Expect­ing Ookami Kakushi to be like Higurashi/Umineko would almost be like expect­ing Sora no Woto to be like K-on, just a smaller mag­ni­tude of wrongness…

How dare you com­pare me to Rika or Beato!

I remem­ber how, at the begin­ning of win­ter sea­son, many peo­ple were look­ing for­ward to Ookami Kakushi being one of the bet­ter ones of the sea­son, as it was the adap­ta­tion of a visual novel crafted by the sto­ry­telling bril­liance of Ryukishi07 (Higurashi/Umineko) and char­ac­ter designs by Peach-Pit (Shugo Chara). Then, once the series began, peo­ple began to dis­like it because it wasn’t what they expected: the mys­tery was shal­low, the story was slow, and not to men­tion that series of ques­tion­ably dis­turb­ing scenes with Issei and Isuzu’s cling­y­ness. Also, peo­ple weren’t dying left and right, or at least the main and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters weren’t.

Must every­thing Ryukishi07 writes be dri­ven by mys­tery and blood and yan­dere lolis? I don’t think that was the goal of Ookami Kakushi at all. Both Hig­urashi and Umineko had a com­mon approach that defined them as a mys­tery series: we know very quickly what hap­pened, what we don’t know is how or why it hap­pened, and hence most of the series was spent piec­ing together infor­ma­tion to under­stand that. It’s drama dri­ven by the quest for infor­ma­tion. But Ookami Kakushi isn’t that way. Even some­one who doesn’t really like mys­tery series like me real­izes very quickly that this isn’t a mys­tery series, not when an ama­teur could guess very early why every­thing is the way they are. No, this is a much more stan­dard­ized ver­sion of drama, one pro­pelled by the esca­la­tion of mood, by the forg­ing of rela­tion­ships, by a desire to know what hap­pens next and how will they resolve this. It was meant to be a grad­ual approach, and not one full of sud­den sharp turns like Hig­urashi was.

This may not be what you were look­ing for as a viewer, but it’s what it is. From this per­spec­tive Ookami Kakushi did an admirable job. It’s nowhere even approach­ing being per­fect, but it has been nev­er­the­less very enjoy­able. At least a grade of two above aver­age I’d say.

Even from just the first few min­utes, the show made it pretty obvi­ous that our dear main char­ac­ter Hiroshi is some­one who is extremely… mag­netic, to these wolf spir­its. Back then I thought it was his blood or some­thing, like Himegami from To Aru Majutsu no Index. The show soon began drop­ping clues at a rapid pace, and by end of episode three all the puz­zle pieces had roughly come together: the locals of the town have the senses of wolf spir­its (Kamibito as we later learn), not merely pos­sessed but melded with them given their tra­di­tion; they were attracted by nor­mal humans, par­tic­u­larly Hiroshi, and had this all con­sum­ing urge to uhhh, do things to them, unless it was sup­pressed by the Has­saku fruits, which were unfor­tu­nately in record-low yields this year; lastly, the Kamibito were restricted to this town because of their urges and their cus­toms, and even then they were not allowed to ‘con­sume’ other nor­mal humans; vio­la­tors of the ancient law will be hunted down by an exe­cu­tion squad like Level E vam­pires.

Maybe you’d enjoy bet­ter if you put yuri-goggles on? Cause Hiroshi is totally a girl, and that sailor uni­form doesn’t help xD

Unlike Higurashi/Umineko, Ookami Kakushi had a small main cast and a story that could be threaded together with­out break­ing off into var­i­ous timelooped arcs, so the ani­ma­tion team took advan­tage of it. They prop­erly built up the rela­tion­ship between Hiroshi and Isuzu, some­thing that needed seri­ous rein­forc­ing to con­vince the audi­ence that Isuzu isn’t just purely run­ning off her wolfish hor­mones like her ini­tial clingi­ness implied. They fully staged the scenes between Issei and Hiroshi with­out any time cut­ting to por­tray just exactly how con­fused and dis­turbed Hiroshi him­self was (which unfor­tu­nately had a sim­i­lar effect on some audi­ence). They even tossed in the scene where Isuzu was pulling Issei back from his urges towards her beloved in a mostly com­posed man­ner — which should have cleared many doubts cause no one would behave that calmly if their brother just started hav­ing a homo-relationship with their unof­fi­cial boyfriend. The grue­some deaths, Hiroshi pan­ick­ing, the love affair between sem­pai and kouhai… every­thing was build­ing up the atmos­phere and an under­ly­ing anx­i­ety for one moment: the Isuzu-Hiroshi scene we were teased with at the start of the series comes back in full force in episode six.

That was proper, well-built drama, one that had been pre-explained rather than rely­ing on post-explanations. Then, to sur­prise the view­ers, Isuzu didn’t die. No, that would have been too simple.

Well the first cli­max is out. Hiroshi is now fully emerged in this mys­tery which remains only a mys­tery to him. As the view­ers, the ques­tion changes to a mat­ter of how will he get to the bot­tom of this. Well, it cer­tainly took a lot of luck and help, since Hiroshi is def­i­nitely no Kenichi/Battler. I’m not sure why they chose a soft, pas­sive main char­ac­ter like him, because a lack of active approach really doesn’t fit murder-mystery premises. Maybe it’s because he’s already a “potent nec­tar” that attracts every Kamibito within miles and if he were aggres­sively look­ing for trou­ble he’d be dead by now. Nev­er­the­less, I can’t help but say things like “Kenichi would totally have done this” at moments…

Then, by episode nine, we see the well-built para­noia from ear­lier episodes com­ing into play in full force once again. With­out accen­tu­at­ing Hiroshi’s dis­tress and anx­i­ety over the events within this town, this scene wouldn’t pack any­where near the amount of sig­nif­i­cance it does. Cut­ting that rope took far more emo­tional tur­moil that the ani­ma­tion could show, and it wasn’t some­thing they could empha­size prop­erly unless it was 1st per­son POV (which isn’t a resource to the ani­ma­tion team, sadly). Nemuru’s actions, on how she barely man­aged to hold her­self back, could have been bet­ter done though. But nev­er­the­less, when those eyes quiv­ered and shook for those few frames, I could almost feel her sud­den real­iza­tion and inner dis­tress assault­ing my senses.

Rather than pulling extreme occur­rences out of ham­mer­space and then com­ing back to explain them proper, Ookami Kakushi is a series that builds details and atmos­phere up to its cli­matic points. Instead of being drama dri­ven by premise, this is drama dri­ven by plot, and very prop­erly done so at that. It may not be as amaz­ing as Hig­urashi, but it’s an approach that I have great respect for nev­er­the­less. It might be a bit slow to start, but that’s what it takes to prop­erly develop the right atmos­phere (which is why romance/dramas usu­ally need early series com­edy, which just wouldn’t work here). Expect­ing it to be like Umineko is just far­fetched, and expect­ing it to be like Hig­urashi is unfair despite the premise sim­i­lar­i­ties. No, Ookami Kakushi pre­sented its own unique approach to the murder-mystery set­ting, and the improper expec­ta­tions are sim­ply ruin­ing its value.

As Honya puts it with a com­par­i­son on why Ookami Kakushi is bet­ter than Umineko as an anime:

The under­em­pha­sis of Ookami Kakushi as a mys­tery also means it doesn’t have to rely on the sta­ple of 07th Expan­sion mys­ter­ies… pro­vid­ing some­thing new for 07th Expan­sion fans.

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Pos­si­bly Related Posts

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