Short Synopsis: Hone Onna’s background! A woman, meanwhile curses a man because he refuses to be responsible for the baby he gave her.
Good: Finally we have a bit of a good explanation of what happened to her; nice twists.
Bad: Right during the climax, the sound of my computer decided to call it quits. Me no like.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
First, before I start with the episode, I finally realized something. You can play nice games with the scene where the candle is added: some candles have the same description on them. Try to find as much look-alikes as possible!
Anyway, with this episode, the background of the three dolls finally is complete. Hone Onna has quite an interesting background. We already knew that she was in a brothel and that she ended up dead in a river somehow, but now we finally find out how this happened. Things can basically be summarized by Wrex’s statement: all men are bastards. First one sells her off to the brothel, then when that guy has finally decided to free Hone Onna from the brothel, another one comes and kills both of them. In fact, he used a former friend of Hone Onna, whom he later dumped, after impregnating her. That girl committed suicide afterwards.
Right now in the present time, the spirit of this girl keeps sticking to people with similar experiences, so it’d be only a matter of time till Ai would run into her, and Hone Onna would meet her spirit again. During this episode, this happens. It seems that she still bears a grudge against her.
Out of the backstories of the three dolls, I’d have to say that I like Wanyuudo’s most (apart from the fanservice, perhaps). That’s probably because he had the biggest influence on Ai’s method of working, since he was the first one she recruited. It’s interesting, Wanyuudo had a standard backstory, but a large influence on Ai, while Ichimoku Ren and Hone Onna had interesting backgrounds, but they didn’t really have a large influence on Ai and how she works.
This episode also had quite some nice production-values. Some camera-movements were looking very interesting, and especially the punishment-scene looked better than usual.
So, with five episodes left, and Hone Onna, Ichimoku Ren and Wanyuudo have had their background show. What’s up next? Kikuri will probably make her move in the next episode, but will that be everything? I’m hoping for Hell-boy to return!]]>
Jigoku Shoujo – 47
