Re-Kan! – 13 (Fin)

Yamada’s Brother’s Impression of how high school girls should dress in the Summer. Actual bust size may vary.

Re-Kan! wraps with a multi-stage slice-of-life episodes, starting with a trip to a theme park (or is it amusement park? I believe Amaburi pointed out the difference). The usual gang of Amami’s classmates come, and Yamada’s often inappropriate brother also tags along.

Finally, Kana and Kyouko surprise Amami by inviting any and all of Amami’s ghosts friends who want to come. Amami also meets a new ghost, or rather an old one who helped her reunite with her dad when she got lost at the park as a small girl. In return, the ghost girl asked Amami to come back one day with her friends. Amami may have forgotten, but she still honored the request, and fun is had by all.

From the theme park the gang has a sleepover at Amami’s place, complete with dinner, fireworks, Old Maid, and the guys sleeping out in the yard, per propriety. (The episode cuts to their classmate Yoshida several times, not participating in all these boilerplate summer activities so he can presumably draw a manga, unaware he’s missing out on some great material for said manga).

Narumi isn’t as scared of spending the night in Amami’s ghost-filled house as she thought, but she still can’t sleep. Turns out no one is asleep, but only resting their eyes, but before they can agree to pull an all-nighter, Narumi dozes off thanks to Amami holding her hand, the same way Amami’s father used to hold hers when she couldn’t sleep.

With that fun-filled Summer day, Re-Kan comes to a close, proving you can stay upbeat and heartfelt in a supernatural anime and still deliver creative, consistent laughs, both of the high- and low-brow variety.

Re-Kan! – 12

Hibiki is lost and anxious without her sixth sense, and it puts her in the nurse’s office, and eventually she stops coming to school altogether. When her living friends pay her a visit, her dad says she’s still processing the shock, and doesn’t want to face those she worried so much.

Narumi doesn’t give a hoot what Hibiki wants, as long as its so selfless it hurts her. When she hears Hibiki isn’t eating, she whips up the same tamagoyaki he and Hibiki made for lil’ Yuuki way back when (nice continuity!); a recipe she knows to be Hibiki’s mom’s. And then she jams it down Hibiki’s throat.

Enough’s enough; Narumi’s not going to let Hibiki stop living just because she can’t see or hear the dead anymore. She drags Hibiki out of her gloomy house to show her that the good she’s done stretches far beyond the dearly departed. I for one love how the other friends sit back and let Narumi do her thing; she’s always had the closest bond to Hibiki, tsundereness aside, and it’s great to see her in action.

Narumi and Hibiki cross paths with numerous such people Hibiki helped connect with their departed loved ones, and had a positive impact on their lives, from the teachers who married and are now expecting, to the Kogal’s mother and the crabby old man. But those were just coincidences, Narumi really wanted to show what making those eggs for Yuuki did; he’s now a tough, happy little brother to his baby sister Kyouka, whose name means “echoing song” and shares a character with Hibiki’s.

Narumi’s well-made point is that with or without her sixth sense, Hibiki has formed countless bonds with people in her life, including Narumi herself, who sticks with her even though the sixth sense frightened her. Just because she may have lost that sense doesn’t mean she should give up or despair, because she remains connected to those people whose lives she touched, as well as those she can no longer see or hear.

About that…after joining hands with Narumi as she drilled this point home, the clouds broke and all of Hibiki’s ghostly friends return to her side, along with her living friends, who are glad Narumi manages to get the job done.

While the explanation for this is a bit cloudy, it would seem Hibiki’s mom returned to that spiritual realm where she watches over her daughter, and managed to revive the plant that either represents Hibiki’s life, sixth sense, or both. Meanwhile, all the ghosts completed their transition back to the living world. The whole thing, it would seem, was temporary.

But there’s nothing temporary about the effect Hibiki’s selfless, caring, kind-hearted acts has on her own life: she was never alone as she feared; her connections with the living and dead endure. It’s a triumphant scene to see such a huge ground assembled around her, and while it might have been interesting to see her accept a life without her sixth sense, I really don’t mind that she got it back, either.

Re-Kan! – 11

The Moon Festival has come, and Hibiki is excited because her dad finally found her mother’s handmade decorations. She invites her friends to her home to decorate the tree, eat her special tamagoyaki, and write down their wishes, which she says have traditionally always come true in her family.

That’s made clear when her wish to have friends is pretty much redundant. Her other wish, written on a very old piece of paper, because it’s an old wish, is one her living friends can’t help her with…but her ghost friends believe they can: meeting her mother. It’s a perfectly normal wish for any girl who has never met her mother, yet Hibiki thinks it’s selfish. Nevertheless, RCS and Kogal travel into the spiritual plane of her mind as she sleeps to try to make it happen.

There, they find a spiritual Yuuhi, who has been watching over Hibiki her entire life through a mirror in a washitsu, and tending to a morning glory plant that is connected to Hibiki. The plant withers if Yuuhi leaves this room, which is why she’s never been able to fulfill her own wish to hold her daughter.

RCS and Kogal, along with Ero-Neko and all of Hibiki’s other ghost friends, arrive at Yuuhi’s room to take over for her temporarily so that she can see Hibiki. The scene where the mother and daughter finally meet and embrace is the most moving and powerful yet in a show that’s been full of them. Such a simple wish, fulfilled at last. As Hibiki falls asleep in her mom’s lap, her dad peeks in too, happy the two women in his life were finally able to connect.

But when Hibiki wakes up the next morning, not only is Yuuhi gone, but all the other ghosts in her life as well. It would seem that the morning glory plant represented her sixth sense, which Yuuhi had been tending all her life, and even the combined spiritual power of her friends wasn’t enough to make up for Yuuhi’s temporary absence, and the plant died.

While Hibiki has lost her sixth sense and thus all her ghostly friends, the fact remains she has a solid group of living friends. The preview for the penultimate episode hints that it will be their turn to help her get that sense back, if they can.

Re-Kan! – 10

Amami & Co. are now second-years, which makes them senpais for the first years, and they all seem to be looking forward to meeting new friends and mentoring juniors. The only problem is, Amami’s ghosts are scaring all the new girls away.

Yamada first suggests Amami change her image, which leads to Amami impersonating her friends; her faux-tsundere impression of the True Tsundere Narumi being the funniest. But that doesn’t work, because it’s the ghosts scaring the newbies. Then Yamada suggests they change the image of the ghosts, which leads to some funny roleplay but does nothing to win the first-years over.

A week passes, and Makoto invites Amami to sew plushies with her, resulting in Amami’s teddy bear and Makoto’s creepy zombie dude being possessed by spirits. The teddy is merely Roll Call Samurai, but they’re never sure about the zombie, only that he wants to act out the manga where his likeness originally came from; a manga made at school that Makoto fell in love with.

Thanks to Umbrella Girl, Makoto gets the “bridge to heaven” in the form of a rainbow. This act is only semi-serious, with the melodrama being stamped out by Kana, Kyouko, and Narumi, who find the whole thing very silly.

With time running out, I was wondering if they were going to put any serious effort into getting the first-years to understand Amami’s situation. Amami may have plenty of friends in her class, both living and dead, but it’s the first-years’ loss to stay away from Amami.

That’s why it’s nice to see two of them who ran away before come to Amami seeking a photo, with ghosts in it of course. No plan of action was necessary, only time for them to understand there’s nothing to fear, and being Amami’s friend has a lot more benefits than drawbacks.

Re-Kan! – 09

The mystery of who Amami is making a very specific kind of handmade chocolate for, and why, isn’t all that mysterious. But as always with Re-Kan, the emotional resonance, not the mystery or animation, did most of the heavy-lifting, and succeeded admirably.

Not only that, as we watch Amami’s activities through the lenses of both her living and dead friends, all of whom have fairly reasonable theories, I felt the episode kept things in doubt long enough for the final twist to have some impact.

Working with the info we’re given from the start, Amami is going to make a traditional Japanese sweet, the recipe for which she learns from the kindly wife of a grouchy old humbug who infests the park scaring the Valentines-crazed youngs away.

The episode staves off the last piece of the puzzle with the use of editing and camera angles to keep the wife’s status up in the air until Amami finally presents the chocolates to the husband, at which point we see he is a widower.

Yet again, Amami did a favor for a ghost who couldn’t do it herself: make chocolates for her still grieving, lonely husband. She also doesn’t disappoint the ravenous Yamada or her friends by offering all of them chocolates, so everyone wins!

When the grumpy old man is alone again, he polishes off the whole box of chocolates, and realizing his departed wife is still there beside him on some plane or another, thanks her, his heart having been lifted from the gloom. The final shot that tracks from him sitting alone on the bench to the shadows of both him and his wife, was quite lovely and affecting.

Re-Kan! – 08

Teachers in anime are usually portrayed as single, miserable, and resentful of the youth that surrounds them, but Re-Kan! is a trend-bucker, so in its world, two of the teachers at Hibiki’s school, Moriya-senpai and Kimura-senpai, end up getting married. They’re a very cute couple, and both the guys and girls are super-excited.

Around the same time, however, a new ghost appears before Hibiki, one unlike any other she’s encountered before. This is the ghost of a very young girl who can only say one word: “Morya.” The Samurai concludes something is tying her to the living world, but she can’t seem to remember what. Yamada suggests they give her new memories to make up for the one’s she’s lost, but first they have to teach her to talk properly, which everyone, even Inoue, gets in on.

In the cold open that sets the bittersweet mood of this whole episode, we see her and a boy of the same age in adjacent hospital beds. The boy turns out to be “Morya” or Moriya-sensei, who Hibiki brings to the girl to play with for a while. There, he remembers that he used to give his carrots to her in the hospital, but now he can eat them himself. He’s grown up.

While spending the night with the motherly Hibiki, the girl finally remembers the rest: she loved Moriya and he her, and they promised they’d meet again when they grew up. She was sicklier than him and couldn’t keep her promise, but she still loves him. With her memories restored, she’s able to pass on, which she does in the arms of Hibiki.

Hibiki, along with Inoue and the others, had grown quite attached to the little girl as they taught her how to speak properly and played with her. For Inoue, she’s another example of a ghost who she didn’t have to fear; and more to the point, a ghost that needed help that she wanted to help.

They’re sad to see her pass on, but in doing so inspired the friends, starting with Yamada, to look more closely at the bonds they share and spend as much time with one another, making new memories as they go forward. This Re-Kan! was another poignant, earnestly-felt triumph, exploring the bittersweet nature of loss, love, and life with grace and dignity.

Re-Kan! – 07

Hibiki’s ridiculous generosity and utter inability to say no to a ghost is taking its toll and  burning her out, so her friends stage an intervention on the streets, insisting she needs a break from her supernatural drudgery. They head over to her house, which while not a Gothic haunted mansion, could certainly pass for that house in Kwaidan with a few minor tweaks.

Hibiki’s dad concurs, and produces a pair of sixth-sense-sealing glasses her mother used to wear when she needed a break from ghosts to, ya know, eat or sleep. I like how this story subverts the standard anime glasses girl trope. Sure, they make her look even more adorable (and more bookish), but they also fundamentally change how she interacts with the world. Simply put: all contact with that which most people cannot see or hear ceases. It really is like a vacation.

But the urge to take them off and sense of who’s floating around her—and more importantly, the urge help them—is strong. So Inoue makes a very childish threat: if she takes off the glasses, they won’t be friends any more, and it works; Hibiki keeps those puppies on like her life depends on it.

Her sidekicks Roll Call Samurai and Kogal don’t like it, but they’re big enough to realize Hibiki could use a break. But when the little sister of a boy Hibiki is playing with goes missing and it starts to get dark, Hibiki desperately needs more sets of eyes to search for her.

Hibiki makes a very difficult phone call to Inoue, who is studying and absolutely scared shitless by Hibiki’s foreboding ringtone. Hibiki seems ready to accept the end of their friendship, but Inoue assures her not to worry. If it’s an emergency, it’s fine to take the glasses off. Hibiki does, and show us yet again how handy it is to have an army of the dead at one’s disposal.

The balance of the episode is a New Year’s shrine visit by the whole gang. While I miss Glasses Hibiki, I loved how she lets spirits vote on what she wears, and the fact Inoue got drunk and loose-lipped on Amazake, and her friends decided to get her to open up.

To their disappointment, her response to almost every question is “Nana!”, so ingrained is her love for her late gran. Hibiki, not wanting to do anything untoward, simply asks Inoue if she’ll be friends with her in the next year, for which Inoue offers a more sober tsundere response of “I suppose.”

We finish things off with a fun little brawl between the incorrigible Ero-Neko versus Samurai and the Killer, who are sick of the cat’s sexual harrassment, as Kogal watches with enthusiasm.

P.S. Like Hannah with Food Wars, I’ve taken over Re-Kan reviews from Zane in order to even out our workloads. -Preston

Re-Kan! – 06

Amami Hibiki is a lovely young woman, but let’s be honest: she’s a bit of a goody-two-shoes, at an age when she’ll be forgiven for letting her hair down and misbehaving now and again. After Narumi (no slouch in the goody two-shoes dept. herself) wonders out loud (and loudly) why Hibiki can’t ever act like a “normal high school girl”, we’re introduced to a whole new Hibiki—a Kogal Hibiki!

The sight of Hibiki all Kogal’d out—and Kido Ibuki ditching the good girl voice for one of constant irritation—is already worth the price of admission. But what makes this another quintessentially Re-Kan! episode is that Hibiki’s new look and act is the result of the ghost of a high school girl from ten years ago possessing her.

The deal is, the Gal-ghost will make Hibiki more like a “normal high schooler”, which isn’t really possible since the high school world has moved on in the last decade, but never mind; and in exchange Hibiki will lend the ghost her body so she can “pass on.”

Until then, Gal-Hibiki’s attempts to act aloof and cool and use outdated lingo provide entertainment to her friends, including the group’s journalist, Uehara Kana, who is always snapping pics and documenting her encounters with ghosts on her blog, following the journalistic tradition of her parents, for which she’s secretly proud.

Worried about what the Gal-ghost will do in Hibiki’s body, her friends follow her, discovering she’s summoning someone to meet her. When she discovers she’s being followed, she’s annoyed and a little embarrassed, as they observe her actions and explanations increasingly out of step with her ko-gal persona.

All is revealed when the day of the meeting arrives. The person who meets her is her mom, who coincidentally is one of Hibiki’s shopping buddies, whom she shopped with the day before in Hibiki’s body. The Gal-ghost is angry that her mother hasn’t moved on from her untimely death, or had a new daughter, and is even still making enough dinner for three ten years later.

But the Gal’s host, Hibiki, explains to her that a mother will never forget their child no matter how many years pass, nor will she ever see her departed daughter as worthless. The mom catches up to her and beautiful catharsis ensues. No longer guilty for dying so soon without accomplishing anything in life or giving anything back her her mom (a false charge on her part), she’s able to pass on.

Before she does, sticks around within Hibiki just long enough to make sure Kana doesn’t make the same mistakes she did. Kana organized a Christmas party for everyone, despite the fact what she wanted most was to hang out with her parents, who are always busy. The Gal-ghost orders her home, and to Kana’s surprise, her folks are there waiting for her.

By serving as the Gal-ghost’s vessel, Hibiki not only got some rad fashion tips and education in early 2000’s jargon, but was able to help Gal forgive herself and pass on, but through Gal, helps her still-living friend re-connect with her parents.

So it’s a good thing for both of them Hibiki isn’t just another normal high school girl!

Re-Kan! – 05

After working hard on getting their haunted house ready for the cultural festival, Hibiki’s crew meets her dad Asahi, a widower with white hair from “being through a lot”, but who is grateful Hibiki has such kind friends to depend on. He and Narumi tend to get frightened by the same things, which is to say anything involving Hibiki.

Of course, Hibiki’s dad knew what he was signing up for the day he met her mom Yuuhi, who was just as beautiful and mysterious as their daughter would turn out to be. It was the ghost of a pigeon that brought them together, warning Yuuhi that a young man was going to get hit by a car trying to recover his pigeon corpse.

The next day at the festival, Narumi (in Sadako cosplay) is the first to encounter Hibiki’s dad, and they have a nice chat about Hibiki. Specifically, Yuuhi’s ability to not only see ghosts, but see the future.

Yuuhi knew she would die shortly after giving birth to Hibiki, and she knew Hibiki would go through pain and anguish, but she also knew she’d find friends. As scary as it was and is to live with the ladies in his life, Asahi wouldn’t give it up for the world, and is elated that his late wife was right.

Narumi is modest and bashful about praise, as always, but she also feels bad about being so hostile about Hibiki’s sixth sense, now that she knows it was passed down to her and is actually a pretty amazing gift.

Unfortunately for Harumi, when she’s wearing her Sadako wig all the school ghosts think she’s Hibiki, and put her and Asahi through a haunted gauntlet that results in her hair turning white like Asahi’s; not from fear, but from an incident at the okonomiyaki booth.

Another fine effort from Re-Kan: blending personality-based comedy and slapstick with a good dose of feels.

Re-Kan! – 04

Predictably, Re-kan! breathes new life into the beach episode formula by infusing it with its charming brand of supernatural embellishment. They have the beach to themselves because it’s haunted.

The ghosts are so thick around Amami, Kana can’t get a photo that doesn’t feature them streaking across the frame in such a way that makes Amami look like she’s being censored even though she’s wearing a perfectly normal swimsuit.

The ghosts also thwart Ero-Neko’s numerous attempts to harass the girls by land and sea; again, the cat’s hilarous voice sells what is otherwise a filler role. The Roll Call Samurai dutifully splitting the watermelon for the hapless Amami was also a nice touch.

The episode downplays fanservice for practicality: the students needed a chaperone for their beach trip, and Yamada provided his big bro, who happens to be a cop, which makes Esumi, a former delinquent, uneasy. Elder Yamada joined the force because he wanted to be a hero, and views Amami’s sixth sense as akin to a superpower to be treasured.

While Amami could certainly have a future in criminal investigations (and I would watch the hell out of that!), for now she’s content to use that power to make the people around her, living or dead, happy. To whit: she uses messages in the sand and the breakers to get the scoop on the local fireworks display, best seen from the train (along with a somewhat unnerving famous ghost cliff-jumper).

After a great bit about Kana having to deal with Amami’s ghost answering service, the balance of the episode is focused on stories of peoples’ pasts. Amami recalls being scared of sleeping alone, until friendly ghosts comforted and stayed with her until she went to sleep. That segues to the story of the “Fire-Haired Messiah” the unwanted nickname of Esumi Kyouko back when she was a yankee; a time Kana can’t help but mention.

What I liked about the tale of Esumi’s past was that she was a righteous ne’r-do-well, protecting the weak and taking any hand that reached out to her in need of help, even if the arm turned out not to be attached to anything! That ghost led her to her first encounter with the elder Yamada, who is just as impressed with Esumi’s good deeds as he is with Amami’s sixth sense. To him, Esumi is a heroine, living the dream and righting rights; the kind of person who inspired him to become a cop so he could help people too.

Esumi grudgingly accepts his praise, but admits she’s more scared of people than ghosts (or specifically, disembodied arms). But like Amami, she can’t help but help; it’s just who she is. Despite her past use of violence to solve problems and her semi-earned rep as a brawler, her heart’s in the right place.

If only she and Kana could do something about their eyes-through the hair…their hair design in the flashback was far less distracting!

Re-Kan! – 03

Last week Franklin mentioned the formula Re-Kan has gotten down: “Funny, Funny, touching, funny resolve!” This week it switches that formula up, to include a lot more touching with its funny in the form of some seriously moving drama. After the cold open I was convinced it would just be an episode about how un-used to cell phones Hibiki is, but I would end up being…dead wrong.

Harumi may be being a tsundere about it, but she wants to be friends with Hibiki, despite her apparent connection with the dead, which creeps her out. Hibiki’s a good person, so when she hears Harumi is determined to get Yuuki, her terror of a younger cousin to eat the fried eggs she prepares, Hibiki offers to help out, sensing an in; she wants to be friends with Harumi, too, after all.

Hibiki’s eggs are fantastic, but Yuuki still rejects them, deeming them “gross” and “wrong.” We’re thinking, ‘well, Yuuki’s just a petty little shit and an ingrate, isn’t he?’ Then we learn his dad was killed in an accident, and his very pregnant mom is in hospital, which is why Harumi is taking care of him. Just like that, the kid is sympathetic. This makes Hibiki want to help Harumi even more, but Harumi snaps at her, saying “it has nothing to do with her.”

When Harumi talks to Kana at school, she assumes Hibiki learned how to make eggs from her mom, but Kana tells her Hibiki’s mother died when she was very young. Harumi knows she was wrong to snap at Hibiki, but now she knows why Hibiki was so intent on helping with Yuuki.

Harumi visits Yuuki’s mom, who can see the exhaustion in Harumi’s face as she lies about Yuuki being no big deal. When Harumi brings up the eggs, his mom tells her there was a way his dad used to make them for her, which is why no matter who makes Yuuki eggs right now, he’s going to reject them as wrong because they’re not like his dad’s.

So where does Hibiki factor in, besides sharing Yuuki’s situation of losing a parent early in life? Glad you asked! As Hibiki is outside Harumi’s house, ready to help despite being yelled at, she gets a call on her brand-new cell phone, which she handles extra-carefully and daintily as if it were honed from delicate crystal. It’s Harumi, calling to apologize and ask for Hibiki’s help with the eggs again. Harumi is extra-impressed Hibiki didn’t stop caring about her and Yuuki just because Harumi told her off. It’s as if she knew Harumi didn’t mean it…because she didn’t!

Hibiki proves especially useful to Harumi here because she’s able to commune with the ghost of Harumi’s Nana, who taught Yuuki’s dad how to make the eggs the way Yuuki likes so much. Hibiki interprets the instructions to Harumi, but leaves Harumi to do the actual cooking: her Nana wants her to learn after all, something she never wanted to do when Nana was alive because she thought it was too girly.

The moment of truth: when Yuuki tucked in to the new, Nana-approved eggs, I knew some tears were going to come…from Harumi, from Hibiki, definitely from Yuuki when he tastes a taste he hadn’t tasted since his dad died—and from myself!

Yuuki actually ends up bawling his eyes out in a moment of catharsis, and Harumi lets him cry it out, which was the favor his mother asked of her, knowing it had to happen sometime, but Yuuki was holding it in, trying to be strong in preparation for being a big brother.

Even Yuuki’s mom tears up and has to turn away while asking Haurmi that favor; she is, after all, someone who very recently lost her husband and the father of her children, one who will never see his face. Despite her tears, she comes off as tremendously strong and brave for her family.

Despite all the tear-jerking moments, this episode never felt sappy or maudlin, because it stayed true to its characters, tapped into their unexpected stores of emotion, and presented the drama simply and elegantly.

It even managed to stick a few jokes in the mix (While the perv-cat’s shtick is starting to wear thin, his voice actor Kujira sells the hell out of every line).

Hibiki and Harumi also emerge from this episode closer friends than ever, even calling each other by their given names. Re-Kan doesn’t just excel at comedy, but drama as well. It’s one of the better pure storytellers this Spring, and when it wants to, never fails to get you right here (points at heart).

Re-Kan! – 02

Some guys in Amami’s class wonder out loud why she isn’t bullied by the other girls. She’s very strange sticks out like a sore thumb; not exactly qualities that make you popular in high school. But this week answers that question, beyond the obvious fact that if girls bully Amami, they’ll have to answer to her ghostly friends.

It’s not fear or deference that make Amami surprisingly popular in her class; but rather gratitude for making their humdrum high school lives much more interesting. Inoue constantly denies the existence of ghosts despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary (including the circling spirit of her own beloved Grandma), but she sounds more like she’s trying to convince herself.

It’s also counterproductive to resent Amami when she’s so kind, going so far to interpret and meet the needs of the ghosts around her with such dedication she neglects her own life and health. As such, Amami needs friends and Inoue in particular to dry her off from the rain, take her to the nurse’s office to catch up on some rest, and generally look after her.

We see that the fruits of Amami’s kindness are a double-edge sword (she attracts Pervy Ghouls along with Roll Call Samurai or Faceless Umbrella) but it’s typically a net positive: she helps those in need even though they’ve passed on, because no one else can. Because she can see and hear them, she can’t ignore them; it’s just not her.

I suppose I should also mention that this was another fun and hilarious episode. Many laughs are to be had, mostly in reaction to Amami or her ghostly friends’ gestures, actions…even texts! Also good for some chuckles: the recurring joke of the only guy in the circle having stuff thrown at his face.

The evident 4-koma roots give the show a “grab-bag” structure and the eyes-through-the-hair designs of the “cool girls” is odd, but those are minor niggles. The well-timed and varied comedy of Re-Kan is enriched by the profound decency of Amami’s character, and the sincere desire of her classmates to root for and support her.