There are some good shows this season (most obviously Rurouni Kenshin), but I must say nothing comes close to Undead Girl Murder Farce when it comes to direction.  This show is so smart, so stylish.  I would say it’s OK if Omata Shinichi fails sometimes because he tries stuff no other director tries, but pretty much everything works.  This is not trickery, artifice for the sake of appearing clever – this is the genuine article.  From the rakugo interludes to the black and white flashbacks to the way Omata uses the freedom of the animation to bring stuff like Aya’s “brain, eyes, and ears” speech to life – it’s just epic.

We’re in Germany now, as promised.  And as promised, werewolves are at the center of the story.  But Blanket Banquet is nowhere to be found yet, and the series returns to conventional murder mystery mode.  The cage team is high in the mountains, on the trail of a village that might lead them to the Forest of Fangs.  But along the way they run into the local doctor (though he’s later referred to by locals as an outsider).  Despite carrying a gun, he immediately begs the trio for help once he recongizes (somewhat surprisingly) them.  There’s been a kidnapping, he says – a 12 year-old girl taken from her room in the night.

I think it’s pretty safe to assume the cold open, where we see the doctor leading the proverbial torch-wielding mob of villagers in pursuit of a werewolf mother and her daughter, is connected to this mystery.  Suspicion of strangers runs high here, even ones who’ve been around a while, so a headless immortal in a cage is a tough sell.  But the father can’t turn down the chance of finding his daughter, so he consents to Aya lending a hand (she does love her puns, but then, she’s with the right guy).

So far, in this round of murders (it’s obviously not a new thing) girls have been going missing every four months, always – until the current incident – on a rainy night.  So far their bodies have all been found in a highly distressed state, which does nothing to discourage the werewolf theory.  The current victim, Louise, was taken from her room, which is itself a mess, with a large blood stain on the bed.  But the girls parents behave extremely suspiciously, which more than anything casts suspicion on Louise herself.

I initially thought that Louise might be the werewolf from the cold open, and staged her own disappearance to cast suspicion elsewhere.  But Aya rather coldly tells the father that Louise is almost surely dead (or at least that “he’ll never see her alive again”, which could be an important distinction).  Aya is certain that this was the work of meticulous planning and not a berserk beast.  Eventually the trio go off to see the old mayor, and he speaks of werewolves climbing up the cliff from the base of the giant waterfall in the forest and feasting on villagers as if it’s been happening for a long time.  He also speaks of the werewolf village at the base of the falls, Wolphinhel – but goes very icy when the Forest of Fangs is mentioned.

There are still lots of details to be sorted here, but I know this much – in Undead Girl Murder Farce the “monsters” are rarely the real monsters.  Aya’s quip about the helping hand seemed to imply that she wished to extend it to the werewolves, and they seem likely to be the real victims here.  Moriarty is obviously going to show up, and it will be with exploitation in mind.  And I’m guessing the two “exterminators” who arrive by train are also agents of Royce, whose feelings about monsters are no secret.  I think it very likely the cage trio are going to wind up fighting on the side of the wolves here.