This weekend I had time finally to watch this whole series from start to finish. I had already watched the first 12 episodes, but because of the intricacies and subtle plot points to the show, and the long span of time in which I watched the first 12, I decided to rewatch the whole thing, now that the 13th episode has been subbed.
I did have a slight case of the sleepies around episode 5, but after that I got my second wind and was able to watch all of it in one day! I think I got more out of it for sure by watching it all at once. I really liked this series, partly because it was so unique and partly because it had such an excellent use of symbolism and foreshadowing. In each exchange, the more closely you pay attention to the details of the conversation, the expressions of the characters, and thier movements, the more intricacies you will find. There is so much to this anime, and they do a great job presenting it, though I think it might at times be more than the average anime viewer would appreciate.
I thought that there were so many different complicated parts to the plot that it would be difficult for them to explain everything in the end. The ending did explain most everything, though there were some things that were not explained, but to me it didn’t matter. It just made sense that they didn’t explain how the doctor could replace bodies because it would take way too long and wouldn’t change anything about the events of the story. I like that they left some things as they were because it makes you want to go back and watch it again.
I also really liked how much explanation they did for the origins of a mouryo, the differences between some of the types of evil spirits (mouryo, oni, and the toori-mono), and how they used that information to add to the story and unravel the events of the story.
The characters in the story are very well developed. Even characters like Kiba, the Tokyo police detective, from the start you know he is an ex-soldier in WWII who has PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and you know that he is in love with Yoko (Kanako’s mother) from her days as an actress, to the point of even having a photo of her in his wallet. This is just one example of the many different characters who are developed so much that they become real people to me. You begin to understand them and why they take the actions they do, without needing them to spell it out in the dialogue. It’s extremely well done.
I would highly recommend this show to people who like detective stories, mysteries, and shows that mess with your head. I also recommend watching the show from start to finish within a short period of time in order to fully enjoy it. If you have watched it but you were having trouble understanding it, I wrote out an explanation of the main plot points below.
Read on to see an explanation of what happened in the show:
(Don’t read this if you haven’t seen it yet, it would ruin the surprise!)
For those who may need some help decifering the story, I will now explain, to the best of my knowledge, the main events of the story. Yoriko and Kanako are friends at school, and both of them, as a result of thier family life are obsessed with aging and don’t want to ever become old like thier mother. The two girls beleive that they are each other’s next life/past life. Yoriko idolizes Kanako and thinks she is perfect, and as a result of her need for Kanako to be perfect, she is confused by the exchange when Kanako is crying at the train platform and she sees the pimple on her neck. This causes her to push Kanako off of the platform. The male detectives think that she was possessed by a toori-mono (a demon which “pushes” someone to commit a crime they wouldn’t otherwise commit).
Yoriko later invents the story about the man who pushes Kanako to relieve her own conscience. She then convinces herself that Kanako’s disappearance was really Kanako ascending into heaven to become an angel.
Yoriko’s mother also seems to hate/resent her daughter, and she is also obsessed with mouryo. She is in financial trouble because of her donations to the fake exorcist. She becomes convinced that her house is occupied by a mouryo, and becomes mentally unstable as a result. She attempts to commit suicide in order to leave Yoriko with the house which she received as part of the divorce from her husband.
Kanako’s mother is the woman who at first claims to be her older sister, who is a retired actress. She fakes the ransom note for Kanako as part of her plan to get the inheritance money. The time of death for Kanako is important because she stands to inherit the money from her father (who it is later revealed is actually not her father at all) if she died after him, which would not be able to be proven is she were kipnapped. The man who is thought to be her father, who willed his money to her when he dies, also dies around the same time that Kanako disappears.
There are two events that happened at the time that Kanako disappeared. Kanako’s replacement body which took up the whole “box” hospital was completed. Then, the man who was in love with Kanako, Amemiya, finds Suzuki behind the hospital with some of Kanako’s body parts. Amemiya murders Suzuki and takes Kanako’s head from the hospital. This is the “real” kidnapping of Kanako that happens, and it is because he is so in love with her and can’t deal with her death. Because of the way that the artificial body works, her head is alive for a while when he takes it.
At that point Amemiya disappears from the story, and no more information about him can be found. Presumably, Kanako dies because her head was removed from the hospital where the replacement body is. This is really not explained at all, but I think it is ok because at that point it becomes somewhat irrelevant to the rest of the story because Kanako is definitely not going to survive, which was certain before they even attempted the body switching, since that was only done to prolong her “life” for the inheritance only. They do talk about the definition of life and the way to get around time of death in order to get the inheritance money.
Ok, so another important point is the identity of Kanako’s real father. It turns out that her father is also her grandfather, and her “older sister” Yoko is actually her mother. This is because Kanako’s grandmother was ill for a long time and eventually dies, and during that time Yoko seduces her own father to take his affections away from her mother, who she resents because of how much attention she gets and how ugly she becomes. The father is also the doctor who attempts to create an artificial body for Kanako at the box shaped hospital. He seems to be only interested in his research, so he manipulates Yoko into trying to get the inheritance money to use for his research.
The train scene which is repeated at least three times with different people is shown this way because one is the story from the short story of the sereal killer, one is shown from the perspective of Sekiguchi because he is uncontrollably drawn to the girl in the box, and the final one is the actual event which led to the story the killer wrote and the killings themselves. The actual event takes place after Amemiya leaves the hospital with Kanako’s head, and when the serial killer guy sees her head in the box, he is so drawn to it and envious of Amemiya that he commits the murders to try and get a “girl in a box” of his own. This causes him to willingly volunteer to become the next guinea pig for Kanako’s father who after losing Kanako’s head cannot continue with his research without another living person to use in his experiments.
There are a few other loose ends which are explained in the end, but I don’t want to make this post too long so I’m leaving them off here. I hope my explanation here helps anyone who was confused! I actually took notes for things that were revealed at different points so that I would be able to explain everything. Make a comment if you have anything else you were wondering about, I’ll answer it if I can!
