English Dub Review: Kakushigoto “Hidden Truths”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Picking up in the future when Hime is eighteen, she goes to the site of her old childhood home and is shocked at what she finds: boxes and boxes of memorabilia including manga drawn by her father. She also meets a stranger who looks remarkably like Goto — and claims to be Hime’s half-brother.

After learning more about her family history, Hime is informed that her father has awoken from his yearlong coma and rushes to his side. He’s awake, but he has amnesia, and cannot remember anything beyond the time when Hime was just a ten year old girl. At first she accepts this, but then realizes she wants her father back, and along with her friends, puts a plan into action to return him to the present.

Our Take:

Every episode of Kakushigoto so far has been a special kind of crazy, blending wacky humorous hijinks with more heartfelt sentimentality. But the final episode of the show truly goes off the rails, taking the insanity to new heights all in the span of roughly 22 minutes. Hime learns she has a brother, is reunited with her grade school classmates, and talks to her father for the first time in years. It’s a lot to handle, and not everything is drawn up perfectly.

Hidden Truths opens in the future, in the time that previous episodes’ flash forwards have taken place within. Hime is a young adult now, and has been without her father Goto for years at this point. We finally learn the truth of the what occurred in the first half of the episode: the family ran low on money, Goto picked up odd jobs, and he was in an accident that led to injuries that put him into a longterm coma. It’s very melodramatic, but also has weirdly placed bits of comedy, like the fact that the injury was caused by a giant rain down of manga magazines. It’s funny, but also makes you feel odd for laughing at the scene that removed Hime’s father from her life for so long.

There are plenty of reveals in the episode, which is both welcome and a little distracting. We find out that Goto was the lovechild of a famous kabuki actor, which is why Hime’s paternal grandfather is so down on him. But her grandfather also passes his talent for painting on to Hime. Oh yeah, and her mother was the one lost at sea, except Goto could never accept it as being permanent. He’s been searching for her throughout Hime’s childhood, hiring sea divers and explorers for over ten years. It’s what leads to his eventual exile from the manga world — as well as the poverty that causes him and Hime to have to sell the house and move into a tiny apartment. It’s a lot, right? And with so much going on, it leaves less room for the emotional reunion between Hime and her father in the present — arguably the real core of the episode.

And what a reunion it is! Goto has woken from his long slumber, but has amnesia apparently. It’s a cheap plot device, which is even called out by his editor — but just because it breaks the fourth wall doesn’t give it a free pass. It’s almost funny how Goto doesn’t recognize his daughter now that she’s older. She looks the exact same in the anime’s art style. Her realization that maybe his forgetting her is okay as long as he loves to draw manga again is sweet, but so rushed that it barely registers amongst all the other happenings. (Rasuna has her own popular manga now and everyone works for her!) When she realizes she would rather be selfish and have him back, the episode finally allows the scene to have some breathing room. It’s one of the sweetest parts of the finale, demonstrating just how much these two have gone through.

If there’s one word to sum up the finale, it would be packed. Hidden Truths is packed full of good stuff like Hime bonding with her former classmates, learning about her past, and reuniting with her father. But there’s just so much going on that it almost nothing lands the way it deserves to. Over the past eleven episodes, Kakushigoto has developed a believable world and lovable characters — and I wish it had managed the timeline of the events in this final episode better. Whether that meant giving it another episode or cutting out a few scenes, I think it would’ve given it a more fitting finale.