Kitsutsuki Tanteidokoro – 10

Kitsutsuki Tanteidokoro has been on a steadily upward trajectory, but this episode really took things to another level.  As this series has gotten darker and darker it’s gotten more and more compelling, and this episode was very dark indeed.  Ishikawa-san isn’t a very sympathetic figure, but there’s still something quite chilling in watching a vibrant young man slowly and painfully dying, and breaking down as his terror over that fact overwhelms him.  And Kindaichi-san’s devotion to him, pathetic as it is on some level, is rather moving in its purity.

I’m sure Ishikawa’s total breakdown would have been developed more deliberately with more time devoted to it (as I’m guessing it was in the source material).  As is, it was very effective  – quite harrowing and very sad on multiple levels.  Things are not going well for Ishikawa to say the least – he’s lost the woman he (most recently) loved, and her husband has been acquitted of murder.  His health is deteriorating, and he’s lost his poetic muse.  In typical Ishikawa vainglorious fashion, he’s decided he must be of value of society – write something that will tell others how to live.  And that means a memoir of his affair (such as it was) with Tamaki-san.

Unfortunately, Ishikawa is not a novelist.  He knows it deep-down, and certainly after Natsume Souseki can’t quite convincingly tell him that his manuscript isn’t awful.  Meanwhile Ishikawa is continuing to milk Kindaichi for everything he’s worth, to the point where their mutual friends are growing increasingly incensed about it.  When Hagiwara and Yoshii find him in the pleasure quarter, the former rips him a new one and when Ishikawa responds with scorn for Kindaichi, Yoshii finally gives him the punch in the jaw he’s richly deserved for so long.

Frankly, Ishikawa is pathetic and awful.  And Kindaichi is victimizing himself here – he’s under no illusions about his love being reciprocated, and he knows Ishikawa doesn’t respect him as an intellectual equal.  But Kindaichi’s love is unconditional, and giving it is the only thing that seems to make him happy – even if Ishikawa figuratively spits in his face every chance he gets.  But Ishikawa is so transparently weak and afraid that it’s hard not to feel a bit of pity for him.  He’s going to get what’s coming to him soon enough – he knows it, we know it.  It’s sad that this is how he chooses to live what life he has left, but ultimately both he and Kindaichi are making a choice to live the way they do.

In the end Kindaichi won’t even let Ishikawa commit suicide.  He follows Ishikawa back to their hometown of Morioka in Tohoku and basically tells him that no matter what he does, he won’t manage to drive him away.  It’s kind of touching in a dysfunctional way, and frankly this is one of those episodes that feels very much like the end of a series when in fact, it isn’t – I’m not sure where Kitsutsuki Tanteidokoro can go from here thematically.  But that’s for the next two weeks to show, and the bar has certainly been raised with this very engaging and challenging episode.

Fruits Basket 2nd Season – 10

As is so often the case Fruits Basket follows up one of its strong episodes (in this case a strong run of them) with a rather weak one.  That’s just the toll to be paid, nothing for it really – a function of a too-large cast and an author too fond of tangents and minutiae.  Of course my feelings about Kagura are no secret at this point.  She’s insufferable, and her character has already done so much damage (including to itself) that no deathbed conversions are going to make any difference.  She’s a total whiff by Takaya Natsuki as far as I’m concerned, and never really works in any situation.

If there’s an upside, it’s that this ep at least represents Kagura more or less giving up on her grating and pointless pursuit of Kyou.  And it also delivers a conversation between Tohru and Kazuma, which is both effective in its own right and interesting as it relates to Tohru’s character.  I quite like that the first thing she did with the information Akito stuffed down her throat was go to Kazuma to verify and clarify it as much as she can.  It shows Tohru is simply not going to accept this future under any circumstances – maybe things will work out the way Akito said, but he’ll have to run her over to make that happen.