Jigoku Shoujo Futakomori ep.18

February 12, 2007 | 13 Comments

There is nothing extraordinary about this episode except for 2 things: the minimal use of Enma Ai and her assistant and the Memento style narrative structure. I suspect the first one is an attempt to minimise the budget by not using the regular cast as often as they usually do on other episodes. The majority of the dialogue and narration in this episode is delivered by the character of the week, Rina. Enma Ai doesn't even use her "Ippen Shinde Miru" trademark here. The second one is a lot more interesting but I don't think it's effective or make the story any more interesting. All we know that someone wants to send another person to Hell and the narrative uses flashbacks to complete the background story.

The episode begins with a young woman feeding some foods to an older, seemingly paralysed woman. At one point she puts too much on the mouth and the old woman snaps, demanding the young woman to wipe her mouth. After doing so the young woman narrates by saying that it was that day that she decided to send this woman to Hell. A flashback to half a year ago revealed that the young woman is called Takeda Rina and she's on her way to the Chinese restaurant with her father. The reason that they went there was to meet Rina's fiancee, Masato, and his parents. As Rina and Masato went out to have a walk together, Rina narrates how the wedding was decided to be in Spring next year. One day while she was working, Rina received a phone call from her father asking her to go back home. Rina actually had a plan to meet her fiancee after work but decided to cancel it since her father begged her to come home soon.

At home Rina's father revealed that he intends on taking care of Rina's estranged mother in the house. Her father claim that due to carelessness, Rina's mother got into a traffic accident and became paralysed. Because she needed people to take care of her, Rina's father decided to bring her home. Rina narrates about how she only had a vague memory of her mother as a child. Apparently before Rina got the chance to know her better, her mother already disappeared from Rina's life. In fact, there was only one occasion where her mother was smiling at her. A flashback then showed a young Rina trying to give a marble to her mother but her mother looked cold and unresponsive towards the gesture. One day Rina's mother left her and her father to go overseas and stay with a man that she met in junior high school. Rina believes that the accident was her mother getting bad karma and thinks that her father is too kind-hearted.

Rina explains that her father hasn't taken her mother's name off the family registry. However, in the case that he refuses to take care of her mother, her mother will have to go to a public institute. The argument between Rina and her father ended with Rina claiming that she won't help in any way. A few days later, Rina's mother was taken by ambulance back to the house. Despite her initial refusal, Rina eventually agreed to greet her mother, Michiyo. Much to Rina's surprise, Michiyo immediately scolded her and her father for not knocking before entering the room. She told them that although they are taking care of her, it doesn't mean they can be mannerless. She also reminded them that it's them who wanted to take care of her when as far as she remembers, no one had asked them to do so. Rina was angry upon hearing this but before she could throw in an equally bitchy comment, her father already apologised for their mistakes.

A few days later, an insurance manager called Kitazaki came to the house to review a care planning for Rina's mother. However, because the condition of Rina's mother does not meet the specified criteria, she couldn't apply for nursing insurance. This means Rina and her father must take full responsibility of the total care cost. Meanwhile inside the room, Michiyo was starring at the moon from her window while Kikuri observed her from the tree above. Not far from her, Ai and Wanyuudou also observed Michiyo from a far. Wanyuudou claimed that if it were him, he wouldn't get near that old woman. The flashback then went forward to one month prior to the incident. Because of her situation at home, Rina seems having difficulty concentrating at work. For example, she forgot to send the fax that her boss asked her to send. At home Rina's father was trying to wash the clothes when his wife pressed the emergency buzzer.

However, when he went to check on her, he found out that she simply had an itchy back and wanted him to scratch her back. Rina mentions how his father was clearly exhausted. Since she can't just leave her father like this, eventually she decided to help him taking care of her mother. Unfortunately Rina's mother turned out to be a very difficult person to care for. When Rina tried to feed her, she kept complaining about the food being cold and then being too hot. She even threatened to sue them for abuse. One night Rina and her father were watching TV program which featured Jigoku Tsuushin as its topic. Upon hearing this, Rina absent-mindedly wondered if she should write her mother's name on that site. In response her father asked her not to joke around about things like that. Meanwhile, Kikuri paid a visit to Michiyo who's holding something in her hand. Surprisingly Michiyo was capable of talking kindly to Kikuri.

Kikuri wanted to know what is it that Michiyo is holding but Michiyo simply told her that it's nothing. At the same time, Rina accessed Jigoku Tsuushin at 12 midnight and logged in her request. She narrates that Ai appeared behind her and gave her the straw doll, asking her to pull the string if she wants to send her mother to Hell. However, if Rina does this, she too will go to Hell after she dies. Ai then ended the conversation by saying that what happens next is left to Rina's decision. Fast forward to one week prior to the incident, Rina's fiancee told her that maybe they should postpone their wedding since he feels there are many bad things happening to Rina. He suggested that they should "wait and see". Rina wondered if what he meant by this is to wait until her mother died. Her fiancee denied this but Rina knew that her fiancee's parents started to have doubts. When Rina's father heard this, he apologised to her daughter.

This, however, didn't appease Rina and in her anger, she told her father that maybe he should move out with her mother. She quickly regretted her words and apologised to her father. Rina's father explained that he's indebted for life to Michiyo. He then dropped the bombshell by telling Rina that she's not really Michiyo's daughter. As it turns out, when Michiyo found out that she could not conceive, Rina's father asked her to allow him having a child from a surrogate mother since he prefers having his own child than adopting a child. Despite her reluctance, Michiyo agreed to this. However, she clearly became unhappy after Rina was born. Rina's father admitted that he's stupid for thinking that Michiyo was happy when Rina was born. Michiyo changed because of this and refused to open her heart to him anymore. Rina explained that her father had been visiting her mother without Rina's knowledge. However, Michiyo refused to come back.

When Rina's father tried to persuade Michiyo to come and live again with him, she accused him of just wanting a peace of mind for himself. She then decided to kill herself in front of him by jumping into traffic. Instead of being dead, however, she ended up being paralysed due to the injuries. Upon hearing this, Rina wondered what happened to her own mother but her father told her that she's passed away 10 years ago. That night, Rena pulled out the straw doll from her drawer and told herself that what happens next is her decision. Unknown to Rina, her father happened to walk in front of her room. At the same night, Kikuri came to visit Michiyo again to ask for the thing that Michiyo was holding. Michiyo, however, refused to give Kikuri the item no matter what. The next morning, Rina's father takes Michiyo for a walk using her wheelchair. Rina decides to use the opportunity to use the straw doll but she can't find it in her drawer.

Ai then appears to let her know that it's futile to search for it since the item no longer belongs to her. At the same time, Rina's father asks Michiyo if she can forgive him for asking her for a permission to let Rina being born into this world. To him Rina is very important so he wants Michiyo to be able to forgive them. Michiyo, however, refuses to forgive them so Rina's father has no choice but to send her to Hell using the straw doll. When Rina gets there, Michiyo is no longer in the wheelchair. Inside Hell, Michiyo looks "frighteningly calm" according to Wanyuudou. Hone-Onna thinks it's because she's seen Hell in the previous world. In the aftermath, Rina finds out the marble that she once gave to Michiyo. She thinks that was the point when Michiyo's heart reacted in human way. If she assumes that, Rina feels that she might be able to forgive Michiyo. However, there is no way to confirm it anymore.

Impression:

I get the impression that we're supposed to sympathise with Michiyo but I find it hard to do so since her attitude was quite off-putting. If she didn't want her husband to have children with another woman, she should have refused the idea. That way her husband would know her real opinion right from the start. Instead of doing this, however, she foolishly agreed to let her husband have children with a surrogate mother and then became jealous later on. That is fine on its own but she should have just left him and move on with another man. I don't see why she would foolishly throw herself in front of a bus. It's one thing to be heartbroken, it is quite another to ruin your whole life by jumping in front of a moving vehicle. On the other hand, I also find the solution to be unnecessary. Is it really that difficult to have her shipped to a hospital/institution. She was going to go there anyway before Rina's father decided that he would take care of her.

What's even more puzzling is the fact that Michiyo is clearly capable of moving on with her life. She clearly doesn't have resentment towards the entire world despite her circumstance. She was shown to be able to converse normally with Kikuri of all people. This is why I don't understand why she doesn't just tell her husband that she'd like to move out of the house. My guess is she wants to make her husband suffer for being 'unfaithful' towards her and what better way of doing this than to make his life and the life of the child she never wanted miserable? One thing that I don't understand is how Rina's father gets first priority in using the doll when Rina was the one who contacted Ai first. Is there some kind of deadline where if you don't use the doll for a certain days and someone else asks for it, that person gets the doll? Or is it more like if two people want to send the same person to Hell, the last person who puts in the request gets the doll?

On next week's episode: Lots of naked butt. Please look forward to it.

© memento 2003