Finally, after yet another week of hiatus, Ghost Hound now seems to be back for real. This episode yet again continues the trend of seamlessly integrating the building-up scenes with the important ones. And that’s really why I love this series. At first sight, it may seem like nothing happens, and yet the plot has been continuously pushed forward by every single episode.
The major event for this episode was Miyako, freaking out in front of Tarou. Only now, I realize that the girl in the storm in the OP was her, without her braids, and only now I realize that her problem is that she often gets possessed by ghosts. I couldn’t exactly pick up what she said back then, but it’s interesting how she freaked out, just at the time when Tarou mentioned his sister, and from what I understood, she was possessed by one of the local gods. It’s quite freaky how this was done. Most series in the same position go all GAR or emo, though this was handled quite naturally.
On further news, we finally learn what happened to Miyako’s mother: she’s in Tokyo. It seems that she divorced from Miyako’s father, and Miyako decided to stay with him. I’m surprised that Ghost Hound is one of the few series where parents can actually be divorced, even though this happens quite often in the real world. But yeah, most lazy anime solve this by never showing the parents of their protagonists, so I guess it’s only natural.
Miyako’s father also runs into the councillor during this episode, and it looks like Miyako will get some sessions in the future as well. It’ll be interesting to see what he’ll discover, especially now that he’s been seeing more and more hallucinations himself. The female scientist (god, I’m going to have to start to learn these people’s names…) also manages to see Makoto in Ghost-Hound-mode, at the start of the episode. Masayuki’s father, meanwhile, is being investigated by a strange photographer, so it really seems that the guy is working himself into trouble.
Makoto, meanwhile, confronts his grandmother about his father’s death. Another conversation I didn’t quite get, but it seems that Makoto is suspecting that the same thing might happen to either him or Tarou. We also now see that Makoto’s grandmother really desires his attention, though the way she acts now, she’s never going to get it. I think that she neglected him so much over the years, that she only noticed how much she needs him once she started getting seriously ill. And yeah, now it’s a bit too late to apologize to a guy like him.
Sounds like a good ep. This remains my favorite series of the fall season.
It’s interesting that you mention that about divorce. I’ve seen it in a few anime (Noein, Zettai Shounen, e.g.), but it does seem be top tier titles that are willing to address it (then again, there’s Digimon too, which features two brothers whose parents are divorced). From what I’ve heard, the Japanese mindset on divorce is to do it after the kids grow up and get out of the house, which would mean that our young protagonists with divorced parents would be in the minority. (But that may or may not be accurate …)
Are you fluent? Where did you get this? It’s not streamed like the rest of the eps. (and it’s unliscenced) so What’s going on? I’m scared to read this before I actually watch it.
I’m definitely not fluent in Japanese, but I can understand a fair bit. If it’s not streamed, then you have to wait a small bit before it’s uploaded. 😉
where can u download this episode subbed?
Ah, it’s been a while, but Shinsen finally subbed this episode.
I think the photographer was Tarou’s Dad. Not sure; they just looked pretty similar to me.