Friends who are familiar with speculative fiction must not be unfamiliar with the name Ayatsuji. Ayatsuji is a representative of the Japanese neo-Benge school of speculative fiction. His "Library Series" mystery novels are loved by readers, and the drama "Another" is adapted from his novels.
And the original author of the drama "Ghoul" that I want to introduce today is the wife of this Ayatsuji walker, Ono Can't help but be beautiful. Like her husband, Ono is a brilliant novelist. The drama "Fantasy Noble Prince" is adapted from her novel, and the classic "Twelve Kingdoms" is also from the hands of this female writer, so naturally this "Ghoul" is not far behind. So next, I will introduce you to one of the most controversial dramas in the B station.
The story takes place in a remote and isolated small mountain village called "Outfield Village". The villagers made a living by making and selling coffins and pawns (wooden plaques inserted in front of the graves), and still use the traditional burial. One summer, the abbot of the village temple, Shizunobu Murui, discovered a murder in a family located on the border of the village of Waiba. One night after that, several trucks quietly drove into the village, and it seemed that some family had moved into the newly built bungalow in the village.
The perspective turns back to the village, and a young girl in a pink dress and a small umbrella enters our field of vision. Ignoring her poking the dead man's chin, the maiden's name was Shimizu Hui. She walked on the country road, ignoring the village grandmother's sarcasm for her, trying to kick the stones on the side of the road but hurt herself, which made her completely break the defense. After she lost her breath, she looked up at the beautiful bungalow and fell into her own fantasy.
The young girl Shimizu Hui, although she was born in the village of The Outer Field, she is very tired of the lifeless hometown. There is little contact with the outside world, and the villagers are very familiar with each other, but they also like to point fingers at other people's lives. Xiao Hui longs for the prosperity of the city and hates the dullness of the countryside. She wears a dress, plays a foreign umbrella, and learns cat steps, but in exchange for the ridicule of the old-fashioned villagers.
But Natsuno, a handsome teenager from the big city, supported her dream. Xiao Hui was very infatuated with him, often took the initiative to show his kindness, and even often hid in the grass outside the window of Yucheng's house at night to spy on him. The girl's biggest dream is to move into the castle with Natsuno and live a life of nobility.
The newly built bungalow in the village is another of her spiritual pillars. One day she finally decided to visit the bungalow. Ignoring his friend's persuasion, he saw Xiao Hui come to the door of the western room, and after the door was opened, a man dressed in luxury walked out.
That night, Xiao Hui's parents mobilized the whole village to search for their missing daughter. In the end, everyone found a comatose Xiao Hui in the deep mountains.
The village doctor, Toshio Ozaki, examined and thought that Koe was only slightly anemic. But Xiao Hui looked sluggish and mentally confused.
It didn't take long for Xiao Hui to die of heart failure. Dr. Ozaki wonders why common anemia can lead to death. After Xiao Hui's death, Yuki Natsuno also began to notice that every night in front of his window, there seemed to be someone watching him.
After Xiao Hui's death, patients similar to Xiao Hui appeared one after another in the village. They just suffer from ordinary anemia, but their mental state is beyond imagination. Sluggish, trance-like, poor and drowsy, and later patients even stubbornly refused to seek medical attention. And these patients will soon die of heart failure. At first, doctors and abbots thought it was an acute infectious disease that was raging in the village. However, as more and more people died, the doctor and Yuki Natsuno slowly discovered the mystery.
Natsuno was overwhelmed by the seemingly innocent nightmares every night, and in order to get a good night's sleep, he decided to spend the night at the house of his gentle and kind friend, Toru Muto. But that night, he seemed to see the resurrected Xiao Hui crawling out from under the bed in his dream. Xiao Hui was jealous because Natsuno's relationship with Muto Toru was better than her own, and she was jealous and bit Xiao Che.
Natsuno examined Xiao Che's neck the next day and found that there were no wounds, thinking it was just a nightmare. But who would have thought that a few days later the nightmare would become a reality. After the death of his friend, Natsuno strengthened his determination to eliminate the ghouls. And the ghoul side also sent a newly resurrected ghoul in order to kill this potential "hunter"...
On Ozaki's side, because of Natsuno's words, he began to investigate the true face of the death that had enveloped the village this summer from the perspective of the corpse. At the same time, through the unremitting efforts of doctors, he found that a large number of blood transfusions can alleviate the symptoms of patients. The doctor thought that this time he would finally be able to save the patient.
However, that night, the leader of the ghouls, Tatsumi, led the ghouls to invade the hospital. Because the doctor was taken in by the wife of the Kirishiki family, Kirishiki Chizuru, they let the doctor go, and instead, they snatched the patient from the hospital bed and ate the poor old man in front of Dr. Ozaki in the hospital yard. The doctor roared in the courtyard, and in order to fulfill the mission entrusted to him by his father to guard the village, he was determined to find a way to eliminate ghouls at all costs and protect his hometown.
The main clue of this fan is the struggle between ghouls and humans for survival. The ghoul side is led by the Kirishiki family of the bungalow. They kill humans and forcibly bring resurrected ghouls into their jurisdiction, enforcing a repressive rule of killing if they don't obey. On the human side, in the early stage, it was mainly Yuki Natsuno and Dr. Ozaki who investigated the cause of death of the deceased in the village; in the later period, Dr. Ozaki mainly led the villagers to launch a counterattack against the ghouls. The whole process is clear, while the plot is compact and the story is tense and exciting.
"Ghoul" is an extremely good group portrait drama. The play portrays a variety of flesh-and-blood characters:
Dr. Ozaki, who will do whatever it takes to protect the village and fulfill the responsibilities left to him by his father;
As the abbot of the temple, the monk Murui Shizunobu, who does not want to live up to the expectations of the villagers but does not want to be bound by fate, is always contradictory and painful;
Kirishiki, the ghoul queen who has been wandering for a hundred years, longing for a home and determined to turn the outfield village into a ghoul village;
Shimizu Hui, a young girl who dreams of going to a big city but can't get what she wants in the end;
Calm and wise, seemingly indifferent but but gentle and kind, Yuki Natsuno;
Two sides and three knives, sinister and tyrannical but loyal to the sand "human wolf" Tatsumi...
And many passers-by characters have also been shaped to have distinct personalities.
More worth seeing than the horror elements, "Ghoul" is more worth seeing its thinking about human nature and the collision of the characters' positions and values, which makes it cause great controversy on the b station.
Humans and ghouls are both victims and perpetrators. In the process of hunting and killing each other, some people have betrayed, some people have been unswerving; some people are confused, and some people stick to their original intentions.
Many humans who turned into ghouls were initially reluctant to kill, but were forced to hunt humans due to the threat and unbearable hunger of the Kirishiki family, to which Kirishiki Belonged. After discovering that killing people will not be punished, he slowly accepts his identity, first killing relatives, friends, and then villagers he meets at night, and slowly seeing humans as live pigs in the circle.
Some humans have killed red eyes when hunting ghouls in the later stages, and they get pleasure by hunting ghouls to vent the evil in their hearts. By the end of the struggle, people had been able to dispose of ghouls like livestock without changing their faces. They nailed through the ghoul's heart sharply, their hands stained with blood but still laughing.
In this episode, the ghouls will not hesitate to hurt the innocent, even their friends and relatives, in order to survive. Whether such an act should be characterized as a survival act like a human slaughtering a pig or a chicken, or a dirty act of betraying morality and law. How should this anomalous creature, which has evolved from humans, look at them? As human beings, there is nothing wrong with launching a rebellion against ghouls in order to survive, but whether the purpose of guarding the village has changed, and whether this purpose is just a fig leaf for humans to vent evil, we have no way of knowing.
"After becoming a ghoul, do you still have to follow the conscience and bottom line of human beings?" 」 How should human beings retain the light of humanity in the struggle for survival?", I believe that this drama can lead everyone to think more deeply about these two issues.