Shinrei Tantei Yakumo – 08

「つながる想い～縁～」 (Tsunagaru Omoi ~En~)
“Connected Feelings ~Bonds~”

Ishii – you are totally awesome now. After you let Gotou get abducted without even trying to save him, I was super disappointed with you. A man in the police force, but even before being a police officer, you are Gotou’s partner! Of course, after that nice punch to the face from Chief Miyagawa I was ready for Ishii to take all of his pretentious fear and kick it to the curb. After getting a small taste of his rough childhood with his overzealous father who forced him to become a police officer instead of letting him become a mangaka, I started to feel pretty bad for him. Just as I was about to start pitying him, Ishii took all of that hate I had built up against him for the past month or so and transformed it all into pure joy. I’m a sucker for when someone goes out and overcomes their inability to do something and starts to push forward at whatever they are shooting for – especially when others around them notice. As a great example, Miyagawa’s new attitude toward Ishii makes it clear that she’s noticed (and likes) the change in his personality. Especially after Miyagawa went as far as to secretly provide him information and give him some counseling as a police officer, I get the feeling I’m not the only person who likes the new Ishii. Plus, did you hear how awesome he sounded when he was consoling Gotou’s wife?

Getting back on track with the actual episode, it looks like everyone who isn’t a police officer seems to have some really good skills of deduction. After Ishii gathers the newspaper girl, Haruka, and Isshin (Yakumo’s uncle) together in one spot, in less than five minutes Haruka is able to come up with some pretty good connections using her insane skills of deduction. After she learns that Yakumo was looking at the map with location of where the tape was filmed at, she notices that there are train tracks all around the house. As she checks the timestamp on the tape against the train schedules, she notices that in the video there are no sounds of a train going by. And not only was the tape not filmed at the Nanase mansion (the quadruple murder case mansion) but after some quick detective work by Ishii, the group learns that the name of the journalist who filmed the tape was a fake. As if right on cue, Isshin comes out with a letter from Haruka’s mother to Yakumo’s mother. The letter having arrived just after Yakumo’s mother disappeared, which in itself is coincidental enough, but it contained some really interesting information about Yakumo and Haruka. Not only did both their mothers know each other, but they were both pregnant with their respective child when they met first met. Other then Isshin describing it as our couple being connected by the strings of fate, I’m super excited for some sort of extravagant twist with this revelation at the end of this arc.

At the same time, Takeda Shunsuke suddenly appears out of nowhere. If you remember from last episode, Takeda is the man who is believed to have committed the Nanase Quadruple Murder. After making his flashy appearance this episode by literally walking in front of two policemen right next to the Nanase mansion, a lot more questions were raised with his appearance. First, Takeda is obviously not the man who murdered the entire Nanase household – which raises the question of how he actually became the man who everyone thinks murdered the Nanase family. Second, the only thing revealed about Takeda is that he is actually Yakumo’s mother’s fiancé. Which at first sounds like nothing terribly important, except for the fact that he single-handedly prevented Haruka from getting abducted. From everything I’ve seen so far this episode I’m totally pumped to see just how crazy the last episode of this arc gets. From having two main characters missing, the entire police force in a frenzy, to Takeda having some sort of relationship with both Yakumo and Haruka, I hope this arc goes out with a bang!

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