horror

I did not expect that final episode of Mieruko-Chan to wrap everything up but I was hoping Miko would learn a little more about her abilities. Still, I can’t say I’m disappointed with this final episode that gave us some tension, a jump scare or two, and some heart-warming friendship moments. All things considered it was perhaps the best the audience could hope for given how many unanswered questions there still are.

That said, without a confirmation of a season 2 you can’t help but feel a little saddened that this has come to a close so inconclusively.

What surprises did the final episode of Mieruko-Chan have in store?

Weirdly (or maybe not) Mieruko-Chan decided rather than give viewers closure it would continue its pattern of making us question are assumptions. See episode 10 had me believe Zen was the big bad before episode 11 had me feel that I was completely wrong. Events in this episode lead me to believe that maybe he isn’t a cat killer but there’s definitely something off about him. The implication from the episode is that he’s responsible for multiple missing persons.

Though this time I’m not going to jump to conclusions. Maybe the guy just ran away after being electrocuted by a high-school teacher.

But that’s all just background for the most part and tying up a loose end in Zen’s story.

Mieruko-Chan is Miko’s story.

Her biggest loose end is the shrine and the spirits who have protected her three times throughout the series. In this episode we see her agonising over whether she should go and thank them and having some pretty horrific nightmares about that situation going horribly wrong.

Unfortunately, this plot line is left completely unresolved though there is definitely an ominous sign toward the end of the episode that those spirits have not forgotten about her and they definitely seem to think she owes them something.

With so much still to learn about why Miko can see spirits, what the shrine god actually wants from her, about Hana’s aura and appetite there’s definitely space for a sequel to this story.

But at the same time, it doesn’t really need it.

The episodic nature of the encounters up to this point kind of make each part stand alone and really other than the shrine spirits and Zen’s cat story none of the other plot threads have really carried along outside of Miko’s friendship with Hana.

And that’s why, even without tying up the loose ends, episode 12 satisfied enough.

The friendship between Hana, Yulia and Miko has continued to grow and while Yulia is still a bit of an outsider there’s clear chemistry now between her and the other two. Mieruko-Chan has really made the power of friendship work for it and with Miko and Yulia now being a little more honest with each other there’s potential for Yulia to help Miko understand a bit more about what she is seeing.

That said, the world moves on and this episode sees a lot of repeated scenes from earlier episodes as Miko walks us through her days with ghosts appearing on the bus, the bus stop, at school and at home and they’ve all become part her daily routine even if she’s still not reacting to them.

And that brings us to the end of Mieruko-Chan. You can read the full season review here.

Images from: Mieruko-Chan. Dir. Y Ogawa. Passione. 2021

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Karandi James

Well, only one episode after Mieruko-Chan convinced me teacher Zen was going to be the big bad, episode 11 of Mieruko-Chan turns our assumptions on their head in a way that this story has done before but usually within the same episode. In this case though, from the moment we met Zen back when he appeared to adopt Hana’s stray cat find, he’s been framed as bad news.

I must say, this twist played out better than expected because as this episode rolled on it made me think back over everything we actually knew about Zen and what we’d just assumed. Admittedly, when a guy is surrounded by black screaming cat spirits, one could be forgiven for drawing the obvious conclusion.

Mieruko-Chan delivered.

If I’m honest though, this episode started feeling a bit shaky. we began with a flash-back to Zen’s unhappy childhood where his mother was putting unreasonable pressure on him and was clearly emotionally manipulative. For a moment I kind of thought we were just going for a sad back-story to somehow justify or provide a motivation for Zen’s actions. Fortunately, Mieruko-Chan had thought this through.

Though Mieruko-Chan is definitely giving a nod to poor parent tropes, tragic back stories, and pretty much every other cliché in the book, once again this anime takes what we expect and gives it just enough of a twist to make it feel freshened up. It really does understand the narrative elements at play here and what audiences expect from them and knows just how far they can bend it without losing their audience.

However, that isn’t the best part of this episode.

The best part is seeing Miko actually taking action. She’s scared and uncertain and she knows she hasn’t really figured out what to do but as she says to herself, she wants to help Hana. This is a motivation that rings true for her character because this story has done the ground work in establishing a real friendship between the two girls. So Miko following Zen down alleys seems somewhat justified even if I was kind of willing her not to walk into the tunnel.

Naturally things go a bit awry and in the end Miko grabs the cat and bolts.

Like with most scenarios set up in stories, if Zen and Miko had talked this out, things may not have escalated but because the story needs to happen both characters in Mieruko-Chan go in armed with their assumptions and the situation therefore plays out ending up with the usual trope of cat running across the road just as the one and only speeding car races toward it.

Seriously, why is there always one speeding car just as the cat runs across the road? This is almost as overused as ordinary Japanese person getting hit by truck in the first episode of an isekai story.

But I guess that is because it works. If someone asks “Why did the cat cross the road?” my answer would be “If it is in an anime it happened so someone could save it from getting hit by a car.”

Fortunately, rather than dragging out the revelations, we do get a resolution by the end of the episode with the misunderstandings cleared up and Miko having used her final protection from the shrine god. Which does leave me wondering what she is going to do now given she’s seemingly no wiser as to how to deal with the ghosts.

At least though Mieruko-Chan has pushed Miko to a point where she does need to deal with them. Pretending they don’t exist and she can’t see the things she can is no longer an option.

One episode to go and I’m very curious as to how they will end things.

You can read the full season review here.

Images from: Mieruko-Chan. Dir. Y Ogawa. Passione. 2021

Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
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Karandi James

Mieruko-Chan really is riding on the power of friendship for its character motivations and emotive notes for the audience, fortunately it is doing it well with the Hana and Miko friendship firmly established and Yulia being an awkward but somewhat cute addition to the group.

While the comedy elements seem to have disappeared completely, episode 10 of Mieruko-Chan gives us a fairly decent horror set up right from the opening scene with the creepy new teacher Zen opening his door a crack to the nosy but well-meaning neighbour. Tension builds through the episode until events force Miko to really consider her strategy of ignoring the ghosts and hoping they’ll go away.

Mieruko-Chan ups the tension as we move into the final episodes.

It isn’t hard to feel sympathy for Miko in this episode. While she’s been seeing ghosts for a while now you can’t help but wonder how hard it would be to focus in class if you could see a ghost looming over each student that the teacher spoke to. Worse when that ghost is looming over you and with the teacher surrounded by angry cat spirits on the other-side, who wouldn’t feel caged?

That said, Mieruko-Chan definitely picked the right awful thing for Zen to be doing to garner contempt from the audience. The guy kills cats (and we all know anime cats are the best). If we learn nothing else about him that’s enough to make him a decent enough bad guy in this story.

However, while Miko is freaking out because of what she can see, it is Hana who we really needed to be paying attention to this episode. The first scene we see with Miko and Hana together involves them running in class and Hana as always complaining she is hungry.

This isn’t unusual and Miko largely dismisses it. However, as the episode progresses it becomes clear that something has changed because while Hana has always been hungry she’s now taking it to a new level.

But because Miko has spent the last nine episodes refusing to see or understand anything about the spirits she sees, she really doesn’t have any idea what is happening with Hana. Which is why Yulia’s inclusion in Mieruko-Chan is going to prove so necessary. Like Yulia or not (and her cute mushroom hair ties may be enough to tip you into the like group), her unthought out comment in the nurse’s office about Hana’s aura was absolutely necessary.

Without it, Miko wouldn’t have a clue and more than that, while she’s though once or twice that maybe her approach is wrong she’s never really thought she needed to take action.

Now though it is different.

Hana is being affected and more than that, Miko has also realised that the god or whatever from the shrine is only going to protect her one more time after the fox masked spirits save her from a ghost child she accidentally waved at in the park toward the end of this episode.

While the fight between the foxes and the ghost is visually interesting, it isn’t the real climax. The real climax for episode 10 of Mieruko-Chan is Miko’s emotional revelation as she realises that staying ignorant means she won’t be able to help Hana and she is also going to be in danger because what little protection she has is about to run out.

Face with this situation, you have to wonder just what Miko intends to do next. It is one thing to decide she needs to do something and another to know what it is she should be doing. I guess I’ll find out as I jump into the next episode of Mieruko-Chan.

You can read the full season review here.

Images from: Mieruko-Chan. Dir. Y Ogawa. Passione. 2021

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Karandi James

Mieruko-Chan continues to find ways to use its formula to engage the audience with episode 9 split into two distinct parts. The first focuses on Miko trying to ignore the ghosts in the school and finding the challenge nearly overwhelming. The second part has Yulia, Hana and Miko go through a gimmicky haunted house where Miko realises she can finally cut-loose and react.

The contrasting conclusions to the two parts overall combine to make this a pretty solid viewing experience.

Mieruko-Chan plays into expectations with just enough novelty to keep it entertaining.

The conclusion of episode 8 of Mieruko-Chan saw Miko’s new homeroom teacher introducing himself and by the strange coincidence that is fictional writing he is the creepy guy that Miko wouldn’t let Hana give the cat to way back at the start of the series. That’s because he’s got a seriously creepy vibe, oh and screaming cat ghosts surrounding him.

Anyway, the guy so unnerves her, as do the other large ghosts hanging around that Miko is kind of on edge. For the most part, hanging out with Hana and listening to Hana contemplate her next meal is enough to distract her, but when Hana leaves her to go collect yet more bread we see just how fragile Miko’s calm actually is.

Mieruko-Chan does a great job sometimes of not-showing the horror so much as showing the effect of it on the protagonist and when Miko stands alone in the bathroom, as far from the door as she can get, looking so small and vulnerable, they’ve done a great job of showing our usually stoic lead girl as someone who is actually a little more fragile than we may have been lead to believe.

Follow that up with the monster that crawls out of the toilet before Miko finds Yulia eating lunch in the bathroom and drags her out to eat with her and Hana and really Miko is on her last emotional nerve. So naturally, before part one is over, Mieruko-Chan decides to snap it with fairly emotional results.

I think the silent tears rolling down Miko’s face, and her simple statement about getting a bug in her eye, still unwilling to freak out those around her or to show any outward sign of her inner turmoil, was a solid ending for this first half and it leaves us with the sense that Miko is very much on edge and doesn’t have a lot more reserve in her emotional energy bank after months of seeing and trying to ignore ghosts.

It’s moments like these that really sell Mieruko-Chan to me.

That and they don’t let the episode end on such a depressing note.

Instead we cut to Hana chasing free donuts and the way to get them is to collect a stamp from a haunted house.

While at first Miko is her usual stoic self as they navigate the faux horrors of the house, soon Miko realises that for once she can react. She can scream and shriek and run around because these are not real horrors. That realisation seems to open a lid on all the repressed emotions Miko has had for several months and she really begins to enjoy herself, smiling as the three of them run from axe murderer to werewolf.

It is such a cathartic release for the character and exactly what episode 9 of Mieruko-Chan needed to balance out the first half of the episode. The end result is emotionally rewarding for the viewer and honestly even the actual ghost turning up in the haunted house couldn’t really dampen the mood too much.

I wonder though if Miko will keep in mind what happened when she told all the horrors, both fake and real, to get away from her. Is ignoring the things she sees really the best way to deal with them? Once again Mieruko-Chan has the audience wondering though no definitive answer is to be found here.

Nope, the episode is inconclusive about the creepy teacher and about Miko’s sight as always but the answers don’t seem to matter as much as just really getting inside Miko’s head and honestly they’ve done a great job this episode taking her through the full range of emotions.

You can read the full season review here.

Images from: Mieruko-Chan. Dir. Y Ogawa. Passione. 2021

Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
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Karandi James

I’m kind of loving that 8 episodes in Mieruko-Chan is giving Miko a reason to second-guess her own decision about how to deal with the things she sees. So far the running gag has been her attempts to ignore them entirely but after two encounters this week Miko starts to wonder whether that really is the right approach, before reaching a conclusion that she’s just not equipped to deal with it so might as well continue to ignore the problem.

That would work well enough for the episode but just as Miko is thanking Hana for inadvertently advising her through her story of the moth on the soda can, in walks in their new teacher and wouldn’t you know it, he’s the creepy cat guy from episode 2.

Mieruko-Chan keeps playing with its formula but never strays too far from the tried and true path.

Compared with episode 7 which had more or less one ongoing situation, episode 8 of Mieruko-Chan returns to the formula of setting up a few different situations that are loosely connected as Miko goes about her normal day and then resolving them. This episode starts with Miko and her brother shopping for a present for her mother when Miko has an unwelcome visitor in the dressing room.

I’m not going to comment on the fact that they once again found an excuse for a girl having a changing sequence in this episode. Particularly as Miko wasn’t even shopping for herself so trying the dress on in the first place made little sense. Anyone who has made it this far in Mieruko-Chan will know there’s fan-service dropped in periodically and usually it feels forced into the scene so no sense really asking once again if it is even necessary.

After successfully buying a different gift, the siblings take the train home and we get a fairly tense sequence that leads to some interesting wonderings about the world of spirits. For Miko, it is pretty traumatic. She’s sitting on the train, brother sleeping on her shoulder, and a ghost is walking down the line swinging his axe through the head of everyone sitting. And don’t think about moving, the ghost is making sure to swipe his axe multiple times through anyone moving.

While Mieruko-Chan is never actually scary, scenes like this are pretty tense and the emotional resonance the audience has with Miko as she panics and works through her options really sells the scene. Of course, if you’ve not connected with Miko as a character I suspect the effect will be somewhat diminished.

What makes the scene even better is that it turns out this axe won’t cut the person, but the girl next to Miko apparently has something inside of her which axe guy cuts, pulls out and then puts in his sack. What is he doing? Is he actually helping? Why was the other spirit thing inside the girl? We don’t know and it isn’t as though Miko is going to sit down and ask the axe wielding ghost.

It was a pretty great sequence though one I feel that was kind of let down by the final gag they decided to throw in before transitioning on with Miko needing to go buy underwear. I get that this is a comedy and we have had these odd moments of fairly flat and obvious humour at times, but here it really did take my enjoyment of the overall scene down a notch.

On the back of the scene where the ghost wasn’t hurting people but other ghosts, we see Miko and Hana saying farewell to their pregnant teacher when Miko notices a transparent blob hovering around their teacher and touching her stomach.

Mieruko-Chan builds this one up as Miko wonders what to do and finally she gives her teacher some encouragement and wishes that she’ll be careful for the remainder of her pregnancy. It is then we learn the truth about the transparent blob in a pretty touching sequence that once again makes Miko wonder if she’s doing the right thing by simply ignoring what she sees.

But in case the audience was getting all warm and fuzzy feelings about spirit babies and ghosts hunting other ghosts on trains, as Miko considers this, she encounters a truly disgusting looking creature near a vending machine and immediately reverts back to simply pretending not to see.

It is kind of the nature of Mieruko-Chan. They never stray too far from the formula they established because it is kind of the whole gag behind the story and when you have a working formula messing too much with it isn’t a good idea. Still, it was nice to see that Miko is still at least thinking about her situation and isn’t just going through the motions.

You can read the full season review here.

Images from: Mieruko-Chan. Dir. Y Ogawa. Passione. 2021

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Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

I will admit that Yuria was not my favourite addition into Mieruko-Chan given I was pretty happy with the Hana/Miko dynamic and honestly, Yuria strikes me as a bit of a brat. Still, episode 7 builds on the events from the shrine in episode 6 and finds a way to integrate Yuria more into the core cast here.

Now haunted tunnels are definitely a staple of most supernatural shows and its definitely a trope anime has explored before. My clearest memory comes from Psychic Detective Yakumo, but haunted tunnels pop up a lot, so not really surprised that this ghostly anime has decided to have the girls visit what is clearly going to be a haunted tunnel.

Mieruko-Chan sends its trio of lovely ladies into the dark.

For those who have been watching the series so far, you might wonder just why Yuria is suddenly hanging out with Miko and Hana. The set-up is a bit silly but it does make sense given what we know of her character and based on the events of the last episode.

Mieruko-Chan reminds us that Hana is oblivious to all the supernatural things around them by having her proudly displaying her picture from the shrine last week (you know the one where instead of a sunset behind her there’s actually some kind of shrine spirit destroying an evil spirit). Based on the number of likes that photo is getting online, Hana has decided to get into photography.

Seeing a way in, and wanting to prove herself stronger than Miko, Yuria inserts herself into the plot by offering to take Hana to a great spot to take photos over the weekend. Only problem is they just have to walk through this dark tunnel to get to this amazing view.

With Miko not willing to mention that she can see ghosts, so can’t explain why she doesn’t want to enter the tunnel, and Hana wanting another great photo, it is more or less inevitable that the trio will enter the tunnel.

One of the things I don’t like about Yuria’s character is her penchant for making assumptions about things around her. When we first really got to know anything about her in Mieruko-Chan, it was finding out that she assumed herself to have been accepted as an apprentice of the god-mother, meanwhile the god-mother just wanted her to go away.

Since that introduction, Yuria’s made a lot of assumptions about Miko and her actions and it continues in this episode as Miko simply goes through the process of removing a stone from her shoe and then tidying herself up after falling. I guess this technically is being played for laughs. Mieruko-Chan is technically listed as comedy. However, right from the start the strength of this anime isn’t in the moments when it tries to be funny.

What makes this episode ultimately work is again seeing Miko try to navigate wanting to get her friend (and herself) out of danger without revealing that she can see, as well as the ties the solution this week has to the conclusion of last week.

And also, while I still don’t love Yuria as a character, she was fully integrated into the friendship group by the time they wound up the story and ended up eating together. They even symbolically show Yuria potentially moving on from her self-made grudge when Hana sends her a photo of the three of them together and Yuria chooses to make it her new background, removing the god-mother who has already left the story.

While the comedy isn’t exactly great, there’s a lot to love about Mieruko-Chan and this episode was a nice solid build-up of supernatural antics with friendship sitting at the core of the solution and all and all was pretty satisfying to watch.

You can read the full season review here.

Images from: Mieruko-Chan. Dir. Y Ogawa. Passione. 2021

Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

I’ve mostly really enjoy Mieruko-Chan this season and while my initial concern in episode one was the clunky fan-service or the slightly weaker comedy elements, they’ve kind of dwindled (not disappeared) and left the elements I was enjoying. That is, the friendship between Miko and Hana, the creepy ghost things, and the reasonably solid execution each episode of setting up a situation and giving us a satisfying resolution to it.

I’d potentially go so far to say that Mieruko-Chan is the anime where I enjoy individual episodes each week the most even though there are other series I’m watching where once they are resolved I know they will stick with me longer.

It is almost as though this anime was made for episodic viewing.

Mieruko-Chan Loves To Place Hana In Seemingly Dangerous Situations

Anyway, episode 6 of Mieruko-Chan begins with Hana and Miko buying cakes. As usual Hana is cheerful and gushing over an extremely cute slice of cake, meanwhile Miko is a lot more subdued, and originally tries to buy the cake next to the one Hana is admiring, before switching again to a cake elsewhere in the cabinet. It is clear Miko has seen something, though you’ll have to watch the post-credits to see the scene as Miko does because we’re moving on to the real problem in the episode.

Oddly, this episode only has one real issue and it carries across three separate scenarios. After leaving the cake show Hana is suggesting their next location when Miko suggests they go another way and we soon see a fairly grotesque monster in the direction Hana intended to go. Then we get the boppy and colourful OP.

The first half of the episode then largely follows the oblivious Hana as she eats breakfast, helps a kid find a dog, and heads off to meet Miko. All the time lights are flickering near her and we are occasionally shown the monster from the day before following her and periodically throwing smaller monsters her way to see if her aura burns them.

Here I’m going to identify a small complaint with Mieruko-Chan. We’ve seen ghosts latch on to Hana before. They’ve neve actually harmed her but they’ve definitely been able to touch her without burning up. Maybe it is because the ones the larger creature is using are particularly weak but it kind of seems like an inconsistency given the larger monster doesn’t seem willing to actually touch Hana because of her aura.

Or maybe I’m asking too much for continuity on this.

When Hana finally meets up with Miko, Miko obviously immediately notices the monster in Hana’s wake and abruptly changes their plans to visit a shrine.

The friendship between Hana and Miko really does continue to be one of the strengths of Mieruko-Chan. Miko is terrified for her friend and really wants to help her but absolutely doesn’t want to alarm her in anyway. Instead of making any kind of fuss, Miko simply tells Hana she wanted to visit some popular power spots and they end up saying prayers at a shrine.

Also kind of cute how Miko ends up tossing in 500 yen instead of the 5 yen coin she suggests to Hana.

What happens after is kind of interesting though Miko isn’t given any kind of explanation and so the audience is also left a little in the dark about what has actually happened here. That’s one of the fascinating things about this story, because Miko doesn’t have a clue what is happening, and is denying pretty much everything, the audience is firmly kept in the dark.

Normally the protagonist of a horror story would have googled for a bit or found some old book that would explain away the mystery, or sometimes find some random researcher who just happens to have an interest in… Miko may have looked up a few ways to protect herself but we don’t know why she could suddenly see things, we don’t know why she’s seeing more and more things, and while we can make some assumptions about what happened at the shrine largely we’re left in the dark.

And Mieruko-Chan is a decidedly better story because of that. Other stories could take note that you can withhold information about the supernatural element in a story because it is more interesting and intriguing, but everything else makes sense. Miko’s character, her choices, her motivations, all of these are perfectly grounded and make sense given the situation. We’re not face with an inscrutable series of events, rather a clear and easy to follow set of events springing from the appearance of creatures who are the only unknown here.

So yes, another solid episode of Mieruko-Chan and honestly I’m very much looking forward to the next one.

You can read the full season review here.

Images from: Mieruko-Chan. Dir. Y Ogawa. Passione. 2021

Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James