these Kaiba, and that’s how Kaiba originated? Oh boy.

The case in this episode looked a lot like the episode with the old couple in Kemonozume. Both couples have been travelling for decades now, and both suffer a huge loss as the episode went on. I must say that I prefer the Kaiba-version. This might be a small spoiler, but the problem with Kemonozume was that the ending had no point whatsoever. The two of them just turned into monsters and killed each other due to the big bad guy. This episode in Kaiba has been very deep, though. This time, just the old lady gets her memory sucked out, and as it turns out, she has been cheating on her husband. And yet the husband doesn’t matter, and he’ll just continue to travel with her memory-less body.

With this episode, I know for sure that Kaiba is my favourite series this season. The 26-episode series really need try their best in their second halves if they want to trump this series.

xxxHolic – 31

by psgels, posted in xxxHolic


Finally! A catgirl who doesn’t end her sentences with “-nya”. She also doesn’t have any of the nervous tics to make her seem excessively cute either. I like that.

In any case: I really must praise the second season by fixing about the only thing that was wrong with the first season: the fact that the stories had no connection to them. The second season so far has been really good at foreshadowing its future stories. It’s a small touch, but it makes this season feel more as a unity than just a collection of random short stories, while avoiding to become a series with a continuous storyline.

The current story was about said catgirl, and it was delightfully close to the horror-stories that we saw in the first season of xxxHolic. The interesting thing is that it never tried to be anything big. The story was just very simple with hardly any unnecessary twists. A really good example of the simple, yet effective episode, and at the same time it foreshadowed Himawari’s arc some more. I suspect that the creators will save her arc for the end of the season.

I’m a bit iffy on the explanation the creators gave, on how the body of the dead girl has sat in her chair for years now, due to the fact that her body won’t decompose due to the chemicals that are in the food we eat. Even preserved meat goes bad if you don’t seal it to prevent outside air from reaching it, so why should a human suddenly become entirely immune to the process? Still, I admit it’s a freaky thought: perhaps the technology to completely preserve our bodies in the future.

Apparently, the creators also seemed to have cut out Tsubasa Chronicle references in this episode yet again. In a way, I’m glad that they did so. xxxHolic is basically a series about modern folklore, not some kind of back-up series for Tsubasa Chronicle. I’ve also heard from various sources that the Tsubasa Chronicle Manga is starting to get more ludicrous with every single volume, so it’s good that the creators have decided to keep things simple. I can imagine how there was a bit of collaboration between the teams that worked on the xxxHolic and Tsubasa Chronicle movie, but I can imagine how with so many references, trying to manage these crossovers will be near-impossible.

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 06

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~


Another very solid episode from Himitsu. Though it wasn’t among the best episodes of this series, it still had me glued at the screen during the tense moments. This episode kept a lot of things unmentioned. It never went into detail as to what Kinoko’s father, three friends and family did to her. All that we saw confirmed is that she was once abused by her father. Her father turned out to be obsessed and in love with her, and Kinoko knew this, so she used him as a scapegoat to take all the blame, which is why Kinoko didn’t kill him. He’d be sentenced to death anyway.

Still, I like series that assume that their viewer has a brain. There’s of course a fine line between left-out information and plain laziness, but I suspect that the creators knew full well what they were doing in this episode.

I think the reason why this episode wasn’t as good as the previous ones was that there were times in which we didn’t follow Aoki’s thought-pattern, but just jumped right to his conclusions, while the thing that made me fall in love with this series was the seemingly endless search for that one clue that helped to push the case closer to getting solved.

Kaiba – 05

by psgels, posted in Kaiba


This episode was surreal, even for a Kaiba-episode. I think it has to do with a guy named “Jamie Vickers”, who was listed in the end-credits. His previous work includes a few episodes of Kemonozume, and the animation of the ED of Tokyo Tribe 2. This guy’s sense of style is even messier than that of Masaaki Yuasa.

This episode was all about bodies, and how they’re discarded once they die. The previous episodes have never really shown what happens to a person if he or she dies from a natural reason, but I suspect that the mind and body die together, and the body can’t be used anymore by another mind, so it is discarded and destroyed. In this way, Kai’s body also gets destroyed accidentally. Oh, and Hyo-Hyo mysteriously disappears in this episode without any clue whatsoever as to where… “it” went, apart from the fact that it saw a huge load of Neiro-like bodies with “Neiro” written on them.

Kaiba this time runs into a designer of bodies, who has become quite famous. He’s of the opinion that people shouldn’t walk around with dull bodies, and his vision seems to catch on rather well. Nearly everyone walks around with some kind of strange body. His own body seems to be actually powered by electricity, and his servant, in the body of a dog, just needs to be re-winded once in a while. This dog seems to be a former woman who took care of the… “cat”, though she got too old at one point and separated her mind from her body, just as she was about to die. The two of them also share the same eyes: the designer can only see what the dog sees, and nothing more, and therefore he’s really dependant on the dog, and they’re always together. The dog also takes care of powering this designer.

In this episode, I also noticed a huge difference between this series and Himitsu ~The Revelation in terms of privacy. In Himitsu, Aoki is very much bothered by the fact that he’s intruding the privacy of others, and yet Kaiba just peeks into the minds of others without any second thoughts, in order to find out their stories.

I also have a theory. In this episode, we learn that Kaiba’s original body was some sort of hero, famous enough to warrant his own statue, though at the same time, nobody knows who this guy actually was. I didn’t totally understand the explanation, but it seems that we’re dealing with a king here. My theory is that Kaiba and Warp are two different persons, and Kaiba was just meant to protect Warp’s body as something happened to him, involving the terrorists and Popo. That still makes me wonder what Hyo-Hyo’s purpose was, because the mission of protecting Kaiba’s body clearly failed. Heck, we have no idea where it is now. Or is there more about the locket that it just being a pretty picture?