Check out last week’s episode five review here.
This show is extremely hard to review sometimes. Not because it is bad, but because I literally don’t know what to say. Or rather, how to say it. How do you provide commentary on a girl of fourteen watching her mother be brutally gang raped right in front of her? Or how despite continually ragging on her, you still feel bad but don’t know what she should do in that situation?
I thought that was the case, but believing one thing to be true and seeing it play out in front of your eyes are two different things. It’s even more disturbing when you realize that she was only spared because the Itto-ryu leader of that night proclaimed for her to not be harmed. But that didn’t stop the creep who wore her mother’s torso on his shoulder from trying to kill her.
From trying to consummate his sick love turned obsession turned possession. That didn’t stop Rin from having his fingers stuck down her throat. That didn’t stop her mother’s face being painted with burial makeup before her spirit was broken. Before her body was killed. That didn’t stop Rin from being painted with the same exact markings.
It didn’t stop her death. Manji did.
Rin met Kawakami Araya and Renzo. I have to liken that to fate, that Rin meets Renzo and Manji Kawakami. It was going to happen, no matter the time. If things hadn’t gone as they did, along the line Rin would have had to confront him. There was no escaping it, no matter her choices, no matter her minute desires. The world keeps spinning. It goes on, and so does society. Whether you progress along with it, or not.
I think that with this episode, this encounter with Kawakami Araya, Rin is beginning to understand that. Rin is beginning to realize that not everyone is willing to dig up the past, or repent just to heal her hurt feelings. That not everyone cares about her pain, and the only way they see fit to end it is her death.
This sends the message that in their world, there is no respite to the ills of the past. Maybe not even in death. But if you no longer wish to feel, you should take yourself out of this world. If you are too weak, too gentle – you will not survive.
The episode begins and ends with a pinwheel spinning. Before leaving with Manji, the pinwheel falls out of Rin’s back pocket. I don’t know if this signifies that she stopped the cycle of revenge and hate (remember her grandfather’s quote from the former student) or if it means she is leaving her childhood behind. Maybe she has finally seen that her way might not always work, and will try fighting next time.
I don’t know.
What do you think?
次の巻: Cruelty Without Merit
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