Hey guys ^^

It has been, more or less, a month since my last update, and prior to that I lapsed into some sort of unprecedented hiatus. Worry not though, ’cause I ain’t quitting yet. So yeah, since it’s my holiday break I thought, what better chance to bring this blog to life.

To kick things off, I’m here to talk about the penultimate episode of the mystery/fantasy Fall 2011 series, Un-Go.

If you have been following the series, then you might understand when I say that I have a love-hate feeling for it. I mostly like Un-Go for the characters and the various themes about truth and lies. Then again I’m not fond of the way they lay out a story for an episode. It definitely feels as if they wanted to stray away from the norm of crime solving and detective themed shows where the formula would be: “crime -> case -> investigation -> catch the culprit”, and focused more on what isn’t regularly shown in such shows such as deeper, human values and moral ethics. They did succeed in changing up the genre, however, whether it was for the better is the true question.

The tenth episode continues from where the previous episode left off. We have Yuuki Shinjurou who is outraged by the assumption that Kaishou Rinroku had been and is still using Bettenou, the reality warping enigma from episodes seven and eight. This causes him to decide on attacking Kaishou directly, forcing him into a corner where he would need to justify being in “two places at once” as seen in episode nine. With the help of Kazamori and Diet member Kuramitsu Mine, the plan works, but the desired outcome did not come to fruition.

The result was the apparent suicide of Rinroku, making people believe that Shinjurou could be partly the cause. Shinjurou however does not believe it. According to the novelist, falsifying the event of death is also possible for Bettenou. The situation also becomes trickier when Inga is involved. He seems to be “helping” Bettenou, maybe out of fear, or something else entirely. I think it’s the former, but we still don’t get any more details about Inga and Bettenou’s relationship other than they are both supernatural entities.

This episode, like most penultimate episodes, was the final build up for this series. It sets the stage with the last scene from the tenth episode: an invitation with Kaishou’s stamp. I do however doubt that it will be the confrontation between Rinroku and Shinjurou. Based on this episode, we now see that Rinroku was not aware that he was suspected of having a double, which in turn was probably purposely made for him to be a scape goat. I feel that Hayami, the officer from the Metropolitan Police, will play a bigger role in the series finale. If you would notice, he’s been getting a lot of attention these past few episodes.

I do however, feel that this series didn’t go in the direction I had hoped. They introduced some key characters a little late in the game, and it made the series, for me, a little bit more confusing. Not the type of confusion you get when you can’t solve a puzzle, but confusion when there’s just so many pieces to the puzzle, but the frame for it is relatively smaller. This episode helped a bit, but I still can’t shake off the thought of how they’re going to fit all of the pieces of the story and make it into a nice picture.

I don’t really think that their spin on the detective theme was a downside, but it leaves room for possible gaps. Hopefully I get proven wrong by the series finale.

P.S. – Anyone know the title of that guitar/clapping/techno tune that plays every now and then in Un-Go? ^^