"It's alive. And no matter how terrible it was, I was envious of him."

[maaru]

Ahhh, just finished watching Mouryou no Hako, an intensely disturbing but heartbreakingly beautiful series. It's the Japanese detective noir story, except that it delves deeply into some Shinto beliefs plus a touch of sci-fi to make your blood run cold. It's certainly not a series for the impatient, as everything is really confusing at the beginning, I couldn't even figure out who was meant to be the central character/set for the first half, and then you're treated to 2 entire episodes of people sitting around a table discussing religious theory. O_o

Seriously, though, it was fascinating discussion and made me glad I'm using the kanji etymology system for memorization - some of the mythological creature definitions discussed had the meanings embedded in kanji. This is the part where the linguistics student in me gets a nerdgasm. That the animation is amazing and remains fluid the entire series also helped (and... CLAMP designs, oh my). There's also a great seiyuu cast (Hiroaki Hirata, Morikawa, Houko Kuwashima and minor roles for Miki [yay!], Tohru Furuya, Junichi Suwabe, etc), and a relatively new director that's got great style (I first encountered him in Aoi Bungaku).

Basically, the premise is about dismembered girls in boxes. Uhm, well, I don't want to give away any spoilers, but I wonder if I can even pimp this to anyone in my Flist, since it's pretty hard to digest. You want your disturbing mindfuck and maybe a dash of Yuri? C'mere.

For extra pimpage, here's an absolutely gorgeous AMV of the series that I found:

Now I want to track down the Hyakkiyagyou/Kyougokudou series by Kyougoku Natsuhiko (Mouryou no Hako is the 2nd book). Apparently, it's a 13-book series that's comparable to Umberto Eco's Foucalt's Pendulum and The Name of the Rose. Of course, that set this Eco fan's ears ringing, because well, that sounds awesome. The only problem? It's completely in Japanese, and probably has a good portion of old language too. But ooh, I want to read it someday - I can only read at the light novel level right now, SOMEDAY, Kyougoku, SOMEDAY you will be mine, fufufufufu.

Oh yeah, this also has a Live-action version made before the animated series (Gotta check this out sometime):

There's actually only a little amount of gore onscreen - most of the horror is psychological, IMO.

Comments

[alienashi.livejournal.com]

Thanks to your pimpage, I think I found a new fave female vocalist *____*

[lunarstar77.livejournal.com]

whose the person sining in the amv? :D i love their voice <3

i might check this series out it sounds cool :) i love detective-y things~! <33

[kumagoro-usagi.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the rec, this series seems interesting and I am really getting into mysteries atm. :D