Ghost Hound 18

I've decided to change a little bit the way I make recaps of episodes. From now on, I'll do it bullet-style, like this, highlighting only the key turn points in the episode, before closing with my own comments, impressions and speculations about the entire thing. There will still be lots of screencaps because pictures speak a thousand words. Heh. Now, on to the episode!

FOCUS:18 Holographic Paradigm
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• More people in Suiten are experiencing the supernatural disturbance. Even the owner of the sake house that Komagusu frequents has seen the ghost of a woman they knew to be dead.
  
• Suzuki, the PR guy, has decided to meet with Dr. Reika Ootori and took some snapshots of her as well as her fingerprint without her knowledge.
• The three boys are trying to deal with their more recent problems on their own, with Taro trying to project, Makoto still refusing to come home, and Masayuki becoming more and more interested in his father's lover.
• In Kumada, Kei brings Makoto lunch, mentioning that it was Matsuda Kaibara who asked her to come. Makoto is still angry with his mother, continuing to call her as "that woman." He throws away the o-bento, thinking that it was Sanae who made it, when it was, in fact, Kei who did.
• Meanwhile, Sanae and Kaibara are preparing for something and in a bittersweet moment, they embrace.
  
• Suzuki's boss reveals that over the years, a syndicate group had been taking children all over the countryside to use them as illegal organ donors. But because the incidents happened randomly, the cops filed them as no more than missing persons cases. But everything changed with the Komori children's kidnapping. He says that it was supposed to be no more than a missing persons case, like all the others, but Ogami Himeko, Makoto's grandmother, used her old connections as founder of the Ogami Worship Circle, purportedly to protect Makoto, who was supposed to be the first child to be taken. The "construction workers" were sent in to negotiate with the kidnappers, suggesting that the daughter of the main family (Komori) would be worth more money. What Suzuki is wondering about is why the "construction workers" have once more appeared and his boss says that they are in Kumada where the wife of the disowned eldest son lives.
• Kei drops by Kaibara's home to report to him that she found Makoto. Kaibara has one more favor to ask her and at the mention of "one more" Kei begins to understand something.
  
• Chiho, Miyako's former friend, has suddenly decided to become friends with Miyako again. She brings her over to her house, only to set her up for a meeting with Noriko, the Ogami's saniwa (spiritual judge).
• Komagusu and Hirata discuss Miyako's condition, in which Hirata unexpectedly tells him that it is Komagusu, most of all, who subconsciously wants Miyako's possession by the Lord of One Word to be true. Hirata also reveals that although he wants to remedy Taro's PTSD, his real reason was his fascination with the boy's peculiar psychological experience.
• Taro finds himself in Snark's Abstract World again and there he sees a holographic image of Sanae. Snark tells him that it is caused by the implicate order of things that they should think about the same thing at the same time.
  
• Miyako comes home only to find her father lying unconscious at the steps to the shrine, bleeding from a head wound.
• Kei goes to Makoto again, this time bearing a letter from Sanae. In the letter, Sanae finally reveals to Makoto what she knows about the kidnapping eleven years ago and his father's suicide. Apparently, after Makoto's father found out about the exchange, he could not go on living. Sanae would have followed him but for Makoto. However, since she could not bear to stay in the house, she left but she has never once forgotten about Makoto.
• Before leaving the Abstract World, Snark hints to Taro how the next several days would be painful for Makoto.
  
• Masayuki wakes Taro up from his trance and the two of them start running, talking about how they have to find Makoto. It seems Masayuki has received a message from Suzuki, telling him about something major going to happen to Makoto and his mother.
• In Kumada, Makoto crumples the letter from his mother and dashes outside, not paying attention to Kei who is crying as she reads the letter. Once outside, he notices smoke coming out from the direction of Kaibara's home.
• Masayuki tells Taro what Suzuki has found out about the kidnapping incident. This makes Taro want to find Makoto even more, but the last bus for Kumada has already left. Thankfully, Reika drives at that moment and seeing the two of them by the side of the road, she unexpectedly stops to give them a ride.
• Back in Kumada, Makoto is running towards the direction of the fire.
  

COMMENTS:

This episode was a real joy to watch. It has managed to reveal so much of what happened eleven years ago and still keep a few questions unanswered, enough to keep viewers' interest in the show. That, I think, is genius in storytelling.

Ghost Hound is proving to be an excellent show in terms of pacing and with the big question already answered but four more episodes left, I can't believe I'm still wanting for more.

For a show that seemed to have capitalized on the mystery that began eleven years ago, it has become so character-driven that even after the big picture has been revealed, I want to find out about the minor details, like what will happen to the characters in the end? I have an inkling but it's speculation at this time and I'm loving this journey the makers of the show are taking me too much to let it go at that.

Ghost Hound is fiction, of course, but the psychology of the show is believable. I'm not saying that all that supernatural stuff is true or that what the characters are experiencing could be true, but logically they make sense.

At first, I thought that the voyeur in the previous episode might have been either Masayuki or Suzuki. I was betting on Masayuki since it was never even established that Suzuki knew how to project (although in this show, you never know). So in the first part of the episode, showing Suzuki with pictures of Reika in his laptop, I went "aha" only to have my hasty conclusion corrected immediately afterwards when it was shown how Suzuki got hold of those photos. So I knew right then that it was Masayuki.

In a way, it's all beginning to make sense the way the three boys' psyches work. Of the three, Taro is the escape artist. Notice how he is the first person to learn how to project? Perhaps, for him, Kakuriyo is an escape as well as a means for him to find his sister. Even this whole "find his sister" obsession is another form of escape for him to enable him to avoid dealing with his own guilt, his depressed mother and his distant father, and even his budding feelings for Miyako. The latter would explain why he made the conclusion that Miyako is his sister's reincarnation, because he is at that age where attraction to the opposite sex must seem very foreign.

Makoto is Taro's complete opposite. Although he did try to escape from his problems, but his personality is really confrontational. This is revealed in several parts of the show, and the one that immediately comes to mind is how he intimidates the bullies in their school. So Kakuriyo is merely a temporary haven for him but once his problems grow too real for him to simply want to escape, his methods change and his true personality reveals itself. He stops projecting (in fact, we don't see him project anymore) and he is starting to act like he is going to do something drastic soon. But despite it all, he is still only a boy and he finds out that he could not eliminate the problem by simply eliminating the person whom he believes is the cause of it all.

Masayuki is the one who is having the most trouble. Not only is his mother gone (both literally and figuratively), but his father is having an affair with another woman. I can't imagine what horror he must have gone through to see his father like that in the lab with Reika. And his way of dealing with the incident is disturbing, if at all normal, considering how he seems to be developing some kind of strange attraction towards his father's lover. At this point, the whole thing is harmless -- it's his way of coping -- but the damage may yet show itself when he is older. In a way, it is already beginning to show, considering how callously he treated that freshman in the first episode.

It's pretty obvious that Sanae is going to commit suicide and Kaibara, who has been her companion all this time, wants to die with her. It seems Kaibara is in love with her but they don't seem to be lovers, more like friends who are mutually dependent on each other.

And speaking of unrequited love, Kei has a thing for Kaibara and by the looks of it, it has gone on for very long. Kaibara probably noticed but like all unrequited love affairs, can't do a thing about it since he, too, is in the same position with Sanae.

And lastly, for the answer to the big question: illegal organ donors. This one has a semblance of truth to it. It's not just an urban legend and even now, it's still happening in the country where I live. But I am thoroughly amazed the way the makers of Ghost Hound managed to tie this very real thing to the show and give it meaning. Even in the fictitious supernatural world of Ghost Hound, this aspect of humanity shows its ugly head, doesn't change the fact this is horror at its cruelest, not only because it is unethical but immoral by every human standard.

There are still a lot of things going for the show. I'm loving that Shinsen-subs is coming out with two episodes each time now. I have Episode 19 in my hard drive but postponed watching and blogging about it until I wrote about 18. Let's see if it was well worth the wait. Expect the next episode tomorrow!