Mononoke – 07

After this episode, I’m going to take a small break to wait for the subs to catch up. It was a nice idea to try and watch this raw, but this is just one of these series that I want to fully understand. Unlike series as Toward the Terra or Seirei no Moribito, who have a continuous storyline, Mononoke deals with stories of 2 to 3 episodes, so every detail counts. I managed to understand this episode in the end, but I was too busy figuring out what happened to really enjoy the episode. ^^; Still, this episode was really good. It seems that the woman didn’t really understand that she killed her entire family. The family she was married to kept abusing her, and her only glimpse outside was through a barred window. She was caught between her love for her mother, who was the one who married her to her new family, and her desire to be free and play. Her mother may have thought that she did a good thing for her child, by educating her well and taking good care of her, but she never let her do what she wanted. That indirectly caused Ochou to go berserk. Hence the masks. She put up so many different faces in front of everybody, but she never really had the chance to show her actual face. Until, of course, she started killing. The man with the fox-mask is another one of these faces of hers. If I had to guess, then I’d say it’s the form of her ideal husband. I’m not sure how many of you remember, but Tenpou Ibun Ayakashi Ayashi also featured an arc about masks. In there, the girl (I forgot her name, sorry) went berserk because she thought her evil masks showed her true face. Interestingly enough, the conclusion of that arc was that every mask was a part of her, and that there is not one true mask. This arc in Mononoke builds further upon that, and they show how things can go wrong, as Ochou didn’t even realize that she’s been putting up different faces.]]>