MainEpisode 2
The Possessed Girl |
[Episode Screencaps] |
This episode of the anime has a real scary atmosphere with the girl almost constantly in fear of the man stalking her. I thought his chanting of the little kitty repeatedly was quite effective. Also making the police the culprits, being those in a position of power who are meant to protect, adds to the atmosphere.
The use of misdirection was a nice touch with the inspector blaming the crime on another policeman leading the viewer to believe this before suddenly changing who it is. Due to the short length of the episode I guess you can never build up such misdirection enough, but it was still a bit of a shock to me. The look of the girls father and the inspector where perhaps a little too similar to my eyes, a number of times I mistook one for the other.
The nature of the presents given to the girl helped suggested the likely insanity of the stalker (bugs, weird dresses, dead hamsters). The scene where the confrontation between the girl and the stalker was very horror like with him slamming the shovel down as well as his strange speech.
In this episode we see Wanyuudou turning into the doll to be used for the contract by Enma, he swing his red scarf around his shoulder as he changes no doubt to represent the red string of the doll. The assistants also demonstrate there ability to infiltrate places with Hone appearing as a teacher in the school and guiding the girl to Enma. This is different from most other episodes where Enma just seems to visit people directly or pull them into the other world without an escort.
They wait until the last moment to have the girl pull the string to add drama then Ichimoku turns up as the hero dressed in a police uniform. Again the revenge on the man seems to have the characters from the episode but they are really illusions. There seemed to be a real aim to scare the viewer as well with the people suddenly turning round only to have skeletal faces.
Like in the previous episode, they try and get the person to understand his sins but, given the likely crazy nature of the person, it was never going to be successful with him blaming her for it. Now re-watching the anime again I keep wondering the effect of what the people are saying at these points, comparing it to Enma and Hajime’s words that what they did was 'not there fault'. However Enma seems to have almost no emotion until far on in there series so it is impossible to tell.
It had a good sense of justice at the end with Hone repeating the little kitten rhyme to the inspector showing herself as a skeleton with sticking her fingers into his chest. Overall I enjoyed this episode and I think it helped to pull me more into wanting to watch more of the anime.
