Night Head Genesis – 03 – Space Gives Answers. Literally

For the ones who haven’t seen this episode yet, I’ll just give a small warning: Night Head Genesis is one disturbing anime! You could say that it’s the Higurashi of the Summer-season. People really are driven mad during some of the scenes. Especially the fact that we’re only at episode three of 24/26 shows that there’ll most probably be a lot scenes to follow, which will be even more disturbing than the things we’re shown here.

Heh, I’m beginning to like this show more and more. Remember the vision Naoya had about the woman in red? Where she was strangling that woman? Well, it appears that she’s a serial killer. That totally explains her behaviour from the previous episode. She and her companion were hungry and looked for something to eat. A bar in the middle of nowhere was perfect for this, in order to keep the amount of suspicion as low as possible. This plan, however, backfired once Naota and Naoya dropped by. Once she heard about Naoya’s ability, she wanted to leave as soon as possible. She grabbed her chance after Naota went out of control, though she carelessly pushed him aside, which was enough to trigger Naoya’s visions.

The thing is, that both Naoya as the woman are still being haunted by these visions. The heavier the images are, the bigger the size of the impact is they make on Naoya. Naoya gets plagued by the visions of the woman violently struggling five different women with purple clothes, while the woman keeps seeing eyes everywhere, in combination with the fact that her mind became unstable once she touched Naoya. I think that that’s a nasty side-effect of his powers.

Naoya does realize, however, her motives: she’s crazy. For some reason, she considers every woman in a purple dress as her enemy. And enemies in her eyes have to be killed immediately. It’s not yet clear how she came to think of this. Bad youth? Dumped by a guy for a girl in a purple dress? Blackmail? Her male companion also is an interesting case. He’s in love with the woman, and even though he knows what she’s doing, he’s so blinded by his love that he’ll help her in anything. It’s strange if you realize what a person is willing to do for his loved one.

Naota investigates a bit, and notices that only four victims have been found. The fifth one has yet to be discovered. However, the woman never made any effort in hiding her victims. It’s as if she wanted the victims to be found. If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be strange that this fifth body hasn’t been found by anybody? The preview for the next episode had the answer, surprisingly. *note to self: the previews of Night Head Genesis are not afraid to display spoilers. Skip them.* In any case, Naoya also has the ability to see in the future. The fifth woman he saw being killed has yet to be killed. That’s why her body hasn’t been found yet, as it it’s still alive at that time. Not aware of the things (ropes, in this case) to come in the future.

Meanwhile, we learn where Shouko has ran off to: space. It seems that from there, she’s able to see everything. I think that you can compare her power a lot with Naoya. Still, the differences remain. While Naoya needs to touch people in order to get information, she needs to be in space in order to make her powers work. Shouko also has the abilities to see events, while Naoya can see thoughts. It’s not yet clear whether Shouko can read people’s minds as well, but both of them have the ability of foresight. Shouko´s goals, however, aren’t clear yet. Also, does she work alone, or does she have superiors?

We also get a bit more info about Elder Misaki. It seems that Naota and Naoya never knew that he was the one who created the barrier. This explains why they haven’t tried to kill him. Though I wonder why Naoya wasn’t able to just… read his mind and find out that he created the barrier. Or the guy had some special skills which enabled him to forget any memory he has, including the fact that he was the one who created the barrier. We also see some shots of him at his death bed. It seems that the last thing he did was point at the sky (Shouko?).

This series’ art actually surprised me. During the first episode, even though the music was awesome, the art looked really low-budget. Though in the second episode, the art only showed flaws when Naota went out of control. And now with the third episode, the art looks even better. It’s strange. You would expect that the creators would try to make a good impression with the first episode, concerning the art style. They of course did, but the low-budgetty art-style could have turned some people off.

In any case, I liked this episode. So far, the first episode has definitely been the best one in Night Head Genesis, though it’s not very easy to make an episode better than that one. Still, I do love the themes of this anime. And for some reason, this anime reminds me of two other ones: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and Jigoku Shoujo. Could that be some sort of sign?