Urusei Yatsura – 33 – Heaven Is a Date on Earth with You

With the possible futures mini-arc concluded, Urusei is back to self-contained segments, both of which have to do with the supernatural. First up, Mendou is out of school for a week, and when Ataru, Lum, Shinobu, and Ten visit, they learn he has an invisible ghostly octopus stuck to his head.

His sister painted a floral design to make it visible, but the sheer absurd sight of it tends to provoke laughter in everyone. Sakura and Cherry arrive to describe the phenomenon as a “cowalker”, or the spirit of the missing family octopus Akamaru.

When Cherry gets into a staring and funny face contest with the ghostly octopus, both get conked on the head, but since the octopus doesn’t have physical form, Ataru misses and conks Mendou on the head instead. Mendou draws his katana and a scuffle ensues.

When Ataru uses a pillow to block Mendou’s strike, it rips open to reveal Akamaru had gotten stuck in there while adventuring, as is his wont. Once he wakes up, his cowalker vanishes, and all’s well that ends well. As for why the adventurous octopus ended up in Mendou’s pillow, I think there might’ve been some wordplay lost in translation.

The true gem of this episode, and perhaps this entire season of Urusei, is “Last Date”, which starts from the delicate pastel POV of a sickly girl who often watches Ataru running past the hospital with a big smile on his face. Clearly smitten, she dreams of one day meeting him, as she learns his name from his mother.

Fast-forward to Ataru and Lum being summoned to Sakura’s for a favor: she needs him to go on a date with the ghost of the girl, whose name is Nozomi. The fact that she’s already dead is sad enough, but only by fulfilling her dreams in her diary of dating Ataru can she pass on to the hereafter.

When Lum sees the circumstances, she’s fine with Ataru going out with Nozomi (voiced by the perfectly-cast Iwami Manaka, Honda Tooru herself), and even as Nozomi provides him with more and more warm knit articles of clothing in the middle of summer, he toughs it out because he’s a decent guy, and because Nozomi is so gosh-darn pure, sweet, and charming.

After going on walks, to the movies, out for a bite, and finally on all the rides at the amusement park, the hour is getting late and Nozomi still hasn’t passed on. The reason is revealed at the end of her diary, as Nozomi, who died on Christmas day, last wrote of her wish to walk with Ataru in the midst of the falling snow.

Since they can’t wait until winter for snow to come, Ataru and Nozomi come upon an aesthetic substitute of a bright and beautiful fireworks show. Nozomi holds Ataru’s arm tight, and content that she’s seen and done everything she wrote about, she slowly vanishes from his sight, having passed on to heaven.

The realization that Nozomi is gone washes over Ataru, and the shot of him standing alone as the fireworks continue is heartbreaking as all get-out. Fortunately, he’s not alone, as Lum, Sakura, and Cherry soon join him. But after previously complaining about how hot he was in all the clothing Nozomi knit for him, he decides he’ll wear it all a bit longer. I’m sorry, but is it getting really dusty in here?

CERTIFIED GODDAMN TEARJERKER

Undead Murder Farce – 05 – Penultimate Night

Borrowing famous names from literary history can be fun, but it’s also risky. Those names and the characters they’re attached to have a lot of baggage; baggage that can easily crush an unassured anime series that’s only five weeks old.

Undead Murder Farce breaks out a large number of those names while teasing several others in its new setting of London. We’re introduced to the Gentleman Thief Arsene Lupin, the Phantom of the Opera, Sherlock Holmes and Watson in the first five minutes.

Aya and Tsugaru have been summoned to London by one of its wealthiest residents, Phileas Fogg (of 80 Days fame). The pair and Shizuku meet Sherlock and Watson in the same paddy wagon, but when the bobbies realize who they arrested, they head to Fogg’s sprawling fortress-like mansion without delay.

That said, the wagon ride still enables Aya and Sherlock to feel each other out as they both demonstrate their deductive prowess. The five are joined at the mansion by two members of the Royce Insurance Company’s “Advisory Security Department”: Reynold Stingheart and Fatima Doubledarts, which are some Harry Potter-ass names!

Once his crack team of investigators is assembled (save for Inspector Ganimard from France), Fogg takes everyone deep below his mansion to what could well be an underground Masonic temple. There’s a massive vault requiring three men to uunlock and four to open, and an elaborate silver puzzle box of mysterious provenance containing the black diamond Lupin intends to steal: the Penultimate Night.

Fogg isn’t as fazed by Aya’s bodiless nature because both the safe and the diamond are of Dwarven origin. The Dwarves of this version of the world were wiped out by werewolves, and the diamond and its silver safe are a form of posthumous revenge.

Like the first Lord Godard episode, this is largely setup, introducing us to the new setting and characters. Unfortunately, despite all those big names, the ones who made the greatest impression (other than the established Tsugaru and Aya) were the two Royce agents, each eccentric in their own way. Sherlock and the Phantom in particular are pretty damned dull!

That said, we also have a Penguin-from-Batman-lookin’ Professor Moriarty, who hangs out with, among other yet-to-be introduced colorful characters, a Frankenstein’s Monster-lookin’ giant named Victor. As Tsugaru dryly remarked to Aya, this is starting to feel like a veritable circus of trouble.

Undead Murder Farce – 04 – Staking One’s Reputation

It’s time for everyone’s favorite severed head-tective to reveal the identity of Hannah Godard’s murderer. Everyone is assembled in the study as Rindou Aya begins by reiterating her seven starting seven problems, five of which rule out an outsider doing the deed. As innocent as everyone looks, the killer is in this very room.

The sixth of the seven problems has to do with the sound of the murder. Hammering a silver stake would have made a sound. But whether someone heard that sound depends on the time. The seventh problem solves the problem of the sound: the silver stake was merely planted in the storage with the madame’s blood to look like it was the murder weapon.

In truth, the weapon no longer exists. It was a stake made from frozen holy water, which melted upon being thrust into the madame’s chest. An empty bottle was left at the scene, but it had dust on the inside, meaning there was never water in it. She even determines that the killer arranged the scene to trick Lord Godard into thinking the murder took place while he was hunting, when it really happened before then.

Put it all together, and the only person who had the strength to stake Hannah without a hammer and break the storage room lock to plant the stake…is Godard’s younger son, Raoul. His last line of defense is that his hand doesn’t bear the burn marks from handling the silver stake, but Aya chalks that up to him cutting his burnt fingers off with a sword. Because he’s a vampire, his fingers would regenerate without the burns.

When he has no other avenue of escape from Aya’s accusations, Raoul rushes to attack her, but is stopped dead in his tracks with Tsugaru’s free hand. He hands Aya, who is disappointed Raoul outed himself before she finished her conclusions, to Shizuku, then kicks Raoul out the window.

As for the motive, both of Godard’s sons didn’t share their parents’ desire to ally themselves with humans. Raoul was the more disillusioned of the two, such that he acted to make it seem as though a human hunter had killed his mother so Godard would end his pro-human practices.

But now that he’s been caught, there’s no escape for Raoul. He may be a vampire, but he’s no match for the Tsugaru, who toys with his prey with a florish of step-right-up showmanship, applying precise yet devastating blows with all the ease of cracking his knuckles. Before killing Raoul, Tsugaru tells the tale of a band of “ruffians” hired by the Meiji to purge all supernaturals, called the Oni Killers…and Tsugaru’s one of them.

For her part, Aya is apologetic that things might not have worked out so well for Lord Godard, but at least the wool was pulled from his eyes. Vampires living in harmony with humans is a nice ideal, but clearly much harder to pull off than he imagined. Before the sun comes up, Lord Godard sees Aya, Tsugaru, and Shizuku off, while Miss Annie from the press shows up for interviews.

While Shizuku chases Tsugaru with their trunks, she gives Lord Godard some parting words of advice not to give up the good fight. Even if his son is outed as a murderer, there’s nothing stopping the lord, who is undying, from trying again to be a credible ally to humans.

She also confirms that the man who stole her body and half of Tsugaru’s—London-based, professor, cane with an “M” engraved on it—visited Godard before she did. This is clearly Professor James Moriarty, who has definitely messed with the wrong immortal detective woman.

I didn’t expect Raoul to be the culprit, but Aya did a thorough job laying out the facts of the case and burning away all of the irrelevancies until naught but the truth remained. It’s talky for sure, but like Kitou Akari’s Kotoko in In/Spectre, it helps that Kurosawa Tomoyo’s Aya is very fun to listen to, and her words are accompanied by visuals and fun camera angles to kept me engaged.

Undead Murder Farce – 03 – Trust the Process

Tsuguru and Aya join Lord Godard’s family for a meal. While Tsugaru, the human carriage driver, and the human butler Alfred have human food, Godard and his children drink animal blood in bowls like tomato soup.

His son Claude thinks the pair to be con artists, but Aya proceeds to explain in detail how she knew the driver’s wife had recently gotten him to stop drinking. She even gets him to feel bad and realize what a fortunate man he is! I also love how Aya and Tsuguru chuckle at each others’ jokes.

Since she’s unable to partake in the meal, Aya uses it to lay out the list of most logical subjects. Only two lack alibis: Alfred and Claude. This irks Claude in particular, and by extension his dad the Lord, but Aya assures them it’s unlikely an outsider did it.

Kurosawa Tomoyo is masterful at giving Aya a calm, collected, and direct manner that commands respect. Among everyone only she is the master detective, and those who doubt or question her process are quite frankly out of their element and resorting to emotionalism.

That said, we later learn that Aya doesn’t have a clue yet who killed Lady Hannah, and the dinner conversation was merely to buy her some time. When Claude confronts them in the hallway, he threatens to snap Tsuguru’s neck. In doing so, Aya confirms that his, and everyone else at the dinner table, had impeccably clean hands.

While Shizuku stays with Alfred and the young maid Giselle (and assures them she doesn’t work for Tsuguru and they can insult him all they like), Godard takes Tsuguru and Aya back out to the woods, where he once again insists that his household is innocent.

Godard then asks if they’ve heard of “Fushi”, or the immortal one. Tsuguru says he has. Aya adds that while they’re indeed immortal, even they can be defeated by an oni, only they were otherwise fairly weak and stupid, and driven to extinction in the Great Purge.

Godard then points out that Aya and Tsuguru might be talking about themselves: the immortal one and the oni. He then gets an arrow to the neck, and then rushes into the woods to capture the human vampire hunter who loosed it.

He’s about to kill him in “self-defense”, but Aya stays his boot. Instead, she questions the man, named Josef, and quickly learns that he was on a train near Berlin the night of Hannah’s murder. That said, he came to avenge his friend Hugo, another hunter who vowed to kill Godard.

Aya’s last question allows her to determine that even Josef wasn’t sure that Hugo’s stake was silver. As thanks for his being so forthright, she allows Josef to run off unharmed, irking Lord Godard. But he hired Aya, and so it falls on him to trust her and not his own instincts in this matter.

For her part, Aya believes she now has everything she needs to solve the mystery—or as she calls it, “this humorous and tragic farce of a murder case.” I’m looking forward to her conclusions.

Undead Murder Farce – 02 – Ahead of the Game

We travel from Japan to eastern France this week, as Lord Godard and his son are out hunting deer. We learn he’s a vampire who wishes to “meet humanity halfway”, accepting, for instance, the gift of a rifle even though he doesn’t really need one to hunt. Godard returns home to find his wife—also a vampire—has been murdered with a silver stake.

The town and the press soon catch wind of the tragedy, suspecting a vampire hunter might be involved. Among the journalists is young Annie Kerber, who is excited to learn that Godard, whom she trusts as an ally to humans, has hired the “Cage User”  Shinuchi Tsugaru and Rindou Aya to investigate the murder.

While on a not very comfortable wagon ride (though I would have liked to see at least part of their boat ride from Japan) Tsugaru and Aya exchange some bons mots between themselves, Shizuku, and the driver. Upon arriving, we learn all the players in this whodunit: Lord Godard, his two sons Claude and Raoul, his daughter Charlotte, the butler Alfred, and the maid Giselle.

Since he is himself supernatural, Godard isn’t surprised upon meeting Aya’s head. On the contrary, he is happy to have a detective of note on this case. Aya immediately compiles a list of seven questions they must answer in order to discover the culprit, but only reveals five of them for now. Charlotte makes an appearance, but is freaked out by Tsugaru and the bodyless Aya.

This episode is primarily setup for the murder mystery to come, introducing the players, the setting, and creating the atmosphere. All we know for sure is that it’s unlikely for Godard or Raoul to be the killers, as they were out hunting. Based on nothing at all, my primary suspect is either an outside vampire hunter, or the maid. We’ll see how close I came as the case continues to unfold.

Undead Murder Farce – 01 (First Impressions) – Getting Ahead in Life

Right off the heels of Jigokuraku comes another stylish supernatural period piece, this time taking place during the Meiji era (1897 to be precise). Shinuchi Tsugaru (whose name means “headliner”) is a member of a supernatural troupe, where he fights monsters in cage matches under the name Oni Slayer. He’s feared in town as another one of the monsters, and by the same rabble who think a regular stray cat is an ayakashi.

One night, Shinichi is visited by a maid who happens to have a long rifle with a katana for a bayonet. The two dance under the moonless night in a very clever and kinetic little fight, until a voice that is not the maid’s is satisfied. The voice proceeds to demonstrate that she knows quite a bit about Shinichi: that he’s a half oni hybrid, but poorly made, such that one day his oni side will consume him.

The voice says she offers a way to extend his life, and all he has to do is kill her. The maid lifts the covered birdcage and the curtain around it opens to reveal the severed head of a beautiful young lady with piercing blue eyes. She introduces herself as Rindou Aya. She’s a 947-year old teenager who up until recently had a body, until a hybrid like Shinuchi absconded with her body and took it abroad.

Ever since his transformation, Shinuchi has treated life pretty much like a joke if not a complete inconvenience. He knows what’s coming, but he performs explicitly because he knows one day he’ll go berserk and take out as many lowlifes who patronize his line of work as possible.

But now that Rindou has offered to extend his life, he’s willing to change course to a less nihilistic end. But in exchange, he rejects Rindou’s desire to be killed. Instead, he offers to help her get her body back. She’ll be the brains, and he’ll be the brawn.

This isn’t just altruism, either: Shinuchi correctly surmises that the same foreign geezer in a top hat with a cane engraved with an “M” who took Rindou’s body is the one who took his humanity. He’ll be restoring Rindou’s body and getting some sweet revenge.

All in all, it sounds like a mutually beneficial deal. Rindou declares she’ll fulfill her end of the bargain and extend his life now to seal their deal. To do so, she’ll spare a bodily fluid, specifically her saliva, which she’ll transfer to him with a kiss. And boy howdy what a creepy, quirky, cool, and beautiful kiss it is!

Kurosawa Tomoyo’s Rindou blends Sakamoto Maaya’s ethereal Oshino Shinobu with Kitou Akari’s matter-of-fact Iwanaga Kotoko. Yashiro Taku does a fine variant of Tsuda Kenjirou’s apathetic velvety gravitas with Shunichi. There’s deft direction from Omata Shinichi (Kaguya-sama) and a compelling score from Yamaguchi Yama, and the OP and ED that totally whip ass.

Put it all together, and Undead Murder Farce fields a strong debut here. It’s a little talky, sure, but it also gives you plenty to look at and hear while the talking is happening, plus the information and characterization being conveyed is clear, concise, and intriguing. I’m definitely in!

In / Spectre – 20 – Paranormal Succession

Kotoko’s next case is brought to her by her parents, and the client is Otonashi Goichi, the president of a successful international hotel and hospitality chain. He ascended due to the murder by stabbing of his wife Sumi, who was detrimentally controlling the lives of their three children and about to drive the company off a fiscal cliff. The timing of her death was no accident; Goichi comes right out and informs Kotoko that he is the culprit. Kotoko’s reaction is classic Kotoko: cheerfully sardonic!

While Goichi didn’t wield the blade that killed Sumi, it was Goichi, who had cloistered himself in a mountain villa, who turned to the supernatural to solve his company and childrens’ problems. Specifically, a fox ayakashi known as a yoko came before him and offered to kill Sumi for him if he agreed to acquire and develop the next mountain over, where the yoko’s rivals lived. Within ten days, Sumi was slain by an unknown assailant, and Goichi was president.

He held up his end of the bargain, and not only did he back the company off a cliff, he shored up its finances to ensure long-term survival and success. Similarly, with the influence of their controlling mother removed, Goichi’s two sons and daughter could pursue their own life goals. His first son became a successful chef; his daughter married the man she loved (who was also successful); and his younger son became the heir apparent to the company.

Goichi waited for the consequences for turning to supernatural means to kill his wife to arrive, but the never came until recently, when he has been diagnosed with cancer and given about a year to live. Before he dies, he wants his children to know—and believe—that he was the one responsible for their mother’s death, and that what he did isn’t something that should be repeated lest they invite the wrath of the universe upon them. That’s where Kotoko comes in.

After meeting with the mountain yoko Fubuki, captured by his rivals, Kotoko works out a deal: he’ll tell her everything there is to know about his arrangement with Goichi, and she’ll use her stature in to ensure the severity of his punishment for his crimes is lessoned. From there, Goichi gave Kotoko free rein to create whatever plausible lie or web of lies is necessary to get his kids on board with the idea that he killed their mom.

After Kotoko completes her preliminary investigations, she brings Kurou up to speed, and Kurou is characteristically reluctant to be roped into this, even if he knows full well that’s what Kotoko is going to do. Over several rounds of a crane game to win a pack of naughty pens packed with fantastically adorable reactions, Kotoko lays out the basics of the plan.

It’s the classic In/Spectre move of spicing up what is otherwise a scene of exposition by having Kotoko/Kurou engage in something interesting. There’s a fair amount of suspense in whether they’ll nab the pens or not, and when they finally do, it’s because Kotoko is mad that Kurou tells her there’s nothing sexy about her…not even her paisley underwear. Rude!

When Goichi’s second son Susumu, the daughter of his first son Rion, and the husband of his daughter, Koya, are invited to a meeting with Goichi, Kotoko, and Kurou, they are tasked with coming up with their own explanations for how Goichi killed Sumi.

Kotoko, assisted by Kurou, will judge their explanations, give them a chance to amend them over the two-day-period, and will be the one who decides who has the best one based on truth and order. The winner will receive precedence in Goichi’s inheritance, so there is no small incentive for them to take this seriously.

While largely a table-setting episode, the GF/BF interactions between Kotoko and Kurou and the supernatural Succession-esque tale of corporate intrigue make it a table for a meal I’m looking forward to tucking into, especially once we get to know the three contestants.

In / Spectre – 19 – Meteorite Boy

Update: This review was initially labeled episode 18 – it has been corrected to episode 19.

Kotoko meets with Tae about the details of the case, and Tae informs her that Zenta infused a meteorite into the right arm of the wooden doll. The same meteorite that fell right in front of him when he was contemplating suicide, and seemed to improve his health, was included so that the doll would have a weapon with which to exact revenge when Zenta died.

I believe this is the first time outer space or a “cosmic” supernatural  phenomenon has come up on In/Spectre, and it’s a neat and thought-provoking thing to bring up. For all of her amassed knowledge and wisdom of Earth-based youkai, Kotoko’s guesses about their space counterparts are as good as yours or mine. She also works a virginity joke into the discussion, but Tae is not amused!

Considering the wooden doll’s extremely regular timing and route, all they need to do is set a trap. That night, Kotoko organizes the youkai into two groups on the beach and tells them not to move. Kurou is employed as the one that will block the doll’s path and get it to divert to a pre-arranged spot. This requires that Kurou die a couple of times, but he’s eventually able to grasp the future thread needed for them to capture the doll.

Note that I say capture and not kill, because Kotoko believes Zenta made the doll relatively easy to destroy on purpose. She theorizes that the doll is essentially what’s colloquially known as a voodoo doll, and any violence exacted upon it could well befall, say, the four college students in the car that killed Zenta’s grandson.

In this way, Zenta would be able to get revenge on the entire town without dirtying his hands, since the townsfolk would technically be responsible for the college kids’ deaths. So before they can consider harming the doll, they have to capture it. That’s achieved once Kurou diverts the doll to the spot, and it falls into a concealed pit and its right arm immobilized with rope held by the two groups of youkai.

On closer inspection, Kurou finds names of the college students carved onto the doll—along with the names of townsfolk, including Tae’s. Tae posits that they can lift the curse—if there is one against everyone named—by simply scratching the names off the wood. When Kurou does so to her name first, Tae feels nothing. In the end, Kotoko was likely mistaken; the curse was strong enough to move the doll and produce electricity, but there was no “voodoo” effect.

With the matter resolved, Tae explains why she thinks Zenta carved her name on the doll. Zenta long resented her for living what looked like a happy and carefree life with all her money. Turns out she only has that money as reparations…for when her children were killed in a car accident.

Any attempts to rid herself of the excess cash resulted in even more cash coming in, whether it was a return on investment in a friend’s company, or damages paid when her husband died. One could call her both blessed and cursed.

As Kurou and Kotoko depart by car, she says it’s entirely likely Tae also contributed to the power of the wooden doll. If Zenta’s sense of resentment and revenge gave it some power, Tae’s own contemplation of death gave it more power; the power to become a threat to the town that she’d have to sacrifice herself to defeat.

Naturally, Kotoko doesn’t tell Tae the whole story, and it’s arguable if she needed to be told, as she’s probably already aware of that on some level. Kotoko then changes gears and whips out brochures, telling Kurou they should do touristy stuff. Considering the role tourism played in this case, it’s a wonderful, darkly comedic line.

In / Spectre – 18 – The Pinocchio of Port Totomizu

Ms. Tae is a woman pushing eighty who doesn’t just walk every day, she jogs. In other words, she’s a badass. When a starving orange cat showed up on her doorstep she nursed it back to health.

When the cat saw her pouring sake and spoke, asking her to give him some, revealing he was no ordinary cat, but a bakeneko. Tae is not one to get overly spooked by such an occurrence; in fact, she decided to keep the cat as both pet and drinking partner.

Tae lives in a once sleepy fishing town of Port Totomizu that suddenly got TV drama famous and started attracting huge numbers of tourists—more than its infrastructure could handle. One of the townsfolk, Zenta, was hosting his son and his family during once such tourist crush, and some inattentive college students hit his grandson, Tsubasa. There was so much traffic, Tsubasa died in the ambulance before reaching the hospital.

Zenta died of heart failure shortly thereafter, but not before finishing an odd Pinocchio-style life-size wooden doll. It is for this reason that the town’s mayor and others suspect that the recent mysterious fish kills now harming revenue and tourism are somehow Zenta’s curse, carried out not by him but by the wooden doll he left behind.

Tae says this is all a bunch of malarkey, but if the fish kills continue the town should consider bringing in someone to spiritually purify the waters. But those opinions of the mayor and co. turn out to be spot-on, as the bakeneko takes Tae to the beach below her house, which is full of yokai all concerned by the cursed wooden doll, and ready to do something about it.

Tae witnesses two of the strongest local yokai, Master Shojo (a gorilla-lke yokai) and Okani-dono (a giant crab), execute a coordinated pincer attack on the wooden doll when it appears, only for it to disable Okani and Shojo’s club with electricity. It then walks into the sea and proceeds to emit electricity that kills still more sea life. The yokai—and the town—are at an impasse. They need outside help.

Of course, we know where this is headed: the bakeneko asks Tae if she’d be kind enough to host the yokais’ “elegant yet fierce” one-eyed, one-legged Goddess of Wisdom when she comes by to assess the situation and offer a solution.

Tae assumes this goddess will be another freakshow, so she’s surprised to learn that Kotoko is a tiny, beautiful young human woman with a polite and strapping companion in Kurou. When scolded by Kotoko for revealing his existence to Tae, the bakeneko tells her if Tae told anyone else anything, they’d simply think she’d gone senile.

Of course, Tae is far from senile, and is in fact a much appreciated elder character of strength and agency. One could also say she’s more attuned to the supernatural since at her age she is closer to the afterlife than most, despite her continued vitality. But this wood golem with an electro-beam might be the trickiest problem Kotoko and Kurou have faced this season. We’ll see if they can wrap it up before they have to head back to college!

In / Spectre – 17 – Stigmatized Property

It’s been a year since Kurou’s cousin Sakuragawa Rikka went into hiding, and finding her remains a priority for him and Kotoko. When we see her, she’s cheerfully interacting with her new property manager Konno Kazuyuki and his girlfriend, Oki Marumi, having moved to her new apartment just a week ago.

Rikka’s trip to the horse races is interrupted by an unannounced cameo by Truck-kun, smacking her head-on and sending her flying thirty meters. A mother tells Kazuyuki and Marumi that she saved her son from getting hit. Marumi calls an ambulance while Kazuyuki checks on Rikka…and is surprised to find her completely uninjured. Rikka even jokes about it being like a TV drama.

She thanks Kazuyuki and Marumi with a six-pack of beer, and they invite her for drinks and a light dinner. Turns out the apartment Rikka has moved into has a dark recent history, as the last three tenants committed suicide within three months of moving in. Rikka offers explanations for the first two when she hears the circumstances: an overworked office drone had a nervous breakdown, and a spurned young woman couldn’t get over a bad breakup.

The third tenant is the strangest, as it was the boyfriend of the woman that was dumped. Rikka understandably isn’t concerned by whatever conditions the apartment might serve up—like Kurou, she’s effectively invulnerable. When asked why she moved in, she tells them the story of her beloved cousin and his truly awful girlfriend, and is determined to break them up before she hurts him.

Rikka suddenly leaves late in the night, again thanking Kazuyuki for his kindness and leaving him her key and some cash for his trouble. The next day, just a hair too late, Kotoko and Kurou arrive. Initially, the couple sees the doll-like Kotoko and wonder how she could be so awful, but then she makes joke about Kurou drinking sake out of her crotch, and then they get it (to be fair, Kurou started it by calling her hairy).

Kotoko’s visit had been foretold by Rikka, since she knew Kotoko is looking for her, hence the need to skedaddle. And sure enough, Kotoko offers logical explanations for all three suicides. The third, which was the one that vexed Kazuyuki and Marumi the most, was simply a matter of the ex-boyfriend moving in to confirm that something about the apartment led to his ex’s suicide. When nothing happened, he became consumed by grief for his role in her death.

She surmises that may also have left no note as a small kindness to his own family, so they could explain his death to the apartment. Once Kotoko and Kurou leave, Kazuyuki and Marumi are satisfied by the explanations. Kazuyuki also thought that while Kotoko may be somewhat awful, he could tell Kurou cared a great deal for her. Marumi says that may be the case for now, but Rikka was concerned about their future together.

On their walk home, Kurou asks Kotoko if she told the pure truth, and she says she instead did exactly what was necessary: tell a believable story with the available info she had that could put Kazuyuki and Marumi at ease. She is also certain there are no supernatural beings in the apartment, as they’d be just as scared of Rikka as they are of Kurou.

That brings us back to a chat between Kotoko and Rikka a year ago when Rikka was staying at Kotoko’s house. Rikka asked what she fears, and Kotoko simply made a joke about a rakugo routine. When Kotoko wonders if Rikka told Kazuyuki and Marumi that she was some kind of awful woman, Kurou tells her that could be the impression some people get of her, considering she doesn’t seem to fear anything.

Kotoko says there actually is something she fears, but when Kurou asks, she simply gives him another Rakugo joke. But as fireworks start to explode in the sky above them and Kurou lifts her up for a better view, Kotoko’s eyes shimmer. I imagine the thing Kotoko fears most is losing Kurou, but is too proud to get serious and say so.

Instead, not knowing what the future holds for either of them, and Rikka still out of pocket, she tells Kurou that relationships between a man and woman tend to go better with a secret or two, then brings his lips to hers for a romantic kiss.

As with the Yuki-onna story, Kotoko and Kurou don’t show up until later, but with Rikka involved in this new “case”, they’re a lot more involved, since Rikka rejects them as a couple. Kazuyuki and Marumi are a nice realistic couple with a cozy, lived-in relationship. This season has shown that the more time we spend getting to know the folks Kotoko interacts with on her travels, the more fun and compelling those interactions are.

In / Spectre – 16 – Honeymoon Period

Kotoko tells Masayuki and Yuki-onna that she knows precisely who the culprit is, and furthermore, that the police aren’t really seriously suspecting him at the moment, which explains why they haven’t been hounding him of late.

The reason? Evidence indicates that the victim Mahiru didn’t have any of her effects taken, and there’s every indication that she and the murderer had time to converse. In that time, she would have surely warned the murderer about the formal accusation she’d written up beforehand.

After all, Mahiru wasn’t trying to be killed, and would do everything she could to avoid that outcome. And if Masayuki killed Mahiru, he would have taken steps to obscure her identity and/or the location of her body. And the cops already all but ruled Masayuki out as a serious suspect after he was wishy-washy about his alibi, and unprepared to defend himself from the facts they’d collected thus far.

As for why it looked like Mahiru was trying to write Masayuki’s name on her hand? That was written by the true murderer after killing her. Before Kotoko says the name of the murder—Iizuka Nagisa—the name already pops up in Masayuki’s name as the only possible culprit.

Iizuka was the only one who sided with him when he was forced out of his company. She loved him, and murdered Mahiru and framed Masayuki so that he’d have no choice but to go to her for support. Sure enough, as Kotoko discuss this, Iizuka calls Masayuki, but he doesn’t answer.

Kotoko reveals that she didn’t deduce this from the mere facts of the case as they stand, but from the eyewitness ghosts who were at the scene of the crime when it occurred. They identified a woman that matched Iizuka’s description. If that’s “cheating”, Masayuki can hardly complain, as the information Kotoko gathered from the ghosts categorically clears his name.

With Masayuki’s name sure to be cleared and only a matter of time before Mahiru is arrested, Kotoko gives him and Yuki-onna her blessing—as long as they use protection! Kurou shows up shortly thereafter, terrifying Yuki-onna (as he tends to do). Kotoko then tells Masayuki and Yuki-onna to get lost and bone already, since they’re now in “the optimal mood.” Yuki-onna  scoops Masayuki up and flies them back home.

While riding a flying yokai home, Kotoko and Kurou talk about the case a bit more. Kotoko explains further how Mahiru had overplayed her hand. She wanted a suspected Masayuki in the palm of her hand, but ultimately didn’t go any further lest the consequences of framing him cause him distress. The two conclude that Masayuki has and may well continue to have horrible luck with women.

Even Yuki-onna, who has been good to and for him thus far, is still a thoroughly volatile yokai who could one day freeze him to death for a slight real or imagined. Kurou likens Masayuki’s plight with his own, not just where his ex and Rikka are concerned but with Kotoko. Kotoko is not amused by this remark!

In / Spectre – 15 – So Generous, It’s Creepy

This episode was an emotional roller coaster! It begins by rewinding from Yuki-onna’s request to Kotoko to the police detectives questioning Masayuki. Their reasons for suspecting him of murdering his ex-wife are numerous: Mahiru left a note accusing him should she die suspiciously; the beginning of his name scrawled on her hand; and camera footage of Masayuki with a woman that looks just like her.

The police have reasonable cause to suspect, but not arrest Masayuki, and his failure to definitively state he had no alibi doesn’t help his case. But what choice does he have? He can’t tell the police he was having tempura and drinks with a yuki-onna on the night of Mahiru’s murder. Why, they’d think he was nuts…even though it’s the truth! Days pass and the police don’t bother Masayuki again, but it’s still looknig bad.

Then Yuki-onna, who was present in rabbit form for the entire talk with the police, asks him if she looks like his ex-wife, and he admits that she does, so it was Yuki-onna in the camera photo. Hers was the face of the one person in his life who didn’t betray him, but he admits he felt bad for marrying for whom he was otherwise unsuited.

Masayuki decides he’ll head out and try to find the real culprit, but Yuki-onna tells him to wait, and when he keeps going with a full head of steam,. she freezes him in his tracks—literally! 

Yuki-onna correctly diagnoses this as Masayuki being impatient and restless and wanting to prove his innocence at any cost, but with no leads and nothing to go on, the best move is to stay put, eat some food, get some rest. Then she remembers that her Ladyship, the Goddess of Wisdom, is just the person to solve this case, so she reaches out to her.

Yuki-onna flies Masayuki deep into the mountains to a cave where Kotoko is waiting. Rather than her going right into the particulars of the case, Masayuki gets a better taste of who Kotoko is, namely someone still quintessentially human despite her status as a goddess to supernatural beings near and far. That’s because Kotoko is upset that Kurou blew her off and she had to get cold pork cutlet from the local konbini.

I was so happy to see my favorite goddess of wisdom meeting my new favorite human-yokai couple, about to dish out the solution to their problems. But that’s where the roller coaster starts hurtling down to the earth, as Kotoko points out that not only does Yuki-onna’s wishy-washy sense of human time make her a poor alibi, but Masayuki might have capitalized on that poor sense to manipulate her into trusting him implicitly.

With Yuki-onna’s unwavering trust, Masayuki could kill his ex-wife one night, have tempura with Yuki-onna, and say they were doing the latter on the night of the murder, thus making him look innocent in her eyes and persecuted by the police. He could even convince her to kill the business partners who betrayed him.

Kotoko is so precise (as always) in laying out this theory that it even had me questioning if Masayuki really did have such a diabolical plot in motion, and had pulled the wool over Yuki-onna’s eyes with food, drink, and companionship. But you know who didn’t suspect Masayuki, even after hearing all this? Yuki-onna herself. She prostrates herself, says Masayuki has a truly kind heart, and demands that her Ladyship reconsider her stance.

Kotoko responds to Yuki-onna’s display by making it clear she’s all too aware that Masayuki isn’t the culprit, and that everything she uttered about otherwise was a lie. Among the reasons she trusts Masayuki? He’s been refusing Yuki-onna’s sexual advances! If he’d wanted to gain her trust quickly, he’d have swept her off her feet.

While Kotoko’s theory of Masayuki being a yokai-manipulating criminal mastermind was harsh and at times cruel, it was still crucial for her to say what she said, so she could enlighten Masayuki to the fact that Yuki-onna trusted him so much, she was even willing to defy her goddess for his sake.

By underscoring the courage Yuki-onna demonstrated for him, Kotoko hopes Masayuki will make the effort to regain some of his own courage. Even if this criminal investigation is all tied up with a neat bow and he gets off scot-free (as he should), Kotoko suspects that won’t be the end of Masayuki’s troubles.

A new start is in order. Masayuki owns up to being terrified of interacting with people—that lack of interaction is why he doesn’t have a human alibi—and tenderly gathers Yuki-onna’s cold white hand into his to thank her for going to bat for him. As for the true culprit of his ex-wife’s murder? Naturally, Kotoko already knows that too!

In / Spectre – 14 – Youkai Alibi

In/Spectre can really spin a good yarn. This week we meet Muroi Masayuki, who is pushed off a mountain by his best friend. As he lays contemplating his imminent death, a spunky yuki-onna (Yuuki Aoi) pays him a visit. She’s not there to kill him, though she does think long and hard about it when he knocks her looks!

Yuki-onna subverts Masayuki’s idea of her kind by building an conjuring an igloo around him so he’ll last the night, then flying him down the mountain in a princess carry, all for half of the cash he’s carrying. Once back in town, he’s able to walk in on his former friend lying about what happened and finger him for attempted murder.

Eleven years pass, and Masayuki moves back to the town by the mountain where he met the Yuki-onna. As luck would have it, he doesn’t need to search far for her, as she’s enjoying soft serve in human form. When he tells her about the time he met a yuki-onna she’s initially furious he broke his vow of silence, but he’s sure she’s the same person, so he technically isn’t.

Masayuki is coming off a divorce from a woman who cheated on him and tried to kill him, as well as the hostile takeover of his company by another former friend. Understandably distrustful of future human interactions, he sought her out. Yuki-onna is eminently interested in human food and drink (and cars!), so he agrees to buy her booze and cook for her at his bachelor pad.

An adorable, mutually beneficial friendship ensues. The connection to the In/Spectre we know finally comes when Yuki-onna speaks glowingly about her lady and Goddess of Wisdom, Kotoko. Yuki-onna cleared befriending Masayuki with Kotoko, and even got approval for sexual relations with him should things go that way (as long as they use protection!)

The good vibes suddenly sour when detectives come to Masayuki’s door to inform him that his ex-wife has been murdered, but that’s where Kotoko comes in. Yuki-onna reports that she knows for a fact Masayuki wasn’t the culprit because she was with him at the time of the murder. The problem is she can’t go to the cops and Masayuki can’t say the source of his alibi is a yokai.

It looks to be a fascinating case, and one that has a lot more resonance now that I’ve come to know and become quite fond both Yuki-onna and Masayuki. They make a surpassingly cute and charming couple whose playful banter and cozy chemistry rivals Kotoko and Kurou, and if anyone can get this out of this legal dilemma, it’s the Goddess of Wisdom.