Sadly there was no nice Maryrose dancing scene for me to make a gif out of this week. But I guess Emilico and the vacuum were almost like dancing.
My autocorrect really hates the name Emilico. It auto changes it to Emilio every single time. I covered the first season, it should be used to it by now!
I clearly remember the scorches and soot sickness last season. But I remember the dolls getting “broken” when they got sick. Like nonresponsive and out of it. I didn’t remember them getting this aggressive. They were straight-up zombies in this episode. Maybe it’s because I’m currently catching up on the latest volume of ZOM 100 that I’m seeing zombies everywhere but I don’t think so!
There were a lot of interesting little tidbits throughout the episode. Whatever happened with Christopher must have had an effect on Barbie because she was a very different doll. Maybe it’s unrelated, but I have a feeling it’s not. I will also keep in mind that the twins seem to be able to take control of dolls through their soot power. That’s a glaring Chekov’s gun if I’ve ever seen one.
But of course, the most interesting part came at the coffee ceremony.
I must say it was great to have a more action-heavy episode. The balance was great. There were some funny moments, some decent tension and still enough new information to pique one’s curiosity. But I noticed that they resorted to using some stills for the action scenes. I think Shadows House is a great-looking anime in general but I guess they do have to be a bit careful about their animation budget.
I don’t need to recount the coffee ceremony debacle, do I? You’ve all watched the episode. Scorches, big vacuum, mysterious hooded figures, zombies, chaos! It was great! instead, let’s get to the clues!
Since the beginning of the season, there’s been talk of this hooded figure skulking around the children’s ward and this week, we finally got a look at it. Not that we could see much. The figure did look taller than Shaun though so we could assume it’s either an adult or older kid. Also, the figure “threw” a scorch at Shaun in defence.
Here’s my guess, scorches are not in fact naturally occurring from soot accumulation. They are created through someone’s soot power. (Alternatively, the power could just control the scorches like the twins’ controls dolls but that’s not as fun) And I’m just gonna guess that someone is Christopher. As hilarious as it would be that they keep throwing flashbacks of Christopher at us that lead nowhere, I don’t think Shadows House is that type of story. This figure was clearly trying to disrupt the coffee ceremony, something that’s very important to Shadows House, so methinks there may be an internal rift among the shadows. And if it is Christopher, it could explain why no one mentions him anymore despite his enormous popularity just a few years back.
On a different line of thought. The shadows were pretty unphased by everything that was happening. I know that if a doll loses its shadow they become a veiled doll, but what happens if a shadow’s doll is permanently broken? The dolls are taken from the town and brainwashed but the shadows are clearly theirs. I mean they even have twin shadows for Belle. It’s much more likely that the shadow is shaped to the doll than the other way around so can shadows reshape themselves? They didn’t seem too worried about the prospect of the dolls getting sick or hurt so I doubt they disappear or get locked in their rooms forever. Thee must be a replacement mechanism.
So here’s my current guess, Christopher the shadow went rogue maybe after losing his doll maybe because the house was trying to push a replacement on him. As such, he took some time to get his thoughts in order and has been working on making his scorch power stronger. That’s why they’ve been appearing occasionally for the past few years. Now he finally feels strong enough to start confronting shadows house by disturbing the coffee rituals and freeing the dolls. Ricky and Lou seem to be coming slowly to their senses.
But what about that last scene. Why did the Belles drop the coffee? It was almost like they were being controlled by the powers of their own shadows…but why would they do that. This was a great little question to end the episode on and I am looking forward to hopefully finding out more next week.
Previous Posts
Season 1
- Shadows House episode 1 – Emilico
- Shadows House episode 2 – Impure
- Shadows House episode 3 – Broken
- Shadows House episode 4 – Murder
- Shadows House episode 5 – Bearer
- Shadows House episode 6 – Proposal
- Shadows House episode 7 – Sunshine
- Shadows House episode 8 – Revelation
- Shadows House episode 9 – Reunion
- Shadows House episode 10 – Fairies
- Shadows House episode 11 – Human
- Shadows House episode 12 – Escape?
- Shadows House episode 13 – Caesura
Season 2