Warning: the following contains spoilers for The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window, Episode 3, “Malediction” now streaming on Crunchyroll.
The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window introduced its potential villain at the end of Episode 1, with a very creepy scene of Hiura Erika cursing an unsuspecting woman with something akin to a subconscious suggestion, and it seemed that she was pure evil with no regard for human life. Though it may be a bit too soon to pass judgment since Hiura Erika is a much more complex character than was previously thought.
Erika surprisingly reaches out to Hiyakawa and Mikado at a diner, and she behaves surprisingly normal for someone that can casually kill others with a thought. She, like Mukae before her, notices that Mikado’s soul is very easy to enter, which sparks Hiyakawa’s jealousy as usual. She and Hiyakawa have a battle of power within Mikado, forming a triangle of sorts that echoes the series’ title.
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But Erika’s true intention is to seek Hiyakawa’s help, because she is tired of doing her current job, as a curse peddler. Someone else is exploiting her powers for money, and it seems that she can’t escape even with her immense psychic powers. After all, she is only a teenager and a high school student.
Erika admits that she is related to the corpse found in the boiler room but insists that she didn’t kill them directly. She is afraid to commit the act, but she is even more afraid of someone else who is forcing her to perform the act, and this is her dilemma. While her voice and expressions here seem nonchalant during the conversation, her body language suggests otherwise. She hides her hand behind her back to conceal her nervous hand movements.
It turns out that Erika is a necromancer that can control dead spirits, and there are even spirits within her that she can use. This is probably the source of her powers, though it isn't yet clear how she does her curses as she’s interrupted by a menacing figure. He appears to be there to keep an eye on Erika but doesn’t have any powers. Erika uses her secret spiritual voice to talk to Mikado and Hiyakawa to avoid his detection, a power that Hiyakawa doesn't possess.
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Considering Erika’s circumstances, it is easy to see how a girl like her can be manipulated by someone more powerful. Even though she seems mature for her age, this might just be due to her constantly seeing and dealing with the dead, as well as her troubled home life. As the end of this episode shows, her mother is extremely resentful of her and ignores her completely and when Erika uses her power to get her mother's attention, it just irritates her even further. Her father is also is nowhere to be seen, so she is probably raised by a single mother.
This episode is all about the mother/child relationship, the case of the week involves a creepy controlling mother that curses her daughter. But the contrast is the clearest when the series intercuts between Erika’s dreadful relationship with her mother and Mikado’s life, who is also raised by a single mother but has a loving and supportive relationship. She calls his job and finds out that he’s doing another part-time job. But she isn’t upset or forces him to quit, instead, she treats him like an adult and asks him to be careful.
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Mikado’s mother is probably why Mikado is so well-adjusted and trusting of others. Though his father’s identity is potentially a very important plot point since he left when Mikado was four and intentionally took away all his photographs so that even Mikado’s mother doesn’t remember much about him. This is very bizarre behavior that hints at a major mystery.
This episode suggests that there are parallels between Erika and Mikado, and they go beyond being raised by single mothers. Both of them are quite afraid of what their powers bring for them, both of them have someone powerful manipulating their actions. But their biggest difference: Mikado’s positivity, might just be the key factor that helps Erika escape her predicament.
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