The Hanging Balloons

I think this is the best standalone episode of the season. A lot of the others, which more often veer into two short micro-episodes, can be evocative but don't really leave you thinking about the premise afterward. This one becomes more fully post-apocalyptic, which to me makes the episode feel more suggestive. Even if it's pretty surreal, is this episode doing something to explore cultural attitudes toward suicide? I'm not sure it's making any sort of coherent argument, but I find myself haunted by the imagery in this episode far more than anything else from the season.

I only had limited familiarity with Ito's work before this, and to me this episode highlights the overwhelming dread mixed with surrealism that is the best of his work.

In my honest opinion, the writers of this episode simply did not take themselves serious at all. I know this whole episode is a reference to suicide, which is a huge problem in Japan, so I can't make jokes about it. However, that won't stop me from saying that the writers could've definitely made this better, because what they made simply looks like it's MAKING FUN OF suicide instead of raising awareness (or whatever they were trying to accomplish). In my opinion, this is one of the better episodes of the series, not because of the underlying theme obviously, but just because the writers simply did not take themselves seriously.