Short Synopsis: Akihiko gathers everyone to tell them about the things he discovered.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
I don’t think that for the past year, I’ve ever been this frustrated at a climax than with this episode, apart perhaps from Kaiba. This episode was simply amazing, and then the creators stick in that damned cliffhanger just at the parts where the juicy parts really are about to begin! That final episode can’t come soon enough.
But really, with a series of this calibre, it actually has the chance of being my favourite ending of 2008, with all the building up that has basically been meant for that final episode, and the big questions still aren’t revealed, even though the huge amount of revelations in this single episodes. I’ve probably said this before, but I really have pity with the poor fansubbers who have to translate and typeset this series. This really is something else, and I’m still utterly amazed at how many open questions the creators managed to create without me even realizing it.
So, let’s see if I got everything correctly: The scientist whose name I forgot is actually Youko’s father, and one of the culprits is Suzaki, the one who died. In the last episode, we didn’t see Atsuko, but instead Youko (my mistake). When Kanako got in her accident, it was actually Yoriko who pushed her, after being inspired by reading Sekiguchi friend’s novel. The trigger was seeing Kanako crying (probably due to Youko, I think that it was then when she found out about how her sister was actually her mother). The man in black coat was Akihiko himself, who seems to have witnessed the event.
When Kanako was caught in the accident, her wounds couldn’t be treated in a regular hospital, so Youko desperately tried to search for a different address. That’s why she wound up at her father’s, and it was Suzuki who she talked to. It then seems that Suzaki was the one who chopped up Kanako and moved her out of the research institute in BOXES, in order to avoid detection. After that, something came and killed him, just like how Kubo Shunko was silenced. The question now remains: who the heck was that?
The way the episode ended was just filled with question marks: what is Kubo doing at the research institute if he’s supposed to be dead? Why did Akihiko say that they’re “inside Kubo”?
At this point, I can’t say whether Mouryou no Hako has been the best series of the past Fall season, since half of them aren’t over yet, but it’s definitely been the best series of the fall season that only lasted 12 or 13 episodes. At the moment, I can’t wait to see what the creators have in store for the finale.
A couple of things jumbled there – Sekiguchi’s story inspired Yoriko to claim a man in black pushed Kanako. The man in the story is based on Akihiko, but he was not actually present at the train station.
Kanako’s body was so badly damaged that they had to replace the bulk of it with machines – this is what her father’s research involved. The machines required to keep someone alive form the entire building – when we saw Kanako’s arms and legs fall off in a vision early on in the series, that was the literal truth. They literally cut off most of her body, leaving her small enough to fit in a box – the box Kiba suddenly remembers seeing Suzuki carrying when Kanako went missing. (We see a couple of very, very fast shots of it, almost too fast to notice the box at all. Try freeze framing.)
Seeing it like this I just can’t wait for final episode where all should be revealed.
Still I would want to see Kanako and Yoriko being together in some distance future due to this whole reincarnation belief,but rather I doubt we would see something like that 😉
I think they’re going to find kubo’s head hooked up to the BOX building somewhere and thats why he is still alive and because he is hooked up to the building to stay alive, they are “inside” kubo…