Apologies for the delay. One thing I realized after I started to watch raws is how easy you can plan to watch them, compared to the subs, which get released at an unknown time.
Anyway, about the episode: I liked this one a lot, and the subs make this series definitely more enjoyable. It seems that the three guys who came to propose were actually already dead, and Ruri never existed in the first place. It seems that she was a form of the Mononoke Nue, who kept luring in men in order for them to acknowledge it as something more than the piece of wood it actually was.
There were a few questions left open, though. The samurai killed the fourth guy in the end, but did he really kill him or were they already dead at that point? The guy with the nose-cone seems to confirm that they were indeed really dead, as he seems to have killed Ruri, while being dead. The fact that the blood they were covered in just disappears after the killing seems to symbolize this as well: even though the two of them killed, they weren’t aware what they did back there.
Then there’s the third one. While he never killed anyone, he actually went on with a game where five scents had to be smelled, among which one of them is poisonous. Would a normal person really say the same?
Then there’s the strange dog. I originally thought that that was the Mononoke, though it was just a random bystander. It also seems that the Mononoke’s existence caused the colours in the house to dull out.]]>
Mononoke – 09
It’s possible that the samurai did actually kill the fourth guy. The samurai knows he’s likely to lose the game, so kills off an opponent, when there’s no one else to be a witness. Nose-cone kills off Ruri, but Ruri does not actually exist. Incense guy continues the game because that’s his area of expertise. He also invited medicine man to replace the fourth guy, and that didn’t make sense to me. Why invite someone as another opponent?
All *three* actions are sorta out of character. But they’re already all dead, so mebbe they’re under the influence of the Mononoke, to repeat the cycle if it weren’t for medicine man.
Personally, it think the end would have been better if, instead of transforming into Sailor Elf and blowing the palette budget (: the medicine man, upon realizing the Mononoke’s Truth, finds out that the Nue has no power over anyone who doesn’t believe its ruse and walks past the Nue and breaks the wood with the unsheathed sword. 😀