Let me start off by saying: this was one of the tensest chapters of any story I've seen in a long time. We've suspected the killer's identity going as far back as his introduction in Episode 02, and the story has sprinkled breadcrumb after breadcrumb of evidence along the trail to his big reveal. So the usual suspenseful moment in most murder mystery stories, the killer's identity, wasn't perhaps as big as it could have been. But none of that affected one unaswered question:
what was going to happen now that Satoru was locked in the car with Kayo's killer?
Not since last spring's
Death Parade have I had the pleasure of watching for so long with such bated breath as I did the entire second half of Episode 10 of
BokuMachi.
That entire car ride was just t-e-n-s-e
tense. I've watched the entire episode twice already and I would have watched the second half alone for a third time but for running out of free time this week. It's just so
good!
But let's rewind to the start of the episode, shall we? :'D I feel like
BokuMachi Episode 10 is divided into two halves: the Nakanishi Aya half and the Revealing The Killer half. The entire episode taken as a whole felt really information dense to me. A friend of mine disagrees, but whether he's right or I'm right -- which a quick look at the manga later can confirm for us -- I felt like this episode bore a lot in common directorially with Episode 01, which we know covered an entire tankoubon's worth of ground in just twenty minutes. I'm not sure how much of this has to do with what Yuki wrote in an earlier post, stating that the anime is confirmed to end the same way the manga will, and how much of it was just the way the material adapts to television. Regardless, the first half of the episode felt like it could've easily been stretched to two or even three episodes in some other programs.
Aya's scene with the boys at the gazebo was pretty cute and entertaining. I loved all of their reactions. Kenya's reaction to learning that Aya is ahead of him academically, even though he's the class genius ... Satoru's reaction to Aya's off-hand dismissal of heroes ... Aya's reaction to Kazu's declaration that secret bases are "A MAN'S ROMANCE!" ... the entire scene was great. Aya had felt like a probable sixth or a seventh wheel up until this point, but this one scene did wonders for introducing her to the children's lives.
I thought Kazu x Aya was a pretty cute, pretty unexpected development. Characters like Kazu, the class clowns, are usually destined to be single in stories like this one. It was interesting for the Kazu character to get the girl for once. Not really sure how else to put this one into words. You just have to watch the scene. And then I can simply say, "I enjoyed it.
"
We finally see the children's secret base! Aaaaaand it's revealed to have pretty much zero relevance to the Kayo plot. ^^; haha Welp, count me down for the Animation Team Fooled Me squad. I put too much stock in that pretty website picture. Not only does Kayo not factor into the story at this point, but the kids' secret base doesn't even look anything like what is pictured in that artwork!
Aya the tsundere. I was listening for KugiRie's voice but couldn't discern who this was. Regardless, classic tsundere.
As we start to transition from the Aya half of the episode to the killer half of the episode, the writer and production team both do a good job of sprinkling
yet more breadcrumbs identifying Yashiro as the culprit. This I credit to starting to build the tension. Because when they're making it
this obvious that he's the killer but they're refraining from confirming it, all you can keep wondering is, "IS HE THE KILLER OR ISN'T HE!?" It creates tension. You're not going to be surprised either way whether he proves to be the killer or proves to be a red herring. But the excitement is in the uncertainty. You want to know which of the two he is, and they keep teasing the reveal without delivering it.
Take this, for example. You see this while watching and you start laughing to yourself, thinking, "OH
COME ON! XD" They're getting super heavy-handed with the "reveal" ... and yet
not, because you
still don't know whether this is hinting towards a Yashiro reveal or whether it's one enormous trap.
Kudos to the team for making us feel sorry for Class Bitch. It just goes to show that at ten years old pretty much all kids are kids, they're all innocent-like, and even the class bitches and bullies you can really feel sorry for looking at them through the lenses adulthood equips us with.
~*~*~*~
So let's jump ahead now to the car ride. The tension continues to build. You see Yashiro again at the hockey rink. And you witness Satoru trusting him with everything. Yes,
let's tell Yashiro all we're doing. Yes,
let's buckle up in Yashiro's car. You're watching with bated breath wondering when they're going to reveal the deal with Yashiro ...
And then they go and have Yashiro say this. And it
sends up the red flag. It sets off the siren in your brain
so, so loud. But Satoru still doesn't get it! And we still are denied our confirmation! It's all
but revealed, and yet still not revealed! THE SUSPENSE! >_<
And they return to Yashiro's habit of tapping hsi finger on the steering wheel. And your eyes are naturally drawn to the black leather gloves we so associate with murderers in our entertainment media.
And as the two continue to talk, they cut back to him tapping his finger again.
And again.
And again.
TENSION RISING.
And then Satoru goes for the candy. Only there's no candy.
And Yashiro tells him there won't be any candy.
Because this isn't his car.
And Satoru looks up, and ...
SHYIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT! >D<
So we get our first climax, our first emotional outlet for relief. Is Yashiro the killer or isn't he? He
is. Alright, cool. But like bbb's already pointed out: wasn't that really obvious?
I mean, sure, I've made the case for how tense it was for me
personally, but that's only because I felt the case was as strong for Yashiro being the killer as it was for Yashiro being a lol-obvious red herring and I couldn't discern which he was. Not everyone is going to feel the same way. Some people might not be experienced enough to suspect the red herrings. And others might be even more experienced and could've discerned that this was just a story that broadcasts its killer early and often and isn't toying around with misdirection. For such viewers, it might not have been such a tense deal getting to the revelation that Yashiro is the '88 killer and also confirmed to be the person who killed Satoru's mother in 2006.
But we're only at the halfway point of the episode. There's still an entire
second half to explore. And it's
amazing. The tension doesn't stop. It partially abates with the reveal that Yashiro's the killer, but then it sets its sights on a new question --
"How will Satoru survive now that he's trapped in the car with the killer?" He's buckled in. They're driving at 40+ miles per hour. And most importantly -- he's in his 10-year old body, absolutely no match for the adult man that is Yashiro.
Buckle up, kids, 'cause we're going for a thrilling ride to the countryside.
The story wastes no time winking at readers/viewers that it was obvious Yashiro was the killer and that Satoru should feel like an idiot for not seeing it. We spend the next couple of minutes witnessing exactly this: Satorus berates himself for not realizing Yashiro might be the killer, for confiding in Yashiro all of the important information that he did, etc.
If we step back a moment, I think we're perhaps being a little unfair to Satoru. Our criticisms still largely hold, but we have to remember: he's coming at this experience as someone living it in the real world, whereas we're coming at it as story-listeners poring over a mystery for entertainment. We look for meta clues that Satoru isn't privy to. It's a common feature of murder mysteries that the killer is someone the audience already knows prior to the killer's reveal, but in a real life situation similar to Satoru's you usually wouldn't know the killer personally. Normally you'd expect it to be a deranged member of the community, or a drifter who arrived uninvited, whom you never knew.
But yeah. It was really obvious to the viewers. Poor Satoru. ^^;
The entire car ride to the lake was super tense. Evil Yashiro is for all his obviousness a captivating villain. You're so horrified and at the same time so transfixed. You have to wonder what he's going to say next, what he's going to
do next. And you are! You're wondering what he is literally going to do now that they've driven all the way out here. Once you see the lake, it becomes obvious -- drive the car into the lake and kill the boy -- but even then you have to wonder how it's going to go down, whether he's going to slit Satoru's throat before dumping the vehicle in the lake or not, etc.
Tense. Satoru's buckled in and can't get out. Once the water starts flooding in he won't be able to escape, unlike what they show in 99% of movies where someone's in a submerged vehicle. Even an adult can't kick in the glass, much less a child, and there's no way to roll the windows down either due to all of that water pressure applying against the pane of glass. He's screwed. How is he going to get out of this one?
Aha. Whether he had a flash of brilliance and hatched this plan to entice Yashiro to save him, or whether he was just spitting insults and had no intention of getting Yashiro to save him, it's pretty clear that these words of Satoru's are going to be what ends up saving him. Yashiro is too intrigued by how Satoru managed to outmaneuver him, and even put forward the crazy theory that Satoru has seen the future. So to have the boy actually claim to have seen the future ... I think Yashiro will be too intrigued to let this one go.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Satoru's going to Revival again to an earlier time, return to this time, and do things differently. But I think that would feel like too cheap an escape to most readers, so I doubt the manga author did that. We'll see.
~*~*~*~
And finally, with almost no relevance to the entire rest of the episode ...
HOLY SHIT I WAS NOT READY FOR THIS.
There's a semi-random shot of Kayo running home to Grandma's and she just looks
so healthy and happy and cute! HRRRRRRNGH. >.< This has to be the most adorable shot we've had of Kayo the entire program.