Apologies for the lateness on this entry. I’ve both been busy, and some wise-guy on Share thought that it was a good idea to disguise a random music-file as the latest Ghost Hound episode. In any case, if you were waiting for the major plot-twists, then this episode is not to be missed, because the plot-twists at the end of this episode were more exciting than ever. The building-up is really starting to pay off, and I don’t know about others, but the creators have managed to fully draw me into the atmosphere of this season.

I think I’ve said it before, but what I really like about Ghost Hound is how it manages to put building-up and major climaxes in the same episodes, compared to most other series, which basically have to make use of entire arcs to just build up enough for one climax that takes a few episodes. Because of that, I just know that a Ghost Hound episode will end up satisfying, because it took so much time in the beginning of its run to carefully place all of the pieces.

In any case, to give a short summary of things that happened: Miyako finally has some therapy from Hirata-sensei. Hirata-sensei seems to be quite a famous academic in Tokyo, which seems to point out how important he believes that Tarou’s case is. Meanwhile, Masayuki finds out that the woman who has been dating his father is the female scientist. Michio (who has really warmed up now that the bullies are gone, by the way), reveals in a library book something about the “Kotosaka no Kami”, they seem to be some kind of gods or spirits.

For the counselling, Miyako gets put under hypnosis. Then, Tarou sees his sister’s image in the unconscious Miyako. It could be very well possible that right now, the spirit of Tarou’s sister has possessed Miyako. In any case, the spirit takes over her again, even worse than last time. Luckily, Komori makes sure that she forgets everything that happened. On the way back, Noriko yet again turns up, and starts going after Miyako this time. It also turns out: Makoto’s grandmother died.

These were some really interesting developments. I wonder what’s going to happen to Makoto now. Is he going to start living with his mother? Or will Noriko still take care of him? Speaking of the devil, what the heck is she up to? She was seen making several phone-calls as well, when Makoto’s grandmother called out for her help.

I’m also not yet sure whether Tarou’s sister is really the spirit that took hold of Miyako, but if this was the case, then it would explain a lot. Of course, the reason why Tarou is so interested in her could just as well be because she resembles his sister so much. :P

How awesome. I now fully understand why the previous episode felt so bad and weird. The entire fifth episode was dedicated to explaining the things that happened there, and it provided a wonderful conclusion to a story that started off so horrible. After watching this episode, I completely forgive this series for the disappointments of the previous episode. I’ve said before that I’m a huge mystery-fan, and Hakaba Kitarou knows exactly how to handle it!

The best thing of the episode would of course be the fact that this episode shows a totally new side of the bad Kitarou. It seems that he too was used by Nezumi Otoko. If I understood this correctly, all Nezumi Otoko was after was the part of his head that Neko Musume bit off, but you can only get your hands on it if she’s in hell. However, because of this, bad Kitarou would need a way to return from hell, and that’s why he needed Kitarou’s jacket, which basically was his link to the spirit-world. He got it in the ruckus that he caused when he set off that mouse on Neko Musume during her performance.

In the process, something went wrong, though. I couldn’t pick up exactly what happened, but bad Kitarou ended up on one of the side-paths on his way to hell, and got separated from Neko Musume. Only because of the real Kitarou’s father, he managed to get out of there, into the real hell. Unfortunately, my Japanese isn’t good enough to pick up why Nezumi Otoko ended up on television this episode either, however it was clear that Nezumi Otoko manipulated bad Kitarou to everything, and he betrayed him at one point.

Thankfully, Neko Musume also remains in Hell, even though she did have the option to return. Kitarou may have also been a bit too emo in his lovesickness, but the climax of this episode worked out pretty well because of this, when Neko Musume refused to meet him. Also, it was pretty hilarious to see how Bad Kitarou shaved his head in the end when he turned good. It’s quite impressive that the creators made him go through so much development in just one episode, and actually got away with it. ^^;