Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Shinigami no Ballad – episode 5

April 6, 2006 on 7:37 pm | In Shinigami no Ballad | 1 Comment

“The light of fireflies”

A sequel episode of sorts, featuring some of the same characters as the first episode as support for the lead of this story. It’s a fairly interesting story that deals with the regretful things that people say before their loved ones die.

Word is going around that an elementary school is being haunted by one of its dead teachers. Eiko, the teacher’s sister, decides that she must dispel these rumours by scaring away students attempting to go on late night tests of courage. On one of these spooking missions, she meets Kouta and Blue. Kouta, after some bugging, agrees to see if he can find the ghost for Eiko.

The key imagery for this episode is that of the firefly, which has many and varied connotations in Japan. It’s hard to tell which ones are genuine folklore and which are simply the romantic fabrications of the directors. Here fireflies represent the happiness of people, because people are happy when they see them.
How can one be happy to see a firefly when all that they feel inside is sadness? This is the problem that Eiko faces due to the incredible burden of guilt she has placed upon her shoulders.

Kouta’s participation in this episode gives a good indication of how people hold up after meeting with Momo: all things heal, especially when a shinigami is on hand to help the process along.

A good episode that is short on words when it comes to the rift between Eiko and her sister. With only one episode left, Momo really hasn’t done a lot of shinigami-ing, but one can forgive her because so far she’s focused on four out of five interesting cases.