Darker than Black ep.08

May 26, 2007 | 15 Comments

How do you write research proposal in less than a month? That's the question that I have to figure out after writing this and Nodame Cantabile's summary. It feels like it's been ages since I've been able to enjoy my free time. I don't even remember what other series that are playing at the moment. I should really catch up with Kekkaishi since I'm way behind but I really can't afford to spend too much time blogging until next month. Anyway, I don't really like this episode. It's not as amusing as last week's and it's not as engaging story-wise. I kind of miss the mysterious vibe that the earlier episodes provide. I suppose the writers want to show some variety in the story and in that respect, this episode works quite well. This episode also meant to be a character development piece for Mao but it's kind of hard to do character development for a cat and this episode proves that.

The episode begins with Li and Huang going through a document containing Fiore company's staff names. Huang believes that they can find the contractor if they follow the industrial espionage's lead. The problem that they have right now is that they don't know Mao's whereabouts. Unknown to them, a police sergeant called Yabuta Tatsuo is seen taking the now captive Mao to the widow's house. A flashback conversation between Gai and Tatsuo reveals that a teeth comparison to the corpse found in the mansion indicates that the dead body is actually the mansion's owner, Katsuragi Toshiko. It is suspected that she fell to her death when the railing she hold onto broke due to the mansion's old condition. When Tatsuo called Gai "Matsukichi", Gai tells the policeman that his name is now Kurasawa Gai. Tatsuo was unhappy that Gai decides to pretend to be cool in the midst of serial murder investigation. He thinks Gai is unsuitable to be a police or a detective.

On his way back to widow's house, Gai is followed by the contractor but thankfully he also encounters Li. Gai recognises Li as the part-time worker at the widow's house and wonders what Li is doing wandering in a place like this. In response, Li claims that the stars are pretty so Gai looks up only to realise that the sky is cloudy. When he looks at Li again, however, the guy has disappeared without a trace. Gai then arrives at the widow's house and expresses his apologies for the police's persistent inquiries. When Gai asks her about the cat, the widow informs him that they got the wrong black cat. Apparently her "Mii-chan" is far more elegant in looks. Inside the kitchen, Mao is trashing around in his cage. He's worried because he lost the bell on his neck, which contains wireless radio. He's afraid that if this continues, he will be turned over to the animal health centre. Mao becomes even more feral when the housekeeper comes over.

Meanwhile, the widow tells Gai that when Toshiko was still married to her husband, she once visited her house. While she was elegant, the widow thought Toshiko's eyes were frightening. It was then that the widow realised that Toshiko didn't use any perfume. Apparently Yuzuki, her husband, never told Toshiko to wear any perfume because he thinks her body odour wasn't bad. Ouch at what is implied there. The widow then continues to bitch about how at least he should have told Toshiko to wear heavy make-up than no make up at all. Before Gai left the house, the housekeeper appears and gives Gai the cage containing Mao. Gai is unhappy about this and as a result, he doesn't notice that he's been followed by the contractor. When Gai passes a river, he entertains the idea of throwing Mao into the river. Mao immediately protests, telling Gai that is considered animal abuse. Gai, however, is too dumb to realise that Mao is the one who speaks.

The contractor then appears behind Gai, demanding that Gai returns his jacket to him. Gai immediately recognises the Contractor as the guy that he saw sitting at the open cafe. He guesses that the Contractor has something to do with the case, prompting said Contractor to think that Gai is actually a Contractor as well. In reverse, Gai assumes that the Contractor was the one who killed Toshiko. The Contractor doesn't know what Gai is talking about but he doesn't care anymore. He decides to use his power to take control of Gai's body so he can get Gai's jacket. In doing so, Gai's body falls backwards, knocking the cage down into the river. Mao who notices this decides to take control of a nearby crow and snatch the jacket away from Gai, who is controlled by the Contractor. Unfortunately, Mao doesn't pay attention while flying and ends up smacking the crow's body dead into the side of a bridge. Mao has no choice but to return to his body.

At this point, the Contractor realises that he saw the same cat who attacked him the day before. He decides to confront Mao and almost drowns the cat. Before he can do so, however, the Contractor finds himself being attacked by Hei's cable. Gai's body is then slammed into the railings near the river. Realising that he can't do much with Gai's body, the Contractor throws away his jacket an dtransfers his consciousness back to his own body. Before Hei can do anything, the Contractor already runs away from the scene. Hei tries to catch up with him but is distracted by the sound of Mao asking for help because Gai's body falls on top of his cage, drowning both of them into the river. Hei decides to stop the chase and saves Mao and Gai instead. The next day, Gai ends up getting the flu due to falling into the river. Kiko, who's back from her holiday wants to know what Gai was thinking when he chose to swim in this kind of season.

Gai tells Kiko that he too has no idea, pissing off Kiko in the process. Gai complains that a man's work is hard and moreover, he still can't find the black cat. Kiko is unhappy to hear this especially after Gai calls her "Miss flat-chest". She, however, decides to ignore his comment and focuses on the garbage collection within the mansion. When Gai replies with another sexual-based joke, however, Kiko lost it and threatens to sue the loser. Kiko then tells Gai that there's been strange talks around the neighbourhood about the widow. Because of this, Gai goes back to the neighbourhood with the picture of the widow and starts interviewing the neighbours. Unfortunately his investigation doesn't bring much result. That is until he sees a bunch of garbage cleaners taking out the garbage bags out of Toshiko's mansion. When the sun shines, something is illuminated out of the plastic bottles located in the front door.

Meanwhile, Yin gives Hei a photo of the Contractor that he encounters a few nights ago. Hei confirms that this is the same guy that he saw and asks Mao to take a look at it. Mao, however, seems rather distracted and not paying any attention. As it turns out, Mao has just received information from the net. Mao wonders if he didn't tell Hei before that the server compensates for the insufficiency of the brain of a cat. Sometimes it doesn't work and the cat's consciousness takes over. At least that's what happened when he was in the mansion. Anyway, Mao agrees that's the same person so Yin identifies him as Ukiyama Norio and his power is the ability to manipulate gravity. Hei is surprised to hear this because he thought the guy's ability is to possess other bodies. Yin doesn't know about this. All she knows is that the guy's past activity was in North India with another Contractor called Amitabh Kapur, who has the ability to possess others.

Upon hearing this Mao realises that the Contractor is actually Kapur, who at one point took over Ukiyama Norio's body. However, while doing so, Kapur's body got into accident. As a result, Kapur is now stuck in Ukiyama's body. Meanwhile, Gai informs the widow that according to police's report, his husband's previous wife was suffering from chronic disease. While walking on the stairs, Toshiko suffered from spasm and tried to hold onto the weak railings. It's been decided that this is an accident and yet he's not sure about this. The widow wonders if Gai is suspecting her and tries to convince him that the whole thing was an accident. In response Gai asks the widow why she didn't tell him that she went to Toshiko's place. He believes that Toshiko didn't take the widow's cat and that right from the beginning, the widow simply wanted to send someone to the mansion to find the dead body. He thinks the widow knew that he'd encounter the corpse in the mansion.

In addition to this, there are testimony from the neighbours that the widow came to Toshiko's house half a year ago, the same time when Toshiko disappeared. Because of this Gai believes that the widow has enough motive to kill Toshiko. When the wife asks for proof, Gai admits that he doesn't have any. This is just a detective's intuition. Because of this, he'd appreciate it if the widow will surrender herself to the police. The widow simply laugh and reminds Gai that he has no proof. She claims that when she came to the house, Toshiko was already dead. Half a year ago, she heard that her mansion had become a garbage mansion so she came to see it for herself. She claims that's the same house where Yuzuki used to reside in when he was young so she doesn't want it to be polluted. When she arrived there, no one answered the door so she decided to go in. Inside she found many garbage bags and in the middle of them, was the dead body of Toshiko.

She, however, assures Gai that she didn't kill her and just want someone else to find the dead body. Meanwhile, on the rooftop of a building, the Contractor meets someone else again, asking if the guy is the one who called him. At the same time the widow admits that the reason she didn't want anyone to find the body sooner is because she wanted Toshiko's body odour, the odour that Yuzuki likes to turn into rotting smell. A flashback then shows the widow running out of the house in disgusts and vomitting in the frontyard. She, however, then laughed and thought to herself that it would have been better if the body rots and releases disgusting smell. Gai is angry to hear this because the widow stole Yuzuki from Toshiko, leaving the woman surrounded only in garbage. He believes that the widow already obtained everything. The widow disagrees and tells Gai that Yuzuki liked to feel all sorts of sensation. To achieve this, he sees, touches, and licks. Eww.

While the widow can't be defeated by Toshiko in this regards, Yuzuki also loves to smell. She explains that Yuzuki has attachment to smell and the smell that he liked wasn't the widow's smell. Meanwhile, the Contractor tells the guy he's speaking to that he intends on leaving this damp country once he gets something from the guy. Unfortunately for the Contractor, the other guy turns out to be Hei, who proceeds to electrocute him to death. Mao and Hei recovers the colourful vials from the dead Contractor and hands it over to Huang. When Hei asks Mao to go, however, Mao stands still and asks himself if the guy's payment is to smell socks. Eww again. On a second thought, Mao realises that the guy probably just want to smell the odour of his old body, which lingers on the socks. He believes the guy already paid all of his price when the guy lost his body just like him.

Preview

Meanwhile, Gai is on his way to go back home when he realises that it's raining outside. Much to his surprise, the suspicious maid comes out and hands him an umbrella. It looks like the maid has a crush on him. The next day, a high school girl sees a cat and finds a tag name nearby. The tag says "Miiko". Back in his office, Gai tells himself that he still hasn't found the cat and thinks that there might not be a missing cat after all. Either way he doesn't care since he receives the rest of the remuneration for the trouble that he went through. His thought comes to a halt when Kiko burst in through the door, squeeing about the fact that she just saw Hei again in that ramen place. Meanwhile, Hei wakes Mao from his sleep because Huang calls them. Mao grumbles and tells Hei that he was dreaming. When Hei wonders if Mao dreams, Mao tells him that he does but it's a dream without altruism like eating normally or taking bath normally. When he sees Hei looking gloomy, he tells the guy that this is a good time to laugh.

Impression:

This is one hell of a weird episode which focuses entirely on body odour. The widow was willing to let the body of her husband's ex to rot so that she can feel better about her own. Speaking of which, I really didn't need a detail description of what her old husband did to her. That was beyond creepy. Meanwhile, the Contractor smells his sock because it's the only thing that can remind him of his old body. That's just gross. I don't know what kind of smell Amitabh Kapur (the name sounds like one of Bollywood's movie star name) used to emit from his body but it must be pretty powerful one for him to miss it. I guess the body that he uses now is not as smelly as his old body. This makes me wonder about what happens to the real Ukiyama Norio? Did he die when Amitabh took over his body? It's obvious that something similar also happened to Mao because he is now trapped in the body of a cat and has to rely on a server so that his thought patterns does not become cat-like. I found that hilarious for some reason.

© memento 2003