Mekakucity Actors - Episode 10

Our perspective shifts once again for this week's Mekakucity Actors (who saw that coming?), as we witness a woman and her daughter waiting for the return of the latter's father... something which, it seems, may never happen.

This suspicion in confirmed when the home of the family in question is raided and the mother openly shot in front of her daughter - not that this is the end of the matter, as the mysterious red eyes sported by the woman, hunted here as a "monster", soon allows her to save her daughter and wreak vengeance upon those responsible. Realising that her powers are only going to cause further pain for her family, she disappears, and we fast forward to see the daughter become a mother with a little girl of her own - Marry, no less.

Again, the terror of this family of so-called monsters leads to tragedy and the death of Marry's mother, and after some glimpses into the world which has imbued some who should have died on a very particular date with red eyes and the powers that accompany them, we return to the present and Marry as she awakens to find herself alone, before venturing out and running into Haruka, who she then befriends as they set off to find the rest of Marry's friends.

This week's instalment of Mekakucity Actors at least worked a little better as a standalone instalment for the most part, but there's still something deeply unsatisfying about the way it jumps around and the structure of its narrative - even though most of the pieces of the puzzle have now coalesced into something approaching a story, it still feels flat and far from interesting, which with just two episodes left to go is a disastrous state of affairs. I'll certainly grant it points for effort, but this series continues to be very much a case of style over substance.