[Categories: Anime Reviews]
Kashimashi episode 11: Yasuna-vision
Following the dramatic events of ep 10, does Kashimashi fall back into filler territory? Hell no. It’s the penultimate instalment and as such the proverbial stuff has really begun to hit the fan! Two characters resort to physical violence, one is hospitalised (not through any physical injury, I might add!) and we acually find out why the aliens are on Earth!
The friendship between Yasuna and Tomari is well and truly over now; Hazumu is stuck in the middle of it all, trying to keep both happy and succeeding with neither, as Ayuki is keen to remind her in a very touching and profound scene (doesn’t anyone else find it strange how she just stands on the sidelines?). The weird medical condition that Yasuna has been suffering from takes a much more serious turn, hinted at by this ep’s subtitle The Things that Disappear from those Eyes.
I suppose now is a good opportunity to draw attention to this. Earlier on the series we see that Yasuna is unable to physically see men: they are grey, blurry and featureless figures. Apparently this has afflicted her since childhood but until now I merely thought of it as an unnecessary plot device to explain why she isn’t interested in them. In this episode Yasuna is losing the ability to see anyone, male or female which leads to the poor girl being pretty distressed. She finds this particularly upsetting since she is now unable to recall what even Hazumu looks like.
Hazumu is now torn between looking after Yasuna and spending time with Tomari, who is convinced that she is rejected by her lifelong friend. To cap it all, the alien guy Sora informs her that he and Jan-puu are leaving because their experiment has failed. It is at this point that all becomes clear with Yasuna’s condition - without giving too much away I finally understood why the writers came up with the ‘Yasuna selective blindness’ thing in the first place.
So, how will this series end? I’m pleased to say that I can’t say. Hazumu could be turned back into a boy or Tomari might even undergo a similar process and I wouldn’t be surprised either way. On the other hand Yasuna is in a lot of emotional pain right now, the cause of which being more significant than was first apparent.
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