The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window

Episode 6

“Belief” may be one of the most powerful forces out there. It's certainly a theme that's been used in literature for a long, long time – I first encountered the notion in a 19th century book by forgotten author Laura E. Richards, but it predates that, with Terry Pratchett particularly excelling at its use; in his books, “belief” becomes one of the single greatest forces, able to topple gods or change the world. (Usually in an entertaining way, which rarely makes it less powerful.) The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window has only flirted with the idea of needing to believe in the supernatural to give it any power, but this week's episode, which provides insight into Detective Hanzawa and Hiyakawa's past, dives right in, reminding us that there's a good reason why Hanzawa is able to work with Hiyakawa and Mikado: he doesn't believe.

It's interesting that this is more or less the first time we're seeing disbelief at play in the series. Previous to this episode, Hiura's powers have just worked on anybody without the subject really coming up. But now it becomes apparent that belief in the paranormal is far more common than honest-to-goodness disbelief, because when she tries to drive Hanzawa away, her powers can't touch him. His disbelief is his armor because, even with what he's seen with Mikado and Hiyakawa, he doesn't really give credence to their spiritual world. The implication, therefore, is that most people do to a degree harbor some belief, a crack that Hiura can force her power into and take advantage of. It's probably a statement about the credulous nature of humanity and how we need to believe in something, turning to fantasy or religion if no logical explanation is available.

What's even more interesting is the idea that Hanzawa's job as a cop has contributed to the power of his disbelief, and that meeting a young Hiyakawa was perhaps instrumental in confirming that humans need no supernatural help to be awful or weird. Hiyakawa, we learn this week, was the victim of a cult, which his mother either founded or donated her child to when she realized that he had spiritual powers. From about the age of five until his very early teens, the poor kid was kept locked in a padded room in the basement of the cult's headquarters, mostly alone, and with his wishes completely ignored as they forced him into a form of aestheticism that constituted abuse. He was used for his powers until he figured out how to wield them as a weapon, which freed him from the control of the cult members, although I would hesitate to say that it freed him in any more concrete sense. By that point his growth was stunted, his mental health precarious, and years of being locked away from the outside world seemed to have either given him agoraphobia or convinced him that the world outside the cult building was bad. In any event, he seems very much unaware of the consequences of his actions (and I hesitate to say that he even understands that he murdered people). When Hanzawa finds him, he's digging moldy rice out of a rice cooker in a building full of corpses, and his reaction to the detective's offer of taking him away seems to indicate that perhaps he was still waiting to be saved – or at least for someone to tell him what to do.

All of this goes a long way to explaining why Hiyakawa treats Mikado the way he does. It in no way excuses it, but now we can see that he's just more or less emulating what he was taught in the cult. He's looking for someone special, but the only guidance he has on how to treat that person comes from how he was treated, which I think we can all agree is a terrible template for a relationship. (And I wouldn't bet that Hanzawa brought Hiyakawa to his home to see his functional relationship with his wife; all of their meetings over the years appear to take place in the police station.) Mikado and Hiura may have grown up scared, but Hiyakawa grew up being abused, and that really does give him a reason for trying to lock Mikado in a metaphorical room with him – he doesn't know any other way to show that he needs and likes him.

Is this enough to redeem him and to make Mikado and Hiyakawa's relationship more palatable? That's debatable. But it's very solid ground put under the feet of the most contentious element of the story, and if nothing else, that's the kind of storybuilding that's worth admiring.

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The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.