Category: Finished Series: Mystery/Suspense

This week, Shigofumi is about a rather extreme case of bullying. The bullies are ruthless in every single way, but this episode is told from a rather interesting viewpoint: from a guy who happens to be in the same class as the bullies, but in the beginning has nothing to do with them. He never takes any action, and finds the bullied guy rather pathetic (which in a way is true. The guy has really gone crazy under the pressure). Then, when the bullied guy asks for his help, he declines, and instead betrays the guy to the bullies (did anyone else think of Kaiji when that beam appeared?). After that, the bullied commits suicide, and the bullies find themselves a new victim in the main character, who now understand how hard it is to be bullied.

Well, I think that it’s clear now that Shigofumi lacks any form of subtlety. It knows how to build up, but it’s interesting how it never tries to go too deep, and instead presents its story quite straightforward. It’s interesting how basically the entire episode says “thou shalt not bully”, and how the symbolism with the puppies was quite straightforward. It kind-of matches Fumika’s approach when she delivers the Shigofumi as well: all that matters is to deliver the Shigofumi, and everything that’s in the way doesn’t matter. I usually like series with a bit more subtlety, but a series with a subtlety like this one also is nice once in a while.

There’s one thing I couldn’t understand about this episode, though. At the end of this episode, we see how the main character stabs one of the bullies with a screwdriver (quite an interesting method to get rid of them), which he posts on a local bbs, it seems. We then switch to a completely unrelated girl, who reads the bbs as well, and seems to get bullied too. She then makes a phone-call to an unknown person and the episode ends. What was that about? Did we meet that girl before? Or was that just an introduction to the next episode? I’m going to assume that it’s the latter.

Yep, this episode yet again showed that this series has the same scriptwriter as Code-Geass. This episode had quite a few small unexplained coincidences that plagued Code Geass, up to the extreme. Thankfully, Shigofumi promises to be ten times better than the former somehow. I think it’s because that this is the only flaw that this series really has, whereas Code Geass was plagued by emo-fests and the horrible nationalistic messages that it tried to shove down the viewer’s throats, among others.

This episode was really mentioned to flesh out Fumiko, and the person receiving the Shigofumi (a cat) took a step back. It worked out really well, in my opinion. We also learn a bit more about Fumiko, before she became the deliverer of the Shigofumi. It seems that she, after killing her father, went into a coma. And now, she’s stuck, delivering the Shigofumi while her real body remains unconscious for years. Her old classmate that we saw in episode three turns out to have confessed to her, though Fumika declined.

It was also quite amusing to see that she hated cats. In that way, she does form a pretty good combination with Chiaki, as it’s clear that both of them try to annoy each other as much as possible. I really liked how this episode gave a new dimension to Fumiko, and how she’s not just that cold girl who delivers letters.

Regarding the case of this episode, it was pretty cute for a old man and woman to try and give their last message to a cat in the form of a key to their old apartment. I like the creativity, and it shows how the original writers were really trying to explore the borders around the Shigofumi. That’s what I like about these case-based series so much. 🙂

Okay, it’s a bit hard to believe that a fire would start, just from the suns rays that shine through a bottle of water, but thankfully this time, it didn’t ruin the story for this episode at all. All the doubts I had of this series after episode 2 are gone now, and this has been shaping up to be an awesome series that successfully combines the ordinary with the spectacular.

This episode tells the story of two girls. One of them is the best player at a local high-school tennis-club, and the other is the coach of said club. A lot of signs point to the fact that both are lesbians, or at least very close friends. One of them has been left by her mother, when she ran off with another guy. Right now, this mother died, and sends Fumiko out to deliver her Shigofumi.

Most of the episode is about the girl, running away from this Shigofumi, and afraid to confront it. After all, her mother ran off without coming back at all. This has to feel like some betrayal, and the girl must have thought that her mother hated her. Turns out that her mother watched her tennis-matches from the side-lines, and encouraged her all the way. The past two stories have been simple, but due to their building-up, they’ve worked out really well. What I especially like is how we also get a small look into the lives of the ones to receive the Shigofumi. I guess that this is the same reason why I fell in love with Jigoku Shoujo. ^^;

This was definitely the best episode of Shigofumi yet. It consists out of just one episode this time (at least, that’s what I suspect), and it tells the story about three guys who live ordinary lives at school. At least, until one of them commits suicide. The rest of the episode is quite an interesting insight to suicides, and to how people often try to search the deepest meanings behind them, while they can also be committed with simple reasons.

The guy in this episode simply wanted to fly. His father though, not knowing about any of this, convinces himself that someone violently murdered his son. He then hijacks the guy’s classroom in order to find out whether the guy’s friends know anything about it. Turns out that they too didn’t, but the guy’s father doesn’t believe it. Thankfully, Fumika comes and delivers the Shigofumi, so things are cleared up. I liked how well this episode was written, and the three major characters (the father and two best friends) were nicely developed for one episode.

The creators are also surprisingly quick with the development for Fumiko. But then again, I’m comparing this show to the Jigoku Shoujo which took twenty episodes before any information about Ai was revealed. Fumiko indeed was a normal girl at one time, who was actually friends with one of the two guys from this episode. Apparently, she killed her father at one point, which resulted in her, becoming the deliverer of the Shigofumi. Obviously, pieces of the puzzle are still missing, but it’s quite a nice start.

The second episode was slightly less impressive than the first one, but still this remains a good series to blog. My main problem is that the influences of Code Geass’ writer were noticeable, and this episode just lacked the subtlety of Jigoku Shoujo. Still, the only real flaw of this episode was the ending, how the random policeman shot without any reason whatsoever. The guy was clearly underdeveloped, and the script was a bit too hasty at that point to get to the juicy stuff.

Still, the episode did a pretty good job of portraying the psychopath-side of Ayase, and how she basically kills everyone who stands in her way. Of course this can only go on for so long until the police catches up, especially when there isn’t really a solid plan of action. My favourite character of the series is Fumika, though. She turned into an interesting combination of Enma ai and Momo (Shinigami no Ballad), though she can’t help it but involve herself a bit more than the former two did. Still, what was up with her fancy moves when she put her gun back in her bag? Seems to suggest that even though she’s quiet, she likes to show off.

In any case, I’m glad that there finally is another arc-based series that deals with random stories for each arc. I’m a big fan of the well-done series of this concept, and all that Shinigami no Ballad has to do now is to provide enough interesting concepts and watch out that the plot doesn’t go too fast.

And really, the ALI-project needs to evolve a bit. Their style may be nice, but really, all the OPs and EDs they’ve done really begin to look more and more like each other. It’s a shame, their work on .Hack//Roots was awesome, but you can’t see any of this brilliance in their latest works.