“Taizo” is the sixth episode of the second season of the TV show “The Terror”, which was named “The Terror: Infamy”, and follows “Shatter Like a Pearl“. It’s broadcast in the USA on AMC Studios and in other nations on Amazon Prime Video.

Note. This article contains some spoilers about “Taizo”.

1919. Yuko Tanabe (Kiki Sukezane) arrives in the USA to marry Hideo Furuya (Eiji Inoue) in an arranged marriage but must confess to him that she’s pregnant. At that point he kicks her out, forcing her to live on the street, where she can barely survive. When she decides to take her own life, the meeting with a mysterious woman (Natsuki Kunimoto) changes everything.

After five episodes in which the spirit – whether she’s a yurei or a bakemono – showed behaviors that at times seemed contradictory, in “Taizo” Yuko Tanabe’s story at the origin of the supernatural events over twenty years later is finally revealed. In fact, most of the episode is used to tell what’s needed to understand the motivations behind those events.

Perhaps the best choice would have been to use the whole episode for Yuko’s story to give it more depth. The important elements are shown with twists and revelations but few of them are really surprising. I would have preferred a slower pace that provided more details and allowed to better appreciate this part of the story.

The part set in the house where Yuko spends time with the mysterious woman encountered on the bridge is very beautiful from the visual point of view but probably you need to have a good knowledge of Japanese culture to understand the symbology of the various elements.

A further difficulty was given by the fact that the two women talked only in Japanese, forcing me to read the subtitles, which cause a slight distraction. A slower pace would have been useful, adding just a few more minutes to allow the audience to see the details of the house and its garden. However, in this season the length of the episodes seems rigid as only the first one was longer than 42-43 minutes.

To be pedantic, Yuko’s story included enough material to make it a great horror movie. Within “The Terror: Infamy” this would have meant using two full episodes to develop it thoroughly and maybe finding some way to make the twists surprising. Watching the episode, the impression is that the goal was to provide the information needed to understand Yuko’s motivations but nothing more. It makes sense from a practical point of view but in a season with episodes that so far always showed something new, maybe something more could have been done.

The consequence of the production choices is that the last part of “Taizo” is set in 1943. It returns to be focused on Chester Nakayama (Derek Mio) and the pace is still really fast, leaving very little time for reflections and insights. For me it’s another reason why it would have been better to leave this part for the next episode. That choice would also have allowed the conflicts between the characters to be given more depth.

Due to its characteristics, “Taizo” gave me mixed feelings, in some ways a sum of what “The Terror: Infamy” gave me so far. Overall it’s another good episode and it’s crucial to explain the whole supernatural part. The problem is that it still gives me the impression that something is missing.

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