'Konohana Kitan' Episode 5 Spoilers: Series to Feature More Touching Stories About Staff Members and Guests
The Konohana-tei continues to provide comfort and happiness to its guests on the Japanese slice-of-life anime series, "Konohana Kitan." And now that the strange pig-like creature Urinosuke has appeared, it seems that nightmares no longer have a place in the supernatural hot spring inn.
In the previous episode, a couple of the attendants of Konohana-tei were kept from potentially bad dreams by a mysterious egg that eventually hatched into a pig-like creature named Urinosuke. Although it has not been directly stated, it seems that Urinosuke is the one responsible for turning Ren and Satsuki's bad dreams into comforting ones, especially for the latter who needed it the most.
On the other hand, the inn attendants also encountered a girl named Shino, who turned out to be a manifestation of an old guest's daughter, who died at a young age. As the head caretaker Kiri explained, a woman who has lost her daughter young would sometimes dress a doll in wedding clothes in the daughter's place so that the latter would marry in the afterlife.
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According to a study on the uses of Japanese dolls cited by Judy Shoaf, certain dolls or figures may be offered as memorials for a dead or otherwise lost child. There are also shrines wherein parents can offer a doll bride or husband to a deceased child to serve as the child's companion, but the dolls eventually begin to resemble the child in the parents' eyes.
The old woman truly believed the doll to be her daughter, Shino, but Shino herself wanted nothing more than for her mother to be free of this illusion. In the end, the old woman died after finishing Shino's pristine white wedding dress and was thus reunited with her daughter.
What new stories about the guests and staffs of the Konohana-tei will be featured next as spring dawns on the supernaturally accommodating hot spring inn?
"Konohana Kitan" airs on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. JST on AT-X and at midnight JST on Tokyo MX. It also airs on Thursdays at midnight JST on BS11 and late night at 2:25 a.m. JST on Kansai TV. Information on other broadcast schedules and online resources can be found on the series' official site. Episodes are also streamed in selected regions outside Japan via Crunchyroll.
