Miss Shachiku and the Little Baby Ghost 09
社畜さんは幼女幽霊に癒されたい 09
Shachiku-san wa Yо̄jo Yuurei ni Iyasaretai Episode 09
Shachiku-san Wants to be Healed by a Little Girl Ghost

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Fushihara realizes she forgot to get groceries. As such, Yuurei-chan and Myaako offer to shop for her while she’s as work. Fushihara is concerned about dumping this task on the young spirit girls. However, she gives Myaako a list and money since no one can see Yuurei-chan. She goes to work, where she’s determined not to take on extra work for the girl’s sake.

The two girls set out for the market shipping district. Their first stop is the produce shop, where the woman there helps Myaako get their vegetables. Pleased with themselves, the girls head to the fish shop, where the shop owner looks and sounds scary. As such, Myaako has trouble saying what she wants. Yuurei-chan punches the man to no effect. They are saved when the old lady Sonoda-san sees their plight. She even gets them extra fish for free.

Sonoda-san escorts the girls home. They try to invite her for dinner, but the elderly lady decides to invite them to her house in future. That night, the girls escort Fushihara home at a decent time. The moon reminds Fushihara that the tsukimi “moon-viewing” festival time is at hand. As such, they make the traditional foods.

On Halloween night, Myaako and Yuurei-chan dress up in costume to pay Fushihara a visit at work. She promises them candy and cake. As the excited girls escort Fushihara home, they encounter Lily, who’s also dressed up. She comes with them and celebrates Halloween. Lily then returns home, where she finds the sleeping Satsuki has left her two Halloween cupcakes.

Thoughts/Review:

As expected, there’s much cuteness and adorableness in Miss Shachiku and the Little Baby Ghost 09. There’s also the usual cloud of sadness around, though not as strong this time.

Shopping Adventure

Kids doing their first, solo shopping trips is nothing new to anime and manga. In that light, Miss Shachiku and the Little Baby Ghost 09 covered no new ground. However, I was pleasantly surprised that the writers didn’t have the girl spirits seriously distracted by the cat or the playground park. Outside of the scary fishmonger, their trip was rather uneventful.

However, it was sad to not see Yuurei-chan at times, representing that the folks in the shopping district only saw Myaako. They could not see nor hear Yuurei-chan. Heck, the fishmonger couldn’t even feel the frustrated Yuurei-chan punching him for scaring Myaako. And yet when Yuurei-chan came back to thank him for giving them free fish, he did hear her, though he never saw her.

At least the old lady can see Yuurei-chan as well as Myaako. For Yuurei-chan, there are now three humans who can actually see and hear her. So on one hand, this is a good thing, as Yuurei-chan was used to being unheard and unseen by anyone. But on the other, it is depressing that so few can see or hear her.

Autumn Activities

The other thing covered by Miss Shachiku and the Little Baby Ghost 09 are some traditional autumn activities in Japan, such as tsukimi festivities, and even the imported Halloween. I have seen Halloween crop up from time to time in anime and manga. But tsukimi hasn’t shown up very often for me. So that was a pleasant surprise.

Here too, we get some adorable stuff from Yuurei-chan and Myaako concerning tsukimi. However, we get a flashback from I guess the year before where Fushihara is shown coming home to a dark, empty, dirty apartment. There’s no one to do a moon viewing with, nor to eat dango with. So even though she has her two spirit kids to celebrate with now, this look-back was kind of depressing to me.

The Halloween segment of the episode was the one part where the cloud of sadness and depression was absent. Myaako and Yuurei-chan look absolutely adorable in their Halloween costumes. And the looks on their faces when they learn Fushihara will buy them candy and cake cracked me up. Likewise, their displeasure with Lily addressing Fushihara as “Oneesama” made me laugh.

Speaking of Lily, she gets to be adorable and happy after seeing the cupcakes Satsuki made for her. The idea of this child ghost being Satsuki’s maid is a puzzler. And then you have Satsuki blowing off the whole idea of celebrating Halloween, only to make Halloween cupcakes while Lily is with Myaako and Yuurei-chan. Somehow, I’m doubtful we’ll get an explanation as to how they met and why Lily is a maid.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

In the end, Miss Shachiku and the Little Baby Ghost 09 is probably the most enjoyable episode of the series, thanks to it not having as strong of a depression-sadness cloud overhead.