Noppera-bō[]
Noppera-bō is the third arc of Mononoke (2007) spanning 2 episodes, beginning from episode 6, and coming to a conclusion in episode 7.
To find out more about the Mononoke of the same name, visit Noppera-bō (Being)
Characters[]
- Ochō (お蝶) (voiced by Houko Kuwashima): A woman who married into a good family. In order to please her mother, she withstands abuse from her husband's family.
- Man in Fox Mask (仮面の男) (voiced by Hikaru Midorikawa): An Ayakashi wearing a fox mask. He can change his fox mask to other masks.
- Ochō's mother (お蝶の実母) (voiced by Ako Mayama): She wishes for Ochō to marry into a good samurai family because she lost her husband.
- Ochō's husband (お蝶の亭主) (voiced by Eiji Takemoto): He treats Ochō badly; as if she is a servant.
- Ochō's husband's mother (姑) (voiced by Oriko Uemura): She doesn't like Ochō.
- Ochō's brother-in-law (義理の弟) (voiced by Hiroshi Okamoto): The younger brother of Ochō's husband. He treats Ochō badly.
- Wife of Ochō's brother-in-law (義理の弟の嫁) (voiced by Aki Sasaki): She treats Ochō badly as well.
- Magistrate (奉行) (voiced by Fukuhara Kouhei): He judges Ochō's case.
Plot[]
A despairing woman named Ochou, wishing for freedom but unable to escape her oppression, confesses to killing her husband's entire family. The Medicine Seller doubts this story and visits Ochou in her prison cell to ask her for the truth, but encounters a Mononoke in a Noh mask who fights the Medicine Seller and allows Ochou to escape. The man in the mask convinces Ochou that he has given her freedom by helping her kill her family, but the Medicine Seller pursues the two and reveals to Ochou that she had killed not her husband's family, but herself. Ochou married into a good family as her mother wished, but in her desire to please her mother, withstood abuse from her new family to the point of forsaking any happiness she could have gained from her life. When Ochou realizes this, the man in the Noh mask vanishes, and Ochou finds herself in her kitchen. It is implied that the man in the mask was an illusion conjured by the Medicine Seller to help Ochou escape—at the end of the episode, Ochou ignores her husband's orders and leaves her family, gaining the freedom she had long desired.