Rea’s back-story is given and we get to know her less than normal relationship with her father…
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After five days of trying different poisonous herbs there are still no results. Rea then thinks of something and leaves. We now enter a flashback explaining Rea’s father’s over the top ‘love’ for her. She realised, when she grew older, that what he was doing was abnormal, but she couldn’t escape her father’s constant surveillance on her through his subordinates.
She made her first friend in highschool who also came from a posh family so his father approved. She told her about his father’s ‘love’ for her and she tells her to tell him to stop.
Present day and Rea’s taking a long time. Chihiro goes to look and finds her climbing a cliff, he rushes over just in time to catch her when she slips. She later says that if she had died she’d want him to bring her back to life.
Flashback continues as Rea tried to fight his dad’s ‘love’ and later found her only friend had transferred as her dad had lost his job. So to stop misfortune to others she gave in to her father’s ‘wishes’.
Present day once more, they try the herb Rea picked but still nothing. So Chihiro decides to give up and bury Babu the next day. Chihiro takes her some of the way home as she injured her foot and bid farewell next to a secret route Rea uses to come in and out if her home without her father’s noticing. But unfortunately, her father catches her today.
Chihiro heads back home to find Ranko there and she questions where he’s been. She manages to open the box Chihiro carries Babu in and a vicious cat jumps out and away.
Rea unfortunately is grounded even from going to school, in despair she takes out a bottle from her pocket filed with some of that poisonous resurrection potion Chihiro made and decides to drink it to take her own life.
Thoughts:
Well, that surprised me, that the cat’s ‘alive’ again. I had a feeling his potion would work because of the opening theme making Babu quite a big part of this anime so I thought he’d be ‘back’ somehow, but I honestly didn’t think he’d be resurrected. I mean yeah like I said had a feeling, but didn’t think it’d happen.
I thought it’d be a more realistic anime, but resurrection just threw realism completely out of the window which of course means anything can happen, i.e. this zombie girlfriend thing can very likely happen especially since Rea took a small amount of that potion herself. The poison can kill her and the potion itself then revives her perhaps? So… that scene with her guts falling out from the first episode could become real…? That would be very interesting, as I wonder how Chihiro deals with a girlfriend who wants to eat his brainz. But of course there’s also the chance that the potion is too weak to do any major damage to her and everything continues as normal, though something needs to break the ‘deadlock’ of her being grounded, wonder what it’ll be.
I’m not quite sure how I feel about his father ‘love’ thing… It’s extremely disturbing, yes it definitely does the job of her wanting to commit suicide and make it half believable, but it’s just too disturbing. I didn’t like how the episode focused quite a bit on that, I know it’s needed, but it’s put me off. However, it won’t stop me watching, we know what his dad’s like now, so there should be no need to remind us again. I do give them credit for trying something different to the usual high class family child who stays home and studies and don’t get out and is forced into many things because of his/her social status, but this isn’t the best replacement. I’m hoping this anime won’t end up being that ‘weird’ one, if you know what I mean. Animes are remembered for extremely good or bad points, normal animes will slip your memory, unless there’s a huge upset, like School Days… but yes, my point is I hope this anime won’t be remembered for this father daughter relationship…
The majority of the background story of Rea was expected, friend did something bad, father wasn’t happy and ‘crushed’ their family, friend hate her and so she becomes distant with everyone and finds everything hopeless. Nothing surprised me, although I do think her friend jumped to conclusions too quickly, but I’m not too concerned about that, doesn’t go into detail and it’s just a background story that did what it needed to do.
The initial interest I had hasn’t died, it’s progressed nicely with Babu coming alive so of course it’d keep my interest, and with Rea drinking that potion too it gets more interesting. Only thing I don’t want to see is more of Rea’s father daughter relationship…
4 comments
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April 17, 2012 at 2:16 am
Joojoobees
Yeah, I’m glad I decided to skip this episode. That was exactly the scenario I have no intention of seeing.
April 17, 2012 at 2:20 pm
Lucretia
It is a needed plot device, but I guess as long as you know that it happened that’s all you need and don’t need to disturb yourself watching it. I’m sure we won’t see much more of it now… hope rather.
April 19, 2012 at 10:20 pm
Lunamaniac
It’s a good episode. Although watching it is uncomfortable it adds real depth to Rea’s character. Also the relationship between Rea and her father is in no way straightforward. This article is consistently ambiguous regarding the nature of his love as is the anime. It’s not so crudely represented as some of the backstories in Mirai Nikki for instance and Rea’s father has an interesting dimension in that at heart he believes that what he is doing is best for her while remaining totally detached from reality. As a character Rea’s father is very interesting and I doubt you will have a chance to get to know him later on. I’m sure he will continue to have a major impact on the plot but without knowing his background the anime could become hard to follow.
April 20, 2012 at 12:33 pm
Lucretia
All weird relationships are never straightforward, if it was it wouldn’t be weird. I’m just saying that it’s too disturbing to try and follow it wholeheartedly and not get weirded out at some stage. There are some people that are detached from reality in a good way and yeah I can follow them and try to understand them, but I just can’t bring myself to try and understand her father, the end result will always be this relationship he has with his daughter so when I think of that I lose interest. I don’t mean he’s not interesting, heck, he’s probably the most interesting, but just in a bad way that makes you not want to have anything to do with him.
Hence why I said I do like how this anime takes a different direction to the high class family child hating his/her life, but they took it a direction where a lot of us feel uncomfortable with, which might not have been the best idea.
I think my basic point is do you want to get to know the reasons behind a murderer or would you rather stay away? Some would want to know, fair enough, but I think most of us would stay away. I don’t deny he’s probably an interesting person or that the murder wasn’t straightforward, but it’s the fact that no one would want to understand them.