Aoi Bungaku Series Episode 11 - Kumo no Ito (The Spider's Thread)

As compared to the previous stories, I was rather lost after watching Kumo no Ito by Akutagawa Ryunosuke. It wasn't because the story was too complicated. On the contrary, the story was too simple and the message was very straightforward. That made me wonder why this story deserved to be covered in the Aoi Bungaku series. After doing some research on this novel and Akutagawa himself, my interpretation and opinion of the story has somewhat changed, although I'm still not pleased with the anime version.

Prior to watching this, I've not read any of Akutagawa's works but I have heard of screen adaptations of his other works like Rashomon and Jigokuhen. It seems like Akutagawa had two distinct categories of works i.e. themes based on classics and the other being children stories. Kumo no Ito happens to be in the latter group. This is probably why the story didn't have subtle themes unlike the earlier stories in Aoi Bungaku. And that could be why, as an adult, I felt that the story was too simple. In addition, the anime left out an integral part of the story and this could have resulted partly as to why I sensed that something was missing.

The novel begins with Buddha looking into Hell through his lotus pond in Paradise and seeing lots of sinful people who are suffering there. Buddha takes notice of a man Kandata, a thief who had done evil deeds without batting an eyelid. The only good thing that Kandata did in his lifetime was to spare the life of a small spider. In view of this act of mercy, Buddha decides to give Kandata a chance to get out of Hell by dropping a spider's thread into Hell. Kandata believes that he can get out of misery by climbing up the spider's thread but is horrified to see that other sinners in Hell are also doing the same. Fearing that the spider's thread will snap, Kandata shouts at the sinners below him to get off the thread. Just then, the thread snaps and Kandata falls back into Hell. Seeing Kandata's behaviour, Buddha puts on a sad expression and leaves the lotus pond.

As you can see, the novel is based on the concept of karma in Buddhism whereby you reap what you sow. Kandata was a bad guy who thought of himself only. As a result, he was put in Hell following his death. The small act of sparing the spider's life gave him a second chance. Although Kandata made use of the chance given by Buddha, the fact that his inner self remained unchanged sealed his fate. However, the anime didn't give the full picture of the story. It began too quickly and ended in the same way as well.

In the anime, we see Kandata's evil deeds as he kills mercilessly and steals whatever he wants. He even dares to make a mockery out of the king who is out on a parade. Unexpectedly, Kandata is wounded by a child whose mother was killed by him. When Kandata tries to hide from the soldiers, he comes across a spider and decides against killing it. Soon, Kandata is caught by the solders because he is unable to run due to his injury. After Kandata is put to death, he goes through hell because of his evil deeds. Suddenly, a spider's thread descends from above and Kandata views it a chance to get out of Hell. As he climbs up the thread, Kandata sees other people also doing the same. Worried that he might lose the chance to save himself, Kandata shouts at and kicks the people below him off the thread. Suddenly, the thread snaps and Kandata falls back into Hell.

There are two major differences between the novel and the anime:

1) The novel depicts Buddha as an onlooker to Kandata's deeds while the anime dives straight into Kandata's deeds.

2) In the novel, Kandata shouts at the sinners in Hell to get off the spider's thread while in the anime, he also kicks them off it.

I'm not too concerned with the second difference because I think the anime wants to reinforce the fact that Kandata is selfish and evil by nature. It's the first point which I think has botched up the story. By potraying Buddha as the onlooker who dropped a lifeline to Kandata, this would have been a more logical way to explain why Kandata was given that spider's thread and who gave it to him. I would prefer it if the anime had adopted a retrospective approach rather than jump straight into Kandata's evil deeds. There was simply too much emphasis on showing the evil side of Kandata.

Another grouse I have would be the graphics. Coincidentally, I dislike the character and set design for this story and Sakura no Mori no Mankai no Shita and they happen to be from the same person. Maybe it's the fantasy nature of the story which warrants such a drawing style or it could be the manga-ka's style which I'm not used to. It's just that after watching refined graphics from some of the earlier stories, the character design and colour balance this time were really an eyesore.

I'm not entirely sure that Kumo no Ito and Jigokuhen were linked in their novel versions but you can see that there are two characters who appear in both stories i.e. the king and the artist Yoshihide. That is probably why Sakai Masato takes on the role of Yoshihide rather than Kandata who is voiced by Miyano Mamoru. No wonder Kandata sounds a lot like Yagami Light. As Sakai doesn't have much airtime, I can't really judge his performance this time.

On the whole, I'm not too pleased with Kumo no Ito so this is how I'll rank the stories now in terms of satisfaction:

1) Ningen Shikaku
2) Hashire Melos
3) Kokoro
4) Sakura no Mori no Mankai no Shita
5) Kumo no Ito

Now, how would Jigokuhen figure in this ranking? We'll see very soon.