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「Chapter.26 黒い河② / Chapter.27 扉の向こう」 (Chapter.26 Kuroikawa / Chapter.27 Tobira no Mukou)
“Chapter.26 Black River (2) / Chapter.27 Beyond The Door”
Man, this show never ceases to amaze me with how it handles its characters.
Tatsuyuki and Gotou.
With a majority of this week’s episode revolving around Tatsuyuki and to a lesser extent Gotou (more on why the thing is title Gotou later), it was nice to get another chance to see 3-gatsu’s world from another perspective. Instead of the dark world full of misfortune that a young prodigy must face, we instead got a lighter take that felt more slice-of-life than usual. Following Tatsuyuki’s routine literally from start to finish, it was nice to see some of the simpler things play out. That and it was really interesting to see his thought process play out when it came to dealing with the scarily talented people all around him. And by interesting, I mean a little too damn real. Because as tough as it is to put into words, I’m sure there are people out there who felt like things got a little too real a little too fast as we listened to him both feel peeved about not being considered a threat while simultaneously accepting it and even going as far to reason out why he was okay with that.
Anyways, before I get into some sort of existential crisis, let me dive into what I really wanted to ask — Just what kind of person is Gotou? It’s obvious that the story is trying to paint him as the evil shogi player who beat up Rei and is doing naughty things with his sister, but just how much of that is truth and how much of it is hyperbole? We know that he has a wife who’s been very ill and the mental stressed involved with that must be monumental. We know that something happened between him and Rei that involved Kyouko, but seeing how riled up Rei gets whenever he’s around Gotou, who’s to say what transpired in Rei’s memories is accurate? And besides that, what else is there to go on except for whatever Kyouko says, something that we already know is dodgy at best? What I’m trying to get at here is that, while he may not be a saint (I don’t think anyone except Momo is truly a saint in this show), he may not be the “villain” the story is trying to paint him to be.
(Unless, of course, everything is revealed later and I’m completely wrong. Which if that ends up being true, I’ll take some shame in trying to see anything “good” in him.)
Looking Ahead
Boy, I was wondering how Nikaidou was going to play into the episode and never did I expect he’d be siccing his older brother on Rei. Anyways, it looks like Rei is in for a tough fight and I hope that we get an episode full of shogi antics unlike anything we’ve seen before. Hopefully I didn’t scare you too much with trying to see some good in Gotou and I’ll catch you then!
Preview
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Smith’s resigned attitude really hit home as well. And I guess in Gotou’s case, people just have a lot of things in their lives that manifest in all sorts of complicated behaviours, a mixed bag of very occasional humane, nice and “normal” actions, and then there’s the super sadistic tendencies which overshadow the “nice” things, like how Kyoko acts?
Been waiting so long to see Shimada! Nikaidou and him are one of my favs, aside from the saintly sister trio ofc.
I can’t wait to see what happens next week with Rei and Shimada!
Saying “let’s continue” right at the end of the episode, what a tease :/
I wonder about the same thing regarding Gotou. The way he acts after winning against Tatsuyuki is like another man compared to how he was pictured throughout the series. Made me thinking all of this is just a plot by Kyouko, though I don’t see any reason why Kyouko want to help Rei.