Shikabane Hime: Aka ended last week, and Shikabane Hime: Kuro continues the story this week, but it would be hard to tell the difference just by watching the opening credits. The sequence is virtually the same except for the last shot showing the title of the series, with Aka replaced by Kuro. And just as they used the letter 赫 meaning “illuminate” for Aka and not the one for the color red, this season uses the letter 玄 meaning “mystery” for Kuro and not the one for the color black. But plotwise, there should be a huge change as the previous season had Keisei and Ouri was mostly an observer, while this season Keisei is no longer with us and Ouri should be taking on an active role.

The first episode, “The Path to the Light”, starts off with a clandestine meeting between a high-ranking official of the Kougonshuu and Sadahiro. It has been half a year since the death of Keisei. The high-ranking official is one of the anti-hime faction, the one that wants to get rid of the shikabane hime, and wants Sadahiro and Akira to discretely eliminate Makina. It can’t be done openly as the other faction that favors the continued use of shikabane hime opposes any such action.

Akasha is having his own discussion with the Seven Stars, although they’re only six with the destruction of Kowaku. The Seven Stars want to attack the Kougonshuu so that they can free Makina from destruction. It’s rather hazy what their motivation is, though, as I’m not sure if it’s because they want Makina alive for their own enjoyment or if there is something special about Makina that they want to use. The way they talk about it suggest both possibilities. We also learn that Hokuto had become a shikabane after being born for the sole purpose of being killed, although I’m not sure if it’s because she was killed shortly after birth or if she was destined as a human sacrifice from the moment of birth. For her, everything living is foreign. Hokuto also shows a bit of interest in Akasha since she always sees him with tears flowing from his eyes in her weird way of seeing the world, which probably implies something about Akasha’s motivations.

Meanwhile, Makina has been cooped up and restrained for half a year now. She is trapped by the memories of Keisei and has yet to fully accept Ouri as her contract monk, which has some rather unpleasant side effects as Rika and Saki find out after scaring the guarding monks into letting them in. The curse that is upon Makina stems from her attachment to Keisei, and it attracts “shiryou”, remnants of souls that are still attached to this world but failed to become shikabane, i.e. ghosts, which feed on what animates Makina as a shikabane hime. This gives them enough strength to give Saki a hard time, as the waters that drain strength from Makina also weakens her, and needs to be bailed out by Kamika. Outside, Takamine reseals the cave that is restraining Makina as a rather cheery and otaku-ish female is supposedly watching discretely, although Takamine tells everyone else that she’s not an enemy when her presence is discovered.

Back in the normal world, Kasuga Nozomi is paying a visit to Ouri’s apartment to check whether he’s back. And not surprisingly, there’s no sign of him having come back since he disappeared six months ago. She’s not the only one worrying about Ouri, as Inuhiko Mizuki also comes by at the same time. Mizuki seems to have the wrong idea about the relationship between Ouri and Nozomi as she notices the lunch that Nozomi had made for Ouri and playfully talks about how she couldn’t believe Ouri would disappear like that and leave behind a huge pair of breasts that he could play with. Despite her denial, Nozomi’s feelings for Ouri might be rather stronger than I would have expected, considering that she made lunch for someone who has been missing for half a year and not likely to show up anytime soon. Mizuki’s joking does bring up a terrible memory for Nozomi, though.

At Goryousan, we see what Ouri has been up to. He has obviously been training as a Kougonshuu monk, but at this moment in particular he’s trying to train himself to see bonds between himself and others. It’s not working too well, as he’s kicked in the face by the rabbit he’s hopelessly practicing it on. Ouri has a familiar face to keep his sanity, Takamasa Sougi who had also come to Goryousan to train. Without Sougi, Ouri would have probably gone stark mad or become an otaku extreme over the past six months by the antics of his teacher, Umehara, who is an even greater otaku than Keisei was. Despite his pervertedness, or maybe because of it, Umehara is a capable contract monk who has the rare capacity to support two shikabane hime.

One of Umehara’s shikabane hime is Fresh, who is as much an otaku as Umehara himself, although the two can have even more passionate arguments than normal Makina and otaku Keisei would have had over conflicts on two-dimensional vs. three-dimensional or doujinshi vs. figurines. In fact, Fresh is a foreigner who had died in a plane accident on the way to Akihabara: somehow the thought of an otaku shikabane rampaging around Akihabara in search of anime goods is just too funny. The other shikabane hime of Umehara is Touma, who is away on a vacation of sorts and seems to strike fear in her contract monk. Fresh is the unknown female that was peeking outside Makina’s cave, and she has brought news of Makina. Hearing the state Makina is, Ouri decides to go to her despite his own meager state of training.

At night outside of Makina’s cave, the three monks that stand in guard are ambushed and killed by Akasha. But before he can break the seals containing Makina, he is attacked by sniper fire from Akira and Sadahiro. I’m not sure if the pair came to fulfill the high-ranking officials request from the beginning of the episode, but they fight against Akasha now that they’ve encountered him. Surprisingly, Akira is ambushed by another shikabane during the fight, which turns out to be one of the monks that Akasha had killed. His hatred of shikabane hime is his obsession that turned him into shikabane, and he breaks into the cave containing Makina. Akasha uses this chance to summon the Seven Stars, who would not have been able to easily reach Makina by themselves because of the Kougonshuu seals.

Inside the cave, the new shikabane approaches Makina intending to destroy her. His hatred stems from his belief while living that shikabane hime interferes with a person’s ability to release all attachments to the world, which would be an impediment to his reaching heaven. He’s taking his time with Makina, which gives a new arrival a chance to ambush him. Ouri had finally arrived and jumped to get the shikabane away from Makina. Ouri is no match for the shikabane, of course, so he can’t keep it away for long, but the souls fueled by Makina’s anguish repels the shikabane, in effect buying them some time. But unlike the monk turned shikabane, Ouri has his head screwed on straight, since he is the sort that does not artificially discriminate between the living and the dead, and as he is finally able to sense the bond between himself and Makina, their memories of Keisei become a unifying force that has lifts Makina’s curse and has her fully accepting Ouri as her contract monk, instead of the obstacle it had been. After Makina makes short work of the shikabane, she finally apologizes to Ouri for not being able to protect Keisei, something she had been wanting to do for a long time.

The first episode of Shikabane Hime: Kuro ends here, but there is still the six shikabane of the Seven Stars to contend with outside, so there is going to be no rest for Makina and Ouri.

Episode 13 of Jigoku Shoujo Mitsuganae, “Six-Script Lantern”, starts on a nice and sunny day with Yuzuki and Akie outside. Being the good friend she is, Akie has noticed that something has been distressing Yuzuki for a while and offers a chance to talk about it, but Yuzuki says she’s fine and doesn’t talk about it. It’s not surprising that Yuzuki turned down Akie’s offer as having the Jigoku Shoujo inside her is a pretty unbelievable thing to talk about. But Akie is still someone who is helping Yuzuki maintain her sanity.

It is almost time for the Six-Script Lantern Festival, a regional festival which floats lanterns down the river. As we learn from the discussion between Wanyuudo and Hone Onna, it started as a ritual for criminals to atone for their sins by sending away their crimes, but it is now a general festival for everyone to send off their regrets and things they want to forget. It is also a time when the gate along the river actually becomes a gate to hell for a short time, and Wanyuudo mentions that something is going to be sent to Enma Ai from hell.

After the opening credits, we see a scene where a young woman calls a police official a hypocrite as he leaves. This woman has recently been accessing the Jigoku Tsushin often, mentioned as Ichimokuren, Yamawaro, and Kikuri are watching. Later that evening, we get a surprise as we see the police official is Akie’s father. She lives with her father and a housekeeper, and they are on good terms with each other. Akie also happens to mention that her new private tutor, Aketagawa, is pretty good. The revelation that Akie’s father could be a potential target brings up the possibility that the Jigoku Tsushin affairs could become even more personal for Yuzuki.

The next morning as Akie is jogging, she sees her private tutor watching a group of old men wistfully. In the evening when Yuzuki comes by to visit Akie, she sees Akie with the private tutor and the two being friendly with each other, and leaves so as not to interrupt Akie’s tutoring session. This wouldn’t be anything notable, except that Yuzuki sees a vision of someone who looks awfully like Akie’s private tutor receiving a voodoo doll from Ai.

On another day, Aketagawa has invited Akie to her home. Oddly enough, the sign on her door doesn’t say “Aketagawa” and instead says “Mayama”, although Akie doesn’t notice it. Aketagawa introduces her paralyzed father to Akie and explains that he was injured while working as a taxi driver when some rich kid beat him up. The kid himself has moved outside the country, but Aketagawa has an even bigger grudge against the police official who supposedly ordered the halt to any investigation. The police official is Akie’s father, which causes an onrush of disbelief, disappointment, and guilt in Akie, all according to her private tutor’s scheme to torment the father. In fact, it’s most probably no coincidence she became Akie’s tutor.

After the break, Akie announces that she would be moving out to the surprise of her father and the housekeeper. She doesn’t bother to explain why or demand answers from her father, and just says that she’ll be moving into the mansion that the father owns in another apartment building. Obviously the father gives in without knowing what’s really going on, as Yuzuki is soon helping out Akie with her move, although Akie seems to have just said it was to have a change of scene. Yuzuki is disturbed a bit when Akie’s private tutor, Aketagawa Azusa, drops by, as she had seen her receive the voodoo doll in a vision.

That night is the Six-Script Lantern Festival, and Yuzuki is at the riverside with Akie about to float lanterns on the river. Yuzuki floats her lantern with “Jigoku Shoujo” written on it, while Akie has written “Father” on hers. However, before Akie floats her lantern, she changes her mind and runs off, leaving behind the disappointed Yuzuki who will have to spend the rest of the festival night alone. But Yuzuki soon sees a light from the gate down the river.

As Yuzuki walks down the river to investigate, fog begins to roll in and the lighting turns into something not quite of this world. Near the gate, Yuzuki sees a small boat with a cherry inside floating out of the gate, and she also sees someone standing at the gate. It looks like herself, but when Yuzuki approaches the figure, she is stopped by a call from the school nurse from school, who says that once Yuzuki goes over that she won’t be able to come back. And Yuzuki virtually confirms that the school nurse is indeed Tsugumi by calling her with the surname Shibata, unless I missed mention of the name in episode 4 which would have confirmed it then. However, both the school nurse and the mysterious figure at the gate disappear, but for some reason Yuzuki recalls an old memory with Akie and runs off to help her.

At Akie’s apartment, her private tutor dropped by again for a visit. Aketagawa Azusa deliberately drips juices from the grapes she’s carrying onto Akie so she can suggest that Akie take a shower. Once Akie goes to wash herself, Aketagawa makes an ominous call to someone, and soon a man arrives to molest Akie in the shower. Akie is shocked and terrified not just at what is about to happen, but also that her tutor is doing nothing to help and in fact is responsible for it, while Aketagawa calls Akie’s father to gloat. Surprisingly for Aketagawa, Akie’s father arrives right after she hangs up and saves Akie. It was Yuzuki that had told him about the impending danger, and when Aketagawa runs to the voodoo doll to pull the red string, Yuzuki actually manages to wrestle away the doll from her. Akie’s father recognizes that Aketagawa is actually Mayama Azusa, the young woman who bears a grudge against himself, and realizes that Azusa had become Akie’s private tutor as part of some twisted vengeance scheme.

Later, Yuzuki is walking the riverside in sadness at what happened, when a ball of light emerges from the gate down the river and flies towards her. It hits Yuzuki and causes some sort of reaction from which Enma Ai emerges. This ball of light must have been the package that was intended for Ai, and she now has a full-fledged existence again independent from Yuzuki. Before she leaves, though, Ai tells Yuzuki that the rest is Yuzuki’s to decide, which has Yuzuki and me wondering what Yuzuki is supposed to decide. And the voodoo doll that Yuzuki had taken away from Mayama Azusa disappears. But at least Yuzuki is happy that Ai is now out of her. And Ai meets up with her gang as an independent entity again, although for some reason Yamawaro is not among the gang to welcome her back.

As Yuzuki walks home, she promises to herself that she would go see Akie the next day. To her joy, Akie is waiting for Yuzuki at her apartment building to meet her, and Yuzuki runs towards Akie. But just as Yuzuki reaches Akie and almost grab hands, Akie disappears. Mayama Azusa had pulled the red string from a voodoo doll and had sent Akie to hell. It must have been past midnight as Azusa must have gotten a new voodoo doll in the meantime, and with Ai no longer possessing her, Yuzuki had no warning at all of what was going to happen. Yuzuki cries in anguish as it starts to rain, something I’m tempted to do myself, and we see that Yuzuki was more than just a hapless vessel for Ai as her eyes momentarily flash red.

The next day, Yuzuki narrates that it’s the beginning of a new torment for herself as she walks by a girl we haven’t seen before, but Yuzuki notices when she appears to hear a bell ringing when she passes her. Now that Ai is no longer possessing Yuzuki, what sort of new torment would she go through in addition to the existing torment with the loss of Akie?

I can’t believe they got rid of Akie. She was a well-adjusted regular character and my favorite normal person in the show. Even though many other undeserving characters had also been sent to hell, they were all throwaway characters, so the exasperation, frustration, and anger is so much more greater with the loss of Akie, one of the people who least deserve to go to hell. How could they do this to us and Yuzuki? Which may be the whole point. I’ll just have to tell myself that we haven’t seen the last of Akie, as I suspect that Yuzuki’s flashback of a younger Akie is a prelude to some later plot point concerning the two girls. Yuzuki should use her hidden magical girl powers to rescue Akie … (And Mayama Azusa deserves to rot in hell.)

What are Enma Ai’s intentions? Is she being forced to be the Jigoku Shoujo against her will again, or is she implementing some scheme that revolves around Yuzuki? What is Mikage Yuzuki? Maybe she’s a reincarnation of a previous Jigoku Shoujo or the next person destined to become the new Jigoku Shoujo, and Ai is manipulating things so that Yuzuki would want to send Ai permanently to hell. Or Yuzuki could be an avatar of some important figure in hell. Or maybe Ai is working some scheme to reverse much of the work she has done, as this season of Jigoku Shoujo has made a point of showing so many of the grudges to be grossly unjust. And what about Tsugumi? Is she helping Ai somehow, or is she only subconsciously aware of what is happening with Yuzuki and Ai? Yuzuki could sure have used someone like Tsugumi to talk about the Jigoku Shoujo.

Episode 13 of Shikabane Hime: Aka, “Agenda for the Contract Monk’s Funeral”, is half recap and half interlude. While Keisei’s public funeral is scheduled for the night, Kougonshuu monks are holding their own ceremony for the departed monk during the day. Ouri notes a number of girls waiting outside, some of whom we have already seen but also quite a few we have never seen before, who are all obviously shikabane hime. They’re not allowed to attend funerals, however, so they can’t go inside the temple. It’s kind of odd seeing how they all dress differently, in contrast to their contract monks whose drab attire are all the same. And they’re all female without exception, which makes me wonder why there isn’t a “shikabane ouji”.

Shirai Rinsen, one of the Kougonshuu monks who provide support for the contract monks, talks with Ouri and brings him to Takamine Sougen, Keisei’s boss and teacher and one of the six Kougonshuu Soujou, or high priests of the Kougonshuu. They basically do a recap of the Kougonshuu’s background, where it’s said that there are about a hundred contract monk and shikabane hime pairs around Japan and it’s reiterated that only a shikabane hime can destroy shikabane.

I wonder what the rest of the world does about shikabane, or is this a phenomenon unique to Japan? And when it’s stated that cutting off the head or completely shredding a shikabane is enough to destroy one, I’m not sure why shikabane hime are supposedly the only countermeasure: an army squad from the Japanese Self Defense Force seems capable enough to handle an ordinary shikabane. On the other hand, shikabane hime would presumably be cheaper and more discrete.

For that matter, where does the funding for the Kougonshuu come from? With not many people knowing about their fight against shikabane, religious donations from average citizens wouldn’t seem to be enough to maintain operations. Maybe most of the funding comes from large private donations or even the government, which might explain why there doesn’t seem to be a separate government response to shikabane and how the Kougonshuu seems to be well-connected enough to cover up incidents.

Anyways, the Kougonshuu wants to transfer the contract Ouri has with Makina to another contract monk. Ouri doesn’t want this, but they have a point as the life of an untrained ordinary person could be absorbed to the point of death by a shikabane hime as Ouri had experienced so recently. Makina herself is being restrained by the Kougonshuu while they wait for a new contract monk for her, and is not even allowed to visit the outside of the temple where Keisei’s funeral is being held.

It is from Sadahiro that Ouri learns where to be trained properly as a monk so that he can keep the contract with Makina. Sadahiro and Akira had come to visit the temple, although they don’t go inside being the non-public members of Kougonshuu that they are, not to mention Akira being a shikabane hime. It is then that Ouri learns that they are a contract monk and a shikabane hime, respectively, and figures out what had happened to Minai in episode 8. Sadahiro tells Ouri about Goryousan, a mountain where monks traditionally go to train.

This episode should be the end of Shikabane Hime: Aka. Of course, it’s not the end of the story, as is made quite plain by the “To Be Continued”. The story should continue in Shikabane Hime: Kuro, where Ouri will presumably be an active actor instead of the passive observer he was in Shikabane Hime: Aka. But there’s still a pressing question that remains: who’s going to inherit Keisei’s anime collection and continue his perverted legacy?

• Ayumi is nervous about entering high school, worried that she won’t be able to make any friends.
• Tatsuki heads to school with her mother, as her father is busy with work in Tokyo, but she ends up very late because of a traffic jam.
• As school president, Oniyuri heads for school for the entrance ceremony, while Kitsune stays home.
• Touma idly wonders if the girl she saw at Kamizono, which was Torako as we know from episode 10, will be at the school. She has an awfully lot of cute dolls in her room.
• Nene is very happy about the quality of the students at Kamizono, and upon witnessing the beautiful school president Oniyuri, decides to enter school politics herself.
• Chie is immediately attracted to an odd-looking part of the school building that looks appropriate for a mad scientist.
• Ushio needs to practice smiling for a camera.
• Koma quickly starts out photographing everyone, willing and unwilling.
• Inori is hoping to make new friends with encouragement from her younger sister, but her first attempt fails as it is with Chie, who had been immediately distracted by building previously mentioned. Chie might have run away in terror if she was paying attention, though.
• Minato spends forever trying to get her necktie on, but eventually gives up and seeks help.
• Mr. Amagasa, the homeroom teacher, arbitrarily ended up being the host for the entrance ceremony by the principal’s ladder lottery (probably).

What about Torako and Suzume? They were the ones who were sleeping at the bus stop at the beginning, which would have drove Nene crazy if she had known. Torako had run away from home yet again accompanied by Suzume. This is a record at four days away from home, which has the girls really wanting a bath. That’s why they go to an onsen anyways even after remembering high school was supposed to start that day, which they wouldn’t have remembered at all if the subject of the entrance ceremony hadn’t come up. An onsen is obviously not far away since that was why they came to the town they slept at in the first place. However, it also means they need to hitchhike their way to Kamizono High School as they had spent all their money, something they have too much fun trying to do. And with this Hyakko ends.

What happens after they get back? It’s back to episode one, where they eventually encounter the lost Ayumi and Tatsuki, the latter who had arrived very late to school and is lost on the campus she has been going to for years. Overall, Hyakko was a pretty crazy slice of life high school anime to watch, with all the comedy and odd juxtaposing of stereotypes. A lot of the anime had to be seen to be enjoyed, as the comic moments don’t really come out well in summaries (such as Torako’s first kiss with Suzume this episode), but the unexpected twists and interactions had me laughing all the way through.

Episode 12 of Hyakko starts with Torako trying to call her friends one night and failing. The next day, it turns out that Torako had been trying to find a friend for a place to stay. Unable to connect to Suzume, Ayumi, or Tatsuki, she ended up staying with Ushio, although they stayed up all night playing games out of the fierce competitiveness between them. Torako had run away from home for the first time after starting high school, which used to be a regular occurrence as Suzume knows all too well, having often accompanied Torako on her escapades.

As Nene is figuratively green with envy that Torako and Ushio spent the night together, Torako’s older sister, Kageyama Oniyuri, appears and wants to know where Torako was. It seems that Oniyuri might be the only other person besides Kitsune that Torako could turn timid against. Suzume obviously knows who Oniyuri is, but everyone is surprised that Nene knows she is, too. It turns out that Oniyuri is the school president, so Nene would have known who she was as class representative, and Nene also suspected that Oniyuri was Torako’s older sister since they had the same surname. Everyone else is surprised at Torako having yet another sibling. The encounter with Oniyuri leaves Torako sad all day long.

Kageyama Oniyuri

When school ends, Oniyuri is ready to drag Torako home. However, Torako refuses to go home as everyone is watching, and the tussle eventually ends with Oniyuri slapping Torako for saying that their parents weren’t her parents. This has Torako running away and getting everyone worried about her. Kitsune summons Ayumi and Tatsuki to talk about Torako’s past, while Suzume is very cutely expressing her extreme displeasure with Oniyuri.

We learn that Torako is a half-sister of Oniyuri and Kitsune. She was born between the father and another woman and moved in with the rest of the family when her mother died. While Torako hardly gets along with her parents and runs away from home whenever there’s a fight, she really likes her siblings and vice versa, even if they’re really bad at showing it. Oniyuri might seem cold and strict, but she really worries about Torako. And even though Kitsune enjoys tormenting Torako way too much, it’s more like him not outgrowing a “torment the person you like” phase. The bond between the three siblings is pretty clearly shown in a flashback to when Kitsune and Torako worked together to avenge their older sister and how Oniyuri handled her younger siblings doing something wrong.

Eventually Torako is ready to leave school, and Oniyuri is waiting to apologize to Torako for slapping her. Torako and Oniyuri are reconciled as Torako sobbingly apologizes in response to Oniyuri’s apology. And as the two sisters start for home, accompanied by Touma who had stayed with Torako on the roof, the rest of Torako’s friends are waiting for her to cheer her up. Oniyuri sends Torako off with her friends and watches happily as her younger sister cheerfully walks among so many of her new friends.

While not devoid of comedy, this episode focused so much more on Torako’s relationship with her siblings and was an interesting way to end the series. Except this isn’t quite the end, and episode 13 was broadcast immediately after this one, which returns Hyakko to the very beginning on the first day of school.

In related news, a sequel will start broadcasting in the fall of 2009. It will be great to see how the musical careers of Chiaki and Nodame develop, not to mention the relationship between them. I suspect there will also be new rivalries and relationships that have only been hinted at in this season.

From the preview, it looks like episode 12 of Jigoku Shoujo Mitsuganae, “Graph in the Middle of the Summer”, will be the silly episode of the season. However, it doesn’t start out that way, as Yuzuki and her friends are at the pool eating snacks at a vendor a friend is helping out with. Everyone except Yuzuki ordered yakisoba, or fried noodles, but decided to eat popsicles instead after seeing how delicious and cool Yuzuki seems to be eating her own popsicle. It’s ominous in that a part-time worker for the vendor is enraged as the girls throw away the yakisoba they had ordered and he had prepared. Will this force Yuzuki to take direct action as he takes out a grudge against a close friend of hers? Or will he suffer outrageous setbacks as he tries to take out a grudge on Yuzuki?

Unlike the first scenes, but like the preview, it’s soon apparent that this is not so much an ominous episode for Yuzuki or her friends. Nomura, the focus of this episode, is an introvert who is quite a pushover in front of others but holds quite a grudge inside. He’s not bad at drawing manga, and he draws out his fantasies of people he hates suffering in hell. He also has a sticker-based tally board with a pin-up girl as a background: starting from her feet, he intends to send the first person whose tally reaches her chest through the Jigoku Tsushin. Initially, there are two main contenders for first place, one being a bully from school and another being a woman he competes over their bicycle parking space, although another strong contender soon appears when he finds the boy going out with a girl he likes.

The rest of the amusing first half of the episode is devoted to how Nomura gets pissed off and increases the tally for each contender with every trivial and non-trivial insult against himself, with accompanying manga being drawn that illustrates his fantasies. He also finally notices how cute Ito Nozomi, Yuzuki’s friend who works at the same vendor, is, although no one notices despite his starting to draw glasses over the cute girls he draws. Not to mention the fact that he still seems to hold a torch to the same girl he had a crush on at the beginning, given how the tally continues to rise against her boyfriend. Ai’s gang finds Nomura’s selection process amusing, with Kikuri having a one-sided bet with Yamawaro on who will win first place in Nomura’s tally board.

Then one day, Nomura finally finishes drawing the manga where he drew out his fantasies of his nemeses suffering in hell, although I wouldn’t even have guessed he was actually drawing anything more than a collection of 4-panel comics. But as he eagerly heads out to submit his manga to “Comic DEEN” (which should be a familiar name to those who know which studio produces Jigoku Shoujo), he finds his bicycle placed among the nearby trash. It turns out that there was a new policy of discarding bikes without a seal from the apartment building management because of the lack of bicycle parking space, and the woman he competed for parking space knew it and didn’t tell him. This makes him really pissed off that he adds about ten stickers to the woman’s tally, but this causes her tally to reach the pin-up girl’s chest, which means it’s finally time for Nomura to send someone to hell. This also lets Kikuri win her unilateral bet with Yamawaro with a bit of revisionist history.

Or at least it would have, if Nomura didn’t chicken out at the prospect of actually sending someone to hell and withdrew some of the added tallies for the woman. By now the three main contenders have nearly reached the goal, and in an ironic twist, it seems to help with Nomura’s anger management as he starts letting trivial things flow over him. It also helps that he won an award for his manga, which greatly improves his mood. In fact, he finally asks Nozomi out for a movie, which has her rather nervous and excited about the prospect of a date. It does annoy Kikuri that the bet is now effectively off, which she takes out on poor Yamawaro.

However, one day when he’s returning home, he discovers a girl about to jump off a bridge. Never mind that the bridge is too low for a probable success in a suicide jump, but anyways Nomura manages to stop the girl from jumping. To his surprise, it’s Kokoro, the girl Nomura had a crush on in the beginning and still has. The reason she wanted to kill herself was because she found out that her boyfriend was cheating on her. In fact, he had three other girlfriends he was cheating on. Nomura cheers her up by saying that killing herself would be pointless, that it would be much better if she got a much better boyfriend. I suspect that Nomura might have been hoping the new boyfriend could be himself.

Anyways, Nomura finds what Kokoro’s ex-boyfriend had done to be unforgivable and adds a sticker to his tally for each girl he cheated on. This time the tally reaches the goal and Nomura does not turn back in contacting the Jigoku Tsushin. However, Nomura doesn’t really hate the ex-boyfriend enough to connect to the Jigoku Tsushin, but Enma Ai shows up anyways. To his surprise, she had come because someone is about to send Nomura to hell.

I was half-expecting Nomura to be the one sent to hell this episode, but it was a complete surprise on who sent him. It’s Kokoro, who in a twisted maze of crappy logic rationalizes her hate against Nomura by making herself believe he would blab to everyone what had happened that night. Quite ridiculous in that Nomura showed no indication that he might do so, not to mention that she should have realized Nomura didn’t have anyone to blab it to and that it really shouldn’t have mattered even if it did become gossip, but who knows what goes on in the head of a person like her. As Nomura is sent to hell, he becomes a cut-out manga figure and goes through the suffering he had fantasized his nemeses going through.

About a week later, Nozomi is crying over the disappearance of Nomura. While her friends try to cheer her up by saying that he was just a terrible sort of guy, Nozomi defends him by saying that he must have run away from home for some justifiably important reason. Yuzuki can’t say anything despite knowing exactly what happened, although she might have actually done something if it didn’t happen so fast with scant minutes between Kokoro’s contacting the Jigoku Tsushin and pulling the red string. Kokoro, on the other hand, just shows how shallow she is as she worries more about how her Jigoku Tsushin mark looks on her rather than what it implies.

From the preview for the next episode, it’s mentioned that the town is the closest location to hell and that someone is going to send Ai something from hell. Things might finally start happening concerning the overall plot, and we might finally get hints of why Ai returned if we’re lucky.

Episode 12 of Shikabane Hime: Aka, “Dawn”, starts off from where the previous episode ended with the stabbing of Keisei by a possessed Ouri. However, Keisei quickly realizes what has happened and exorcises Ena’s control from Ouri. Too bad for Ouri that it wasn’t a dream, though, as he was aware what was happening.

Outside, Makina is fighting ineffectively against Kowaku, whose body can turn into mist and be adjusted to have a variety of effects, from tranquilizing to explosive. Meanwhile, Takamine, Rika, and their entourage are surrounded by some kind of barrier erected by one of the Seven Stars. The barrier is too weak to harm them, as Kamika promptly starts to demolish it, but it’s enough to keep them from helping Keisei and Makina.

Back at the temple, Akasha has appeared in front of Ouri and Keisei, and he inflicts additional damage on the already gravely injured Keisei, even plucking out one of Keisei’s eyes for his own nefarious purposes. Soon Makina, who has been being beaten by Kowaku, is thrown indoors, and Akasha turns towards her to “reveal her true nature”. He shouldn’t have let down his guard, however, as Keisei uses a suspicious potion to regain strength and grabs Akasha from behind.

And when Kowaku appears to destroy Makina, Keisei jumps in to save her and inflicts Kowaku with some sort of venom, which not only hurts Kowaku but also interferes with his ability to turn into mist. It’s not without its price, though, as the side effects hurt Keisei as well, but he’s well past worrying about it as he gives his all and repels Akasha and Kowaku, regardless of the consequences to himself.

Given his devastated state, Keisei convinces Makina and Ouri to transfer the Makina’s contract from himself to Ouri despite their protests. The transfer ritual is rather bland, unlike what I thought it would be from a shot in the opening credits, although setting up something like that in the middle of battle would have been out of the question, of course. The entire series seems to have been preparation for this moment, as it sets up the relationship between Makina and Ouri, and shows what happens to a shikabane hime whose contract monk dies without transferring the contract to another. I was hoping that Keisei would at least survive, even if crippled, but he doesn’t last long and the show loses its resident otaku.

Meanwhile, Kowaku is enraged at the damage Keisei managed to inflict on him, so he forces Akasha to release the shikabane that Akasha had gathered and regains his strength by merging them into himself. However, Kowaku’s rage is nothing compared to Makina’s rage, who quite handily beats him up and destroys him with no mercy by destroying his core. Unfortunately, this comes at a steep price, as Makina is unknowingly absorbing a great deal of Ouri’s life in the process.

As Akasha watches, he suspects that Ouri has something to do with the extreme power-up of Makina, but he also notes that an untrained Ouri would die at the rate Makina is using up his life. Remembering the past when Keisei announced that he would be raising Ouri, Akasha saves Ouri’s life as a last act of sentimentality and withdraws. By the time reinforcements arrive, the battle is all over. And Ouri finally let’s his tears run free when he sees the stew his late older brother prepared for him the previous day. This has got to be Ouri’s worst birthday ever.

Keisei is gone, but at least he went out with a bang. His funeral would be the next episode. Now that Ouri is Makina’s contract monk, though, will he still be going to school? I suspect that he’ll have to receive training as a monk in order to support Makina properly, so I doubt he’ll be staying in school. This would also mean he wouldn’t be returning to a part-time job at the Parthenon, which should reopen as Sadahiro and Akira no longer need to move away after being discovered by Keisei.

What is the “truth” that Akasha wanted to rub into Keisei’s face this episode? It was something that drove him to kill his own shikabane hime, which makes me think he’s blinded himself to another truth, that shikabane hime have minds and feelings just like ordinary humans. Whatever Akasha’s “truth” is, why couldn’t he have just written it up in something like the Journal of Applied Spirituality? He shouldn’t have followed the footsteps of other cheesy villains and dangle hints of the truth in front of others, all the while inflicting great suffering.

Episode 11 of Hyakko, “Escaping from the tiger’s mouth”, starts off with the classroom teacher happily opening the packaging for his new cellphone, the replacement for the one Torako destroyed in the previous episode. However, he realizes how childish he must look to the teacher sitting next to him and tries to make excuses, but he needn’t have bothered since the other teacher is stuck in her own world worrying about her sick Yuki she had left at home. As the other teacher heads home sick with worry, she asks the classroom teacher to take over her English class scheduled for the next hour.

Since the teacher isn’t really that good at English, he decides that the class would go to the new gymnasium and do physical education, instead. After a lot of confusion on what to do and how to divide the teams, among the suggestions being perverted Nene’s division by panties color, they settle on dividing teams depending on what they ate for breakfast, with one side being bread and the other rice. To Torako’s disappointment, Touma ends up being excluded and being the scorekeeper, having not eaten breakfast. After all the confusion on how to divide the teams, they finally get back to deciding what to do, and Ayumi’s suggestion of dodgeball is chosen.

Tatsuki is surprised at Torako not using famous sports names as a prelude as she did in episode 2, but it turns out that it was just Torako not knowing any famous dodgeball athletes. Tatsuki should have left sleeping tigers lie, as Torako starts naming Tatsuki the “Dragon Princess” and herself the “Tiger Girl” by translating their names to English. Thankfully, the tangent is derailed as Torako is stuck while trying to name Ayumi, unable to figure out what should come after “Walking …” (”Walking Snake”?).

With Torako and Nene being the leaders of their respective teams and the most enthusiastic, Torako throws the first ball with all her might against the other team. Unfortunately, it hits one of the weakest members on the other team, Ayumi, right in the face, resulting in the first casualty in the dodgeball match. And she isn’t the only one, with additional casualties resulting from also being hit in the face. Chie is the second one to fall as she is hit by Ushio, and even Tatsuki, who showed pretty good athletic reflexes, is like a babe against the might of Suzume. With all the tension, Inori collapses all by herself. Yanagi, who wanted to get the rare chance to take pictures of the younger students in gym uniform but got roped into medic duty, even mentions the four casualties being like “shikabane”, but at least they’re still conscious enough to point out they’re still alive.

Discovering how dangerous a sport dodgeball is, and finally realizing how there would be no way for Torako’s team to win against Suzume, Torako suggests a one-to-one match by a representative from each team. Nene obviously volunteers the most powerful player in her team, Suzume. On the other hand, Torako makes the surprise nomination of someone not even on her team, the teacher, who has served as judge so far. Like Torako, the teacher tries to refuse out of the desire to live, and Shishimaru would have happily sacrificed his life for Torako, but Torako doesn’t allow Shishimaru to be the sacrificial victim as he isn’t part of the class. The teacher is eventually provoked into volunteering himself, though, as the other team behaves as there’s no way he could win against Suzume.

At this point, the episode cuts to other scenes, one with Hitsugi-chan and Yagi-chan and another with Kitsune yet again telling the light blue-haired girl from the end of episode 7 about Torako, after which we see the angry teacher, who is barely able to talk, leaving the classroom. Almost everyone is sorry about the sacrifice made by the teacher, although Tatsuki is annoyed at the responsible Suzume for sleeping without a care. And the teacher is even more annoyed at the sacrifice he made as he learns that he needn’t have suffered such injuries if the teacher he was covering for didn’t run off worrying about a puppy.

Near the end of the episode, we see an announcement about the next episode also being the last episode of Hyakko, to be broadcast on December 24. It will be a one hour special, and according to the preview, it will reveal a terrible secret that Torako harbors. Of course, we already know from episode 6 just how unreliable previews can be …