What did you think of this episode?
5Loved it!
30.3%
89
4Liked it!
22.1%
65
3It was OK
28.2%
83
2Disliked it
12.2%
36
1Hated it
7.1%
21
Average 3.6
294 votes
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| THIS IS AN ANIME ONLY DISCUSSION POST. DO NOT DISCUSS THE MANGA BEYOND THIS EPISODE. ---------------------------------------- |
tsubasaloverNov 14, 2009 6:53 PM
I ♥ Two Syaorans from Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE and TRC!!! |
| So Shigemaru goes to the city with that girl....kills people around so she can collect their heads, play with them up to kissing them (hold on, is that necromancy kind of like here: |
 In spoiler my anime list for now. |
| that... was weird. the art for the next arc looks nice. anyone know who the artist for that one is? |
p r o f i l e 👀 |
| Wow..i almost forgot to breath there So quick question..someone tell me are both of them died? |
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| Wow that was pretty good, the art and scenery were great. |
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| Whaaaaat? Was that woman really a demon or did he just see her as a demon? Did he end up dying? And that girl had a letter that said: "I'll come home soon, so wait for me." What's up with that? I'm confused.. Anyway, it was awesome. I liked all the serious parts and the woman playing with heads was kinda disturbing. Two episodes is a bit short and it could've been better without all the unnecessary comedy though. Overall, I liked No Longer Human a lot better. Looking forward to the next story "Kokoro". |
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Bonney said: Why not the city girl? She looked strangulated.i think that only shigemaru died...;( |
In spoiler my anime list for now. |
| I couldn't tell if it wanted me to take it seriously or not half the time, but in the end I thought it was a great episode, especially compared to the last one. It even managed to get a good laugh out of me when she started playing with those severed heads. As for the ending, I think it's left up to the viewer to decide for themselves, which I like. |
| Somehow this anime always seems to freak me out from thing i would nomarly not be freaked out from...maybe it the animation or the story idk but i do love this show =] |
| I was not entertained. The only good part about the episode was the song (again). This was just so weak that I've really become disappointed in the ability of the show to properly adapt these stories. I haven't read either No Longer Human or Under the Cherry Blossoms, yet I'm positive both works had much more dramatic impact than these adaptations. |
| This is from the guy who did Kurozuka? That explains it all. There was no hope to begin with. |
| I was not feeling it. Both drama and humor was forced, and the plot didn't even try to be coherent. It was pretty and nice animated, but really, there was nothing in this adaption that made it memorable. A wasted opportunity, though I have no idea how good the book is in the first place, so someone correct me if the book is as horrible as this was. |
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| And to think I came here seeing if people were going to discuss the episode, but its just people bitching about how its not like the manga/light novel again. Seriously...fuck you guys. Just fuck you. |
| Really? Only one person mentioned the light novels in comparison to the show having actually read the source. Perhaps you'd like to read all of the comments before you post. |
| wow that was quite disturbing o_O I guess we won't really find out unless its been explained eleswhere. Overall I thought the art was beautiful especially with the cherry blossoms but didn't like the way it kept switching between comedy and seriousness all the time. Plus I found the majority to be quite disturbing and they didn't really explain much. I deffiently prefer the first arc over this one but next weeks episode looks nice ^^ |
_Me_ said: You know its hurts to get strangulated..the tears must have been for that..not for the hubby killing me fact because she was for sure going to kill shigemaru.Though never watched an entire strangulation session before its scary , it really creeped me out.she was crying as she died, as if she didn't know why her possible husband figure would do this. he was laying in her position because before that he had been going through the psychology that he was her Thankgod someone finally understood this point or said it , the laying shigemaru doenst show hes dead , it was his deluded mind which believed that he saw himself in her , a monster, a demon..Shigemura has "sakura-jap-phobia" , so being near it increases his killing urges??? They should have showed why hes afraid of it atleast without showing vomiting humour..i really wanted to know.. "one might say it is that which is called loneliness" - so there you go agn , trying to find a pitiful reason of why shigemaru killed humans...god believe the fact that the dudes a psychopath-deluded killer thats it. The girl is scary, glad shes dead ,playing theatre with the living flesh, this reminded me of the house of wax , making play realistic...this concept had been used many times..though it never fails to amuse me.. Unnecessary humour always bothers me...hope the next arc is amazing- not going to compare with "NO longer human" beacuse it was a god in this season....( next arcs glass boy looks better than shigemaru atleast ^__^) |
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Linalee-Stratos said: _Me_ said: You know its hurts to get strangulated..the tears must have been for that..not for the hubby killing me fact because she was for sure going to kill shigemaru.Though never watched an entire strangulation session before its scary , it really creeped me out.she was crying as she died, as if she didn't know why her possible husband figure would do this. he was laying in her position because before that he had been going through the psychology that he was her Thankgod someone finally understood this point or said it , the laying shigemaru doenst show hes dead , it was his deluded mind which believed that he saw himself in her , a monster, a demon..Shigemura has "sakura-jap-phobia" , so being near it increases his killing urges??? They should have showed why hes afraid of it atleast without showing vomiting humour..i really wanted to know.. "one might say it is that which is called loneliness" - so there you go agn , trying to find a pitiful reason of why shigemaru killed humans...god believe the fact that the dudes a psychopath-deluded killer thats it. The girl is scary, glad shes dead ,playing theatre with the living flesh, this reminded me of the house of wax , making play realistic...this concept had been used many times..though it never fails to amuse me.. Unnecessary humour always bothers me...hope the next arc is amazing- not going to compare with "NO longer human" beacuse it was a god in this season....( next arcs glass boy looks better than shigemaru atleast ^__^) Well said Linalee-Stratos! Well said. I agree with your thinking. I am more clear upped now. |
In spoiler my anime list for now. |
| Soooo...the girl is dead and Shigemaru is a psycho,right? Well if that's the case...i'm realy happy she died ^_^ |
 "Only the dead have seen the end of war". ~Plato~ |
| so they move to the city, he collects heads for her, then decide to move back to the mountains, but he goes insane b/c of the sakura blooming, and they die, wow weird ending |
the only way to stop a gamer from playing is either: beat them, or wait until they get bored (though 2% percent suffer seizures  |
noteDhero said: This is from the guy who did Kurozuka? That explains it all. There was no hope to begin with. Depends on people since I love the scene where Shigemaru fell down to an endless pit, which reminded me of Kurozuka and that show was awesome!!! Just because most of people don't get it doesn't mean it's bad ;p |
 If he's not with us, he's AGAINST us!!! |
| LOL. What was there to get with Kurozuka? It was an endless loop with disposable characters. It looked pretty, but that was it. And this is coming from someone who spends whole shows trying to find a deep meaning for everything. Honestly though, nothing besides the vague storytelling in a rush to get to the twist at the end reminded me of Kurozuka. |
noteDhero said: LOL. What was there to get with Kurozuka? It was an endless loop with disposable characters. It looked pretty, but that was it. And this is coming from someone who spends whole shows trying to find a deep meaning for everything. And what's wrong with getting an original ending from time to time? It was not usually done, maybe my memories fail me, but the closest one I can think of at the moment that did the same thing is Magikano. Plus that depends on your perspective, same thing with how people said that Hakko's necrophiliac stuffs with Santana were disgusting. As for myself, I find it touching and romantic. Same with Kurozuka, I find the aspect of Kuro always striving to search for Kuromitsu in their endless stream of union and separation somewhat melancholic and romantic. Maybe that's cuz I don't give a damn about the support characters.... But yeah, preference matter and beautiful shows, like what you said, such as this, are far better than the lot we are getting right now IMHO ;p |
If he's not with us, he's AGAINST us!!! |
| Original? Do you mean compared to the source material? If so, I wouldn't know because anime is the only thing from the industry that I really consume. If you mean original as in novel, then I'd just say that original isn't always good...especially when in this case, the ending is basically a mobius strip. I don't know about Magikano, and I'm confused about this Hakko and Santana you mention also (were they characters in Kurozuka?) This is just another one of those difference in perspective I guess, because the last thing I would call the relationship between Kuro and Kuromitsu would be touching and romantic. I thought it was wholly parasitic on Kuromitsu's end. She orchestrates it all to feel alive. I felt like she wasn't in love with him at all, and he was just too young to really understand what love was...not to mention the fact that he constantly doesn't know the whole picture until the end. Sure the shows are better because they look good, but they also become that much more disappointing when they don't take the care in crafting a story as much as they craft the presentation. |
| Hmmm.... "parasitic".... From my point of view and understanding, Kuro always need a new body in order to live, so that's what Kuromitsu did: Try to obtain a perfect body for him. If she was not in love with him, she wouldn't bother to go through this endless immortality quest alongside with him. I mean, he was not the only male, she can do it with other guys and have fun messing with their lives. But she didn't, at least from all the time periods that I have seen. If you taked about the other white haired dude, then yes, she "used" him all along for her own ends. Well, one thing that can be changed is that maybe Kuro was tired of going through the same thing over and over hence he asked Kuromitsu to stop doing this , but she won't comply and he gave in. IMO, it's the reverse of what you said, she was creepily obsessed with him, she can let him die any time she want, just leaving his head there w/o a body and he will ultimately passed away, yet she didn't. As for the rush thing, you're right as a spectator but as from a director's POV, you're not. You should know that Japanese animation always lacks budget, not like Disney where they have crap load of money and strong advertisement. So even if they want to make those shows longer, w/o money, nothing can be done and their creativity of packing thing should be complimented instead ;) |
If he's not with us, he's AGAINST us!!! |
| I knew I was forgetting something important about that relationship (I even went back to the Kurozuka episode 12 discussion to try and refresh my memory). That said, I still never felt like she was in love with him...it was that his vitality and exuberance made her feel alive, so it is swapped like you suggested. It doesn't really have anything to do with rushing a story or not or having budgetary constraints. It has to do with prioritizing and knowing what is most important. Take this arc for example: Was that whole beginning necessary? Did we need to waste time in a two episode story with moments so anachronistic that it broke each moment? From a director's perspective, he should have noticed that he had pack in the last few minutes with the flashes of blank text because he hadn't done a better job in setting everything up. There was far too much comedy than this story warranted. It's like saying, "You know what Hamlet needs? More cowbell!" It's a failure of translating ideas in an attempt to be contemporary and different. |
| Finding something deep? I think you misunderstood the entire conversation. While I was watching it, I tried to find some reason in the show, but by the end, it was clear that there was none. It was just redundant for the sake of increasingly boring action scenes. Bitch thought it had a romantic undertone and I disagreed. That's all. I don't think it was a comedy, I don't think it was that clever, and I didn't get a sense of any parody. The show took itself seriously to me, or else there wouldn't have been so much downtime where characters were talking about absolutely nothing. Far from a masterpiece in my book I don't remember the first half of episode 8. That was a year ago. I went back to the discussion, and if I remember correctly, it was the episode where Kuro was trapped in an illusion set by the turtle guy? Am I missing something? I thought it was weird, but I don't think it was clever, funny, or parodying anything. It was a shit gag. Maybe I'm missing the reference. There is a difference between any Tarantino movie where the "nothing" discussions are on philosophy, movies, music, semantics, etc. which are clever, and help to characterize, and the nothing conversations that went on in Kurozuka--where they would talk about the non-existent plot and how important it was. Mod Edit: Merged post due to deleted post. |
asandariDec 20, 2009 7:36 PM
| I meant references of a comical nature that would warrant your saying the show had elements of parody. Those action sequences definitely had a reference in the Matrix, but the Matrix found reference in Ghost in the Shell. You'd have to pick out where dialogue in Kurozuka were clever and useful. Because from my memory, I don't think it was since the direct plot had no bearing on the actual point of the show. Most of it was filler conversation while traveling from one place to the next, or empty lines during a fight. The only thing that may have been more than that was the kabuki stuff at the beginning, but it grew so redundant that I stopped caring. Through no dialogue did we get a better sense of any of the characters. Everyone besides maybe Kuromitsu and Kuro were one-dimensional. But to bring this back around to this arc that just finished, that's what was missing. The dialogue and characterization gave no sense of loneliness on Shigemaru's part. It's odd that the show would be about something like that when he had how many wives? And a talking boar. Restlessness maybe. There was much more effort on that side of things, but it was all just way too half-baked. |
noteDheroNov 18, 2009 10:19 AM
| Ningen Shikkaku was better. I think they could do this better... Next story will be Kokoro and I think Takeshi Obata will do the charadesign so hopefully it will be good too ;) |
| damn what a twisted plot that was.... interesting though i really think there where some comic parts that could hav been avoided |
| Yep creepy effin' sakura is effin' demanding xD. And demanding effin' woman is effin' demanding xD. Although her occational chibi-modes were cute xD And then everything goes haywire O.O As in really fucked up O.O tl;dr this was one crazy story : D I'd say it was about as good No Longer Human, but not in the same way though, of course : p Oh and yeah next story could be good too : p |
| Protip: I don't really check the forums anymore, so if you want something, take it on my profile. Is it time for my long-awaited return to the forums? щ(ﾟДﾟщ) Nope™, probably not. |
| That was cool. Except that it made no sense. Seems we might really be heading into 'too weird for its own good' territory. First arc was better, but this arc gets kudos for one of Nana Mizuki's best performances. And aha, I wondered why I was getting such Kurozuka vibes, especially with that exact same pit. The director was the Death Note guy. Can't say I'm becoming a fan of his. |
| well im just confused....thot the city girl was a demon...otherwise she wouldnt have left a letter saying she'd come back |
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Kekkaishi said: well im just confused....thot the city girl was a demon...otherwise she wouldnt have left a letter saying she'd come back Well i guess she said that because she planned to kill shigomeru in the mountians and come back to the city most probably with his head to play with... |
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| This was quite an interesting one. In the end they mentioned "loneliness" being the real mystery of the sakura. It's clear that Shigemaru was nuts, so i think that the girl didn't exist in the first place, it was just a part of his madness. Something like Hitchcocks psycho. :D |
Gaara_The_Great said: Absolutely brilliant. Tetsuro Araki manages to surpass his previous work--Kurozuka. Also, I think there wasn't any girl, it's just Shigemaru's imagination though it's obviously left to the viewers to decide for themselves. I agree...Here's what I think: |
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kimmiechan |
kimmiechan said: Gaara_The_Great said: Absolutely brilliant. Tetsuro Araki manages to surpass his previous work--Kurozuka. Also, I think there wasn't any girl, it's just Shigemaru's imagination though it's obviously left to the viewers to decide for themselves. I agree...Here's what I think: woah now that youve said that it all makes sense..that's probly correct. oh but that doesnt explain the letter ...the little girl(idfk if it's a woman) ..read the letter saying "il be back soon" which can be the lady....or shigemaru but thats unlikely. |
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Kekkaishi said: kimmiechan said: Gaara_The_Great said: Absolutely brilliant. Tetsuro Araki manages to surpass his previous work--Kurozuka. Also, I think there wasn't any girl, it's just Shigemaru's imagination though it's obviously left to the viewers to decide for themselves. I agree...Here's what I think: woah now that youve said that it all makes sense..that's probly correct. oh but that doesnt explain the letter ...the little girl(idfk if it's a woman) ..read the letter saying "il be back soon" which can be the lady....or shigemaru but thats unlikely. I think Shigemaru wrote it. If the woman was really a construct of his mind, he could have wrote it as her just as easily as he blamed all of his horrible actions on "her". But then, part of what was said at the end was that no one REALLY knows what happened. It's part of the fun of trying to figure it out. That was my just my theory based on what I perceived while watching it. I enjoyed this one, here's hoping the next one is as good. |
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kimmiechan |
| Well the only thing that kinda works against the concept that she was all a delusion of his one mind is that his wives actually asked him about 'that woman'...so someone must have been there, or all of his women must have been delusions. But I think that's looking a bit too far here, when even the source material was meant to be mysterious. The original also elaborates on the Sakura a bit more, it is said that even though they are beautiful, they harbour a dark power and can drive even the holiest priest insane if he decides to rest in their shadow. So you see, you can draw a parallel between the Sakura and his new wife, that she too was beautiful beyond comparison and he was willing to do anything to be in her presence, even going against his own will (killing his wives, moving to the city, becoming a thief and murderer). Yet the story is not only about the evil of women, it also shows the weakness of men and how they can delude themselves. Shigemaru was convincing himself that he had all what he wished for, that the mountains were his kingdom and that he was, while being an outlaw, still a good and mild one...yet none of that was true. The first time we saw his true self come about was when he was face to face with this woman, Shima, who showed him that there was always something more...the same craving he always felt when saw the cherry blossoms. In the novel he also says how he always hears a strange sounds (similar to a drum) when he is near the Sakura, and he is perceiving it again before he sees the woman as a demon. I always understood it as his own desire for more, that he himself screamed of because he felt lonely among the mountains, yet he always assured himself that the city was a source of evil, a reason never to go there. Yet he succumbed to the woman (like a human cherry blossom) and went with her to the city, where of course he was unable to deny himself and her what she wished for, even if it was inhumanly cruel. He never searched for the source of that evil within himself but within the city and when he returned with her to the mountains, he felt that he had it along with him all the time. Yet of course the woman was good enough to blame, because she was the devil who seduced him. But when after her death his desire did not stop he saw, that it was his own darkness that led him to this point and that he was just to weak to stand up against it. The letter to the girl with glasses (I found it a nice play with the anime-archetypes, because in the original novel, she is handicapped) was just to leave things open a bit...the reference to her in the end just showed for me, that she was able to live despite all the evil around her and she managed to get both, nature (the boar) and comfort (the city). |
Waiting for: God Eater (PSP) 私が、探偵だからよ。 |
| Nonsense. |
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| seizonsha: That makes sense. And if we take into consideration the fact that the original was written right after the war, and that the cherry blossoms supposedly are loved by the Japanese beyond all else, there is obviously some subtle criticism of the authorities that the pre-war Japanese believed in here. They didn't really realize the truth about themselves, just like Shigemaru. And the fact that Japan was a very isolated society before they started conquering other nations, might also be a parallel to the theme of loneliness in this story. By this line of thought, maybe "the city" is supposed to represent the rest of the world? All this also reminds me of the Sakaguchi quote from the intro to the first episode of this arc: "To live, to become decadent. People need to properly fall down the path of decadence. By doing this, they will discover themselves and shall be saved." I would also like to add that I think the out-of-place comedy (especially the way the woman was sometimes portrayed) could emphasize or even represent the cherry blossoms in the way that they both seem innocent, yet there is something sinister lurking behind the facade. At least there was a stark and untraditional contrast between the serious scenes and the comedy scenes, and after Ningen Shikkaku I doubt that their only intention was to make Japanese literature appeal to the masses. Oh, and that was Mizuki Nana? I was impressed. |
seizonsha said: Well the only thing that kinda works against the concept that she was all a delusion of his one mind is that his wives actually asked him about 'that woman'...so someone must have been there, or all of his women must have been delusions. But I think that's looking a bit too far here, when even the source material was meant to be mysterious. The original also elaborates on the Sakura a bit more, it is said that even though they are beautiful, they harbour a dark power and can drive even the holiest priest insane if he decides to rest in their shadow. So you see, you can draw a parallel between the Sakura and his new wife, that she too was beautiful beyond comparison and he was willing to do anything to be in her presence, even going against his own will (killing his wives, moving to the city, becoming a thief and murderer). Yet the story is not only about the evil of women, it also shows the weakness of men and how they can delude themselves. Shigemaru was convincing himself that he had all what he wished for, that the mountains were his kingdom and that he was, while being an outlaw, still a good and mild one...yet none of that was true. The first time we saw his true self come about was when he was face to face with this woman, Shima, who showed him that there was always something more...the same craving he always felt when saw the cherry blossoms. In the novel he also says how he always hears a strange sounds (similar to a drum) when he is near the Sakura, and he is perceiving it again before he sees the woman as a demon. I always understood it as his own desire for more, that he himself screamed of because he felt lonely among the mountains, yet he always assured himself that the city was a source of evil, a reason never to go there. Yet he succumbed to the woman (like a human cherry blossom) and went with her to the city, where of course he was unable to deny himself and her what she wished for, even if it was inhumanly cruel. He never searched for the source of that evil within himself but within the city and when he returned with her to the mountains, he felt that he had it along with him all the time. Yet of course the woman was good enough to blame, because she was the devil who seduced him. But when after her death his desire did not stop he saw, that it was his own darkness that led him to this point and that he was just to weak to stand up against it. The letter to the girl with glasses (I found it a nice play with the anime-archetypes, because in the original novel, she is handicapped) was just to leave things open a bit...the reference to her in the end just showed for me, that she was able to live despite all the evil around her and she managed to get both, nature (the boar) and comfort (the city). This is how is I saw it. I think you guys looked too deep into this and thought that everything else was an illusion, which I don't think it was. I think that his wife, Akiko, could be related to the the sakura in the way that she is beautiful on the outside, but something deeper lies under the true self (she is beautiful on the outside, but ugly in the inside, just like a rose. Akiko is a woman who abuses the weakness of the man and controls man with her beauty to get what she wants. When she noticed that Shigemaru was not willing to listen to her own desire, she made the plan to go to the mountain with him and to kill him when he would be blindfolded by the sakura blossom. The letter that was written to the little girl was most likely written by Akiko, because the voice actor was the voice of Akiko reading the letter, which would mean that she wanted to kill him and come back to the city. As for the ending, with Shigemaru lying on the ground, I am a bit lost, but the part where the sakura engulfs the body and make it disappears could be portrayed as the idea that what truly lies under the sakura (in this context, for example, the corpses) can not be seen because of the beauty of the sakura that makes the viewers unable to see what truly lies under. I actually thought this could have been a bit longer and with more detail, but it was still good nonetheless, even though I preferred the first arc. |
LuxoDec 6, 2009 11:24 AM
| the art for the next episode looks great this episode was messed up but awesome i cant believe he strangled his wife though >.<;; |
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