Shikabane Hime: Aka - Episode 4

It's been a while since we last checked it out, but at last we're back on the trail of our corpse princess courtesy of episode four of Shikabane Hime. Sadly, it appears that the first victim of this particular instalment is the animation quality (which takes a definite dive here), but what of the story itself?

In essence, the main plot of this episode is actually a good one, the sort that makes you sit up straight away at the room for potential it holds. The subject of the story is Osaki Kun (not Osaki-kun...), an idol for whom even death cannot dim her need to sing her songs, a passion which causes her to become a Corpse - A seemingly sweet girl whose diva-esque tantrums take on a rather more chilling dimension on account of her being dead. Of course, Keisei is soon onto this (releasing a new album when you're dead is always a give away, unless you're Paul McCartney perhaps) and so Makina is despatched to do her thing, getting caught up with Yakuza types and the like along the way.


Outside of this main thread of the story, Keisei's connection to Makina and the whole Shikabane Hime thing is finally made clear to Ouri (who once again stumbles into what's going on, this time while researching into the truth of Makina's death), which should make the relationship between those two interesting beyond the largely comedic vignettes we've been served with between them so far.

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting from this episode of Shikabane Hime, but somehow I'm left with a nagging feeling that they could have done a little more with the subject matter. Don't get me wrong, this was a solid episode that once again remembered its horror roots quite well on occasion, but it never really delved into the emotions of Osaki to explain why she emerged as a Corpse beyond simply saying "Oh, she likes to sing" - Personally, I wanted a more powerful driver for her 'resurrection' than this.

Still, despite that putting things out in the open between Keisei and Ouri in this episode is definitely a good and much-needed move to further complicate the relationship both between the two and with Makina as well, and we also learn some new little tidbits that will stand us in good stead for episode five, which appears to be suitably intriguing from the preview. A little more depth in both character and animation this time around though would have made for a much better episode.