Shabake is neck and neck in the Patron Pick polling, but it’s close so I’m going to let it run a few more days before calling it. For now I would have said, if pressed, that I was leaning towards covering it anyway. I like it, and it’s genuinely intriguing. It’s just struggling to close the deal a little. I enjoy a meandering narrative, generally speaking, and Shabake certainly has one. It just goes through some slow patches where I find my interest waning a bit.
Superficially, it seems as if the murder mystery hatched in the first episode was resolved this week. Chougorou, the guy seemingly responsible, shows up at the shop (while Ichitarou is minding it) demanding the “rare drugs”. Ichitarou is nothing if not honest, and he believes that the mummy thing is a hoax. He tries to talk Chougorou out of wasting his money on it but Nikichi urges him to sell the drug anyway, as the customer seems highly volatile. That’s not the half of it – in the secret storeroom he knocks Nikichi out and turns on the young master when he realises mummy “smells all wrong”.
Fortunately Sousuke – with an assist from the Yanari – shows up to save the day (which has to grind Nikichi’s gears pretty hard). The cops haul the killer off, the chief establishes a motive – he killed the carpenter because he refused to take his son as an apprentice – and all seems pretty tidy. But Ichitarou’s mind is as sharp as his body is dull, and he can’t unsee the odd things attached to all this. Why did Chougorou behead Tokichi’s body? Why did he think mummy would bring the man back from the dead, then decide (based on smell) that it couldn’t?
There’s a very interesting exchange between Eikichi and Ichitarou about all this, and more. It reveals just how disconnected Ichitarou is about the lives of common people. Eikichi comes off extremely cold and practical here – about Ichitarou, about Oharu and her love for Ichitarou, and about himself. It reflects the undercurrent of darkness that provides a stark contrast to Shabake’s warm and comforting youkai SOL vibe. That as much as anything is keeping me connected with Shabake at the moment, if not yet fully engrossed.
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