Kyousougiga – 03

Koto visits the Kurama temple, lending Shouko her hammer, Aratama, and meeting with Shouko’s assistant Fushimi and the Chief Priest Kurama. In a flashback, Yakushimaru meets the siblings his father created for the first time. Kurama excels at his studies, calligraphy, and woodworking, and his father creates the Mirrored World so Kurama and Yase can visit the capital. Shouko loses her PSP, in a retelling of the second OVA. Meanwhile, Kurama is hopeful the arrival of Koto could lead to the fulfillment of his dream: to see the outside world.

This series is taking events from the earlier OVAs and adding material around them that augments and refines the overall story. It blends events in the present with Koto to events of the distant past with the three siblings, this time from Kurama’s perspective in both timelines. He was clearly designed to be a model older brother; when his siblings sobbed when their parents were suddenly gone, he took up the dual mantles of family head and watchful guardian of the town. He keeps Myoue and Yase in the loop, but he runs things.

Kurama sees Koto, the first-ever visitor to the Mirrored City, as his possible key to the outside world. He envied his brother’s actual humanity; and envies Koto’s as well. He’s pretty much achieved all he can in the Mirrored City; and yearns to leave the drawing and return to the real world he only had the slightest glimpse of as a child. That could have untold ramifications for both worlds, but we really can’t see Kurama as a villain executing a grand evil scheme here. He has just as much right to follow his dreams as Myoue, Yase, or Koto.

Rating: 8 (Great)

Kyousougiga – 02

This episode documents the young Koto’s life prior to entering the Mirrored Kyoto and becoming the ward of Myoue. Abandoned at a very young age, she was taken in and trained by Inari (AKA “The Fox”), and despite early complaints by his peers, she proves to have a great deal of talent. When Koto suddenly appears in the Mirrored Kyoto with her two familiars, A and Un, the Council of Three (the siblings Kurama, Myoue, and Yase), they debate whether she is related to them, or could actually be the reincarnation of their mother, who shares her name and eyes.

It’s just a fact of anime that whenever there are two characters with identical eye color (in an anime where not all characters have the same eye color, that is), it almost always means they’re related. So it’s no coincidence that lil’ Koto has the same red eyes as the departed Lady Koto or Myoue Shounin, just like it’s no coincidence that Inari also has the same color eyes. The narrator in the very first moments of the episode is also quite clear: “This is the story of one family’s love and rebirth.” Meaning Inari and Koto could well be Shounin and Lady Koto, reborn.

Mind you, the episode doesn’t come right out and confirm anything one way or the other, while the dream-like sequences of Koto and Inari in the secret room with the drawings of Mirror Kyoto and Koto the rabbit don’t make things much clearer. But whether she’s Myoue/Kurama/Yase’s mother or sister, she’s definitely a member of their family. Her appearance represents a sea change, both in their lives and in the world they preside over. The first major change since their parents left. We’ll see how each of them end up dealing with it.

Rating: 8 (Great)

Kyousougiga – 01

In ancient times, monk Myoue Shounin leaves Kyoto to resid in the mountains of Takao. What he draws can come to life, including a black rabbit named Koto who falls in love with him. Koto makes a deal with a Buddha who gives her human form. She and Shounin have a family made up of Kurama, a drawing, Yakushimaru, a human, and Yase, a demon. This strange family garners derision from the town, so they move into the drawing of Kyoto, “the Mirrored City”.

They live there for hundreds of years, until Koto starts to dream of the world’s end, a warning to return her human form she borrowed from the buddha. She and Shounin depart for parts unknown, leaving their three children. Fast-forward to the present day, when Myoue Yakushimaru has replaced his father as Takao monk. The sky fills with unusual lightning, which he thinks could be a sign of Shounin returning, but it turns out to be a girl named Koto from a parallel dimension, looking for her guardian.

This stylish, engrossing, inventive series has been teasing us with small tastes since December of 2011, but has finally gotten a run of ten episodes in which to expand its already dense and tantalizing story. We’ve been licking our chops for some time, and this first non-recap episode takes us all the way back to the beginning with Myoue’s father. It’s a charming, romantic tale that turns bittersweet when Koto, the rabbit who became a lady, then a wife and mother, has to leave that ideal life. There’s an alarming abruptness to going from happy family to three kids on their own, but Mirror-Kyoto is devoid of war or suffering, so the kids fare fine.

Once we’re in the age of cell phones and video surveillance (this episode covers a formidable length of time), the three now run the city like their parents once did, in the configuration we’re familiar with from the OVAs. Then, out of the blue, a girl who vaguely resembles their father suddenly makes a big, Terminator-style entrance, flanked by twin demon brothers, brandishing a big hammer, hunting a black rabbit we know to be Myoue’s mom’s original form. Just as suddenly as he lost his parents, Myoue gains a family.

Rating: 9 (Superior)

Kyousogiga – 03

One of Douji Yase’s animal-like youkai records video of a special day in the world on the other side of the looking glass: a day when unwanted or unneeded…stuff is relased into the air, where it drifts away towards a train station which will take it further away still. One of these objects is a stuffed animal a mother wants her daughter to let go, but she won’t, and floats off with it. Koto, A and Un fly up to grab her, and it isn’t long before Shouko and her suited legion also assist; finally Shouko shoots the plushie, and the girl and Koto fall back down to earth. Also among the objects that shouldn’t have flown away: Douji Yase’s favorite teacup.

This really captured the grandeur and whimsy of the strange world Koto is now at home in (the awesome soundtrack really helps sell it). There’s a very fable-like vibe to it, and it’s also very much the opposite of how the real world operates. Our waste falls to the earth, both due to gravity and due to the nature of municipal sanitation and decomposition. We as a modern society toss out a lot that may still be useful to others, but is wasted anyway, due to convenience. Still, it would be great if, once a year, all the unnecessary clutter that had accumulated that year could be released into the sky, to find its own way…somewhere else.

Rating: 9 (Superior)

Kyousogiga – 02

We got so hung up with Fall series that Kyousogiga almost slipped through the cracks. Well, with one episode left to air, we’re taking the opportunity to catch up on this excellent ONA.

In this piece, Shouko, the geek who runs Kurama Temple, has lost her PSP. She suspects she lost it when she was tackled post-lunch by Koto/A/Un. She deploys legions of well-dressed henchmen to leave no stone unturned. They spot a PSP in the talons of a bird, but after a sustained pursuit and much discharging of firearms, when they catch the bird, the PSP is not hers. Eventually it’s found by a man named Fushimi, who simply searched for its GPS signal. The tracking device is a must for Shouko, who is very active and has a tendency to lose things.

Like a rich dessert, this episodelet was dense, compact, and full of complex flavors surrounding a very simple concept: losing something important along one’s daily travels. In Shouko’s case, having her PSP is a matter of utmost importance, and she is also fortunate to have virtually unlimited resources at her disposal for whatever petty purpose she chooses. We liked her brief, outwardly pleasant, inwardly tense chat with Douji Yase, as well as her knee-jerk reaction to remembering she was jostled by Koto:  destroying her house and holding her at gunpoint.

Rating: 8 (Great)