NO KE MO NO NO KE MO NO

In the beginning of the movie we see little flowers around good food (such as Kame’s grandmothers food, the breakfast they prepare)

and even Kon at one point.

This all changes with the awakening (or so we think) of the mononoke and with the escalation of our characters drying up, both figuratively and in a literal sense.

I assumed in the end, after the mononoke was slayed, the movie would show us the flowers again, how the good fragrance of things returned. But instead we see that the bad smell (that Kame points out in the end battle sequence) still lingers.

We can see it clearly surrounding Asa as she is doing her first job as the official scribe.

The talisman kon placed on the well remained unresponsive to the events, and we see kon closing his eyes and looking up at the sky almost as if he is exasperated by the realization of there being ANOTHER mononoke that he couldn’t manage to find.

Some thing that bothered me about the ending is that both Asa and Kame ended up throwing things away. Asa let Kame go, and Kame gave her comb to Asa.

So what if the bad smell was NOT because of karakasa and was because of Kame and Asa’s situation? Maybe it is Asa’s feelings for Kame that she never admitted to, and didn’t act upon (as she ended up having her leave her side) that gave birth to another mononoke, the fire rat?

I also noticed that whenever Asa began committing herself more and more to the Ooku and hence sort of pushing Kame away, the stinky smell was surrounding her.