Shinigami no Ballad 2

This series seem to follow an episodic feel, with that lingering feeling of the theme “love” strong in these two episodes. The feeling that I get from this series is rather heartwarming, and I geninuely do not understand why it is rated so badly. Granted, it is not an excellent series where there is a very strong message or impact from each episode, something that Kino’s travels can do. However, each story is very beautiful, with Momo being an intrinsic part to the fabric of the story.

Love is really a powerful thing that moves things.

Episode 2

This time, it is yet a story about love. A boy was told by Momo that he was going to die soon in the swimming pool. He was shocked, before a girl on the poolside woke him up from his partial slumber. In a slightly frentic voice, she asked him to get off the pool unless he wanted to die, because she released a piranha in the pool. We then heard that the pool was closed the next day, as the piranha was found lying dead in the pool. No one knew who it was.

It was then that we realised that it was the setting of a middle school. The boy had an older sister who was an excellent swimmer and one that he felt deserved to live. He always wondered why an useless person like him was allowed to live when her sister was much better.

He then started to interact with the girl, who had a very bad reputation in school, as she was very eccentric in nature. We eventually realised that the girl liked the boy, but the boy said that he was going to die and he could not accept it. The girl did not know about Momo’s existence and was angry at the boy for making such an awful lie. She would not mind if the boy hated her or liked her, but to lie to avoid her completely was painful.

With a series of events happening, we see the boy thinking about the past and wondering why he was not taken away. As he thought, he saw a light shining in the darkness of the water. He dived toward it but it disappeared, leaving him to drown. It was then that the girl saw him and rescued him, holding him tight in an embrace as she feared that he might die. He finally realized that he should have admitted that he liked the girl.

With that, Momo had finished her task as she cried again, touched.

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Thoughts

Is it just me but I felt that this story is very touching. I mean, you have a crappy guy that thinks that he deserves to be dead rather than his sister. However, the fact that true love and his sister’s love for him has brought him back to reality. I really feel that Momo is really trying hard as a shinigami to bridge that gap between the living and the dead.

Somehow, this is becoming a series about relationships, simply with the notion of death in the background. I somehow can see the similiarities between this and Hanban, even though the way of presentation is totally different. Just a feeling, that’s all. ^+^