Posted on August 26, 2026
NIGHT HEAD synopsis – episode 14
Episode 14 – Shadow
broadcast date: january 21st 1993
Director / Screenplay:
Katsuyuki Motohiro (本広克行) / Takeo Kasai (土方政人)
Naoto Kirihara – Etsushi Toyokawa (豊川悦司)
Naoya Kirihara – Shinji Takeda (武田真治)
additional cast can be viewed here
We open on Miho, a young woman walking alone through a parking lot, the accompanying soundtrack already striking a brisk, threatening tone. She looks over her shoulder nervously, and we cut to Naoya, sleeping in the car.1 He wakes with a start, seemingly sensing danger nearby. Several thugs approach the young woman, pulling her screaming over to their car.
Alerted by the noise, Naoya pops out from around the corner – he watches in shock as the girl is shoved into their backseat, then gulps. Sorimachi, the leader of the miscreants, steps forward – stabbing Naoya in the stomach before leaving him for dead.
Meanwhile, Naoto returns to the car with groceries, and is shocked to find Naoya missing. In a panic, he quickly scans the area – on finding Naoya collapsed in a pool of his own blood, he rushes over to save him. Before blacking out, Naoya warns him – the men who got him are still ready to kill. Cradling his younger brother in his arms, Naoto screams his name.
We cut to the hallway of a hospital where a frantic Naoto is told by a doctor that while his brother is in critical condition, they’re doing everything they can. With nothing to do but wait, he collapses into his seat before breaking down in sobs. Quietly, Naoto begins to hear his brother’s voice, speaking directly into his mind – relaying a vision of what happened earlier in the parking lot. Naoto understands that Naoya wants him to rescue the kidnapped girl, so he heads out. Sitting in the car outside, Naoto wonders to himself if this is what their powers are for before heading out.
On arriving at Naoya’s envisioned kidnapping destination, he warns his older brother again: these men are prepared to kill. Naoto heads in cautiously, but is immediately confronted by the scene he fears most – the goons holding the frightened girl’s arms while their leader stabs her. Naoto rushes forward, yelling at them to stop. With powers blazing, he sends them all flying – but not soon enough.
Naoto: (Lifting Miho up) “Hey, hang in there!”
But it’s already too late.
Miho: (Looking at Naoto with vacant eyes) “…”
Miho’s eyes fly open; her mouth gapes as she clutches at empty air.
Her strength fails, and she slumps over, dead.
Blood flowing from the wound coats Naoto’s hand.
Miho’s face is twisted hideously in terror and agony.
Naoto: (Clutching Miho’s body in futility) “Naoya…I’m sorry… I didn’t make it in time…”
Naoto trembles with bitter regret.
Just then, he senses a presence behind him, only to be struck on the back of the head by a blow from a steel pipe, knocking him unconscious. He awakes to find himself on the floor, hands and feet bound with rope. He focuses, attempting to use his powers to break free but finds that… he can’t. Panicked, Naoto struggles, a splitting headache signaling that something is very wrong.
Just then, seeing that Naoto has woken up, Sorimachi approaches. He crouches, brandishing a knife, and demands Naoto tell him what exactly he did back there to send them all flying – and that if he can use that power at will, he’ll let him live. Sorimachi tells him that he’s going to put him and his power to work for their crew, and despite Naoto’s protestations, he’s defenseless.
Naoto questions why they killed Miho, and Sorimachi says that it makes no sense to leave any clues in a kidnapping case. When Naoto questions his comedically evil stance on the ethics of the whole scenario, Sorimachi says he doesn’t care:
Naoto (brimming with anger): “Are you even human?”
Sorimachi: “Who knows? I don’t really care if I’m human or not.”
Naoto: “What exactly do you think you’re going to do?”
Sorimachi: “I can do anything … I’m not bound by any limits.
Laws and morals mean nothing to me.
I have no use for trivial things like love.
Having nothing means I can do anything.”
Sorimachi tries to goad Naoto into using his powers again, but Naoto spits in his face. Sorimachi retaliates by kicking him repeatedly in the stomach before leaving, telling one of his goons to keep watch. Naoto, nearly incapacitated, can’t understand why his powers would leave him at a time like this. As he continues to struggle, wincing at the pain this brings him, he realizes he can no longer feel Naoya’s consciousness – surely, he can’t be…?
Back at the hospital, Naoya is fine. Shoko has come to his bedside to warn him that his older brother is in danger – or, is himself a danger. While he currently cannot use his powers because of that blow to the head, the rising tide of negativity that is filling his heart will be set free – unleashing his powers without restraint would be both a danger to anyone around him, but he as well would be consumed by the negative forces. Shoko insists that Naoya is the only one who can stop him.
Back at the warehouse, Naoto has just barely managed to loosen the ropes on his feet without the use of his powers. He attempts to slink past his guard but fails, and the two fight – Naoto’s hands still bound. As the goon comes at him with a knife, he screams in fear… and his powers return. He tests this out by toying with the goon, repeatedly plucking the knife from his hand and sending it skittering. As he gains control again, he shreds the ropes with a tug and rises to his feet with an icy stare.
The other goon suddenly appears, grabbing him from behind, but to no avail – he sends them both slamming across the room. They make the same fatal mistake that others before them have done and call him a monster, but this time, he agrees with a cruel smirk.
Naoto: “That’s right. I possess a power beyond anything you people could even imagine.”
Goon (unable to believe what is happening):
“I-Impossible… This is insane!”
But Naoto’s smile only broadens –
“Well, I guess you wouldn’t understand.”
His expression hardens as he lashes out with his powers, contorting the body of the goon “into a grotesque shape, the sickening sound of snapping bones echoing out.” The man collapses, foaming at the mouth,2 and Naoto moves on to his colleague who he gleefully batters against the walls. He asks him if he’d like to have every bone in his body broken one by one, but the goon begs for mercy. Naoto just wants one thing: to know where Sorimachi is.
After one more quick round of torture, the goon brings him to Sorimachi’s room where he demonstrates his powers by exploding a bunch of stuff. The goon starts screaming and he knocks him unconscious in annoyance. Sorimachi is stunned. Naoto reassures him that he didn’t kill the goon – but Sorimachi himself is a different story. Their dialogue in this section ought to be sampled in full:
Sorimachi: “You some kinda monster?”
Naoto (grinning): “If I’m a monster, then so are you. You’re a beast wearing human skin!”
Naoto lashes out at him with his powers, a shock coursing through Sorimachi’s body.
Sorimachi: (With blood running from his nose): “Psychic powers, huh?”
He looks at Naoto.
Naoto: “For the first time in my life, I’m actually glad I have this power.”
He attacks Sorimachi again.
Sorimachi (wincing in pain): “So this is what you can do…?”
Naoto: “I’m just getting started. I’m going to make you savor it to the fullest.”
Sorimachi: (Wearing a bold grin) “That’s music to my ears.”
Naoto is taken aback – his attempt at threatening this villain has failed, and if anything, he seems delighted. Sorimachi thinks Naoto should partner up with him, but Naoto disagrees, retaliating with crushing blows at Sorimachi’s every attempt. And believe it or not, the guy hangs on through a fairly intensive short-form “debate” on the ethics of murder, despite Naoto pulverizing his internal organs with the power of his mind:
Naoto: “I don’t need a lecture from the likes of you!”
He lashes out at Sorimachi with force once again.
Sorimachi coughs up a mouthful of blood.
Sorimachi: (In agony) “What’s wrong… with living true to one’s own desires…?”
Naoto: “Shut up.”
Sorimachi: “What do you intend to use that power for? Become a champion of justice and take down the bad guys? There’s no end to it. You’ll turn into a murderer yourself before you run out of villains to kill. I know how those powers of yours should be used. Having power means nothing on its own. It only gains meaning when you know how to use it.”
Naoto can’t take any more of this, and tells Sorimachi that he knows how to use his own powers: by killing him. The force of Naoto’s powers warp their surroundings as Sorimachi groans in pain, but just then – a voice. Naoto whips around to see Naoya in the doorway, clutching his stomach wound. He begs his older brother to stop, telling him he mustn’t kill Sorimachi. Naoto, shocked, says that he has to – or Sorimachi himself will just kill again. Naoya grabs him, shouting that no one can decide who deserves to live – and that if Naoto kills Sorimachi, that makes him no better than he is.
In a rage, Naoto flings his younger brother away, a psychic blast that throws him to the ground with a crash. Naoya sees that his stomach wound has reopened, and he cries out – when Naoto turns to see what he’s done, the tension is broken. Awash with shame, Naoto falls to his knees, but Naoya tries to reassure him. That isn’t what his powers are meant for – there has to be another use for them.
Filled with remorse, Naoto helps his brother up so they can leave, but Sorimachi calls out to him – he says that they’re one and the same, and cackles as he assures Naoto he was having fun torturing them all with his powers. Grinning, he gasps out “I get it now. You’re one of us.” before losing consciousness.
As usual, “Naoto and Naoya walk away, dragging their battered bodies.” Naoto, shaken, tells his brother that Sorimachi was right – unleashing his powers to the fullest felt good, and he enjoyed hurting them. Nearly sobbing, he tells Naoya that if he hadn’t turned up when he did, his own powers would have spiraled even further out of control.
The episode ends with this:
Naoto: “This incident made it clear to me.
If there is any meaning to my power — if there is a right way to use it…”
Naoya: “…?”
Naoto: “Then I need you.”
Naoya: “You need me?”
Naoto: “Yeah. Without you, my power would only ever bring about destruction.”
———————————————
From the rapid-fire ethical “debates” with nonsensical stakes to the caustically homoerotic subtext, we’re given – gifted, if I may be so bold – a melodramatic performance from Toyoetsu that perfectly polishes off this episode as a camp masterpiece. You could cut this episode out of the show and it wouldn’t matter, but equally, you could show someone this episode in isolation and it would be a delight all on its own. The opening portion – from the title card to Naoto’s anguished screams over the dying Naoya – is one minute and seventeen seconds long… and boy, do they establish plenty.3
foreshadowing? I daren’t speculate…
While we are treated here to Naoto going sicko mode, it is in a star turn from Yutaka Matsushige that we are given the greatest gift of all. In isolation, either performance would be fun, but it is in their harmony that we find the perfect encapsulation of a toxic yaoi ship – enemies to lovers that speedran so fast it crashed before it could truly soar.4 It’s a fujoshi recipe for subtext that works well every time, because when you take hypermasculinity and violence to its extremes it will inevitably turn homoerotic.
Previously, Naoto explained the conflicting emotions of affection and jealousy between siblings that morphed into psychic violence like so: “Sometimes, love that is too intense becomes indistinguishable from hatred”.5 Here, we have the opposite: a hatred so intense it is indistinguishable from love. Within an ethical framework where characters inexplicably recognize their own villainous role, the persistent beckoning to work together from Sorimachi, along with the charge of their being one and the same may appear to be taunts; however, in a world where his ego allows for the self-importance I suspect, this comparison rings out as the recognition – if not admiration – of a fated rival. Wiping blood from his mouth, his apparent delight at being told he’ll have to “savor [Naoto’s power] to the fullest” resonates with a sadomasochism I don’t think the authors even understood, let alone intended.
Similarly, Naoto’s lines delineate his hatred for Sorimachi in ways that place his attention towards him in the spotlight – even if he’s saying he’d kill him over a goon, it still marks Sorimachi out as special to say “but you’re different.” Naoto’s flip to negativity comes as a controlled rage, accepting rather than exploding at being called a monster, but this leads quite accidentally into his The Notebook-esque exchange where he says “if I’m a monster so are you”. Later, the violent framing of his desire to torture and kill Sorimachi is undone by his phrasing, the pervasively romantic quality of saying “for the first time in my life, I’m actually glad I have these powers” making me audibly gasp. If that’s not fodder for a fanfic, I don’t know what is!
By and large their back-and-forth on the ethics of murder isn’t really worth dissecting, apart from the ways that Sorimachi and Naoto are paralleled as characters. Sorimachi’s remark that “Having nothing means I can do anything” contrasts him with Naoto and what he has – Naoya. Sorimachi is himself framed as what Naoto would turn to (either ‘turn into’ figuratively or who he’d ‘turn to’ more literally) if he were to lose his brother, since the events of the episode appear to have been precipitated by his misunderstanding at being cut off from Naoya’s consciousness as signaling his death.
However, this feeds into the problem of Naoya being all that he has – and this necessarily meaning that Naoya cannot have anything (or anyone else) in return. This is further made worse by the notion that he “needs” Naoya (as preordained by a christ-like teen) or else his powers mean nothing but destruction. I’ve been in some bad relationships in my time, and it ain’t good when your value to your significant other is as a surge protector for their rage, and comments like this are more threatening than affectionate. This feels like something Naoto needs to learn to control on his own, and while he gestures towards understanding this himself, we rarely seem him taking steps towards working on it – and more often see the emotional fallout of his failures to do so (see: episode 1, episode 3, episode 6).
The more interesting angle on all this is the three-point turn they do regarding the “meaning” of his powers. At the beginning of the episode, before heading out to rescue the kidnapped girl, Naoto ponders if this use of their powers is where their meaning lies. In the middle of the episode, Sorimachi repeatedly tells Naoto that he knows how his powers ought to be used – “Having power means nothing on its own. It only gains meaning when you know how to use it”. This notion seemingly tempts Naoto, however briefly, before he says that the way he’ll use his power is instead to kill Sorimachi himself, leading to the denouement wherein Naoya arrives and belatedly assures his brother that isn’t what his power is meant to be used for.
The thing I don’t understand about all this is why Naoto’s powers (and their ‘purpose’) need necessarily be linked with violence. At one point, Naoya dramatically asks, “There has to be another way to use your powers…”, a confusion which really makes no sense to me, other than pointing towards whatever inevitable “grand scale” New Age showdown George has in store for us. Naoto has telekinesis, which surely means he can exert physical pressure in ways that could be the opposite of injurious – couldn’t he be a firefighter? I imagine his powers would also come in handy for a mountain search and rescue team, or anyone who deals with the aftermath of natural disasters. Surely the impact of this would also be the opposite of Sorimachi’s assertion that true power comes from having nothing, where his place in a community would hold him to the moral justifications of how he uses his powers (and, give him “something” other than Naoya to hold himself to).
One last thing to go out on – in the May 1994 issue of June magazine, an interview6 with the cast featured an anecdote about this episode:
Toyokawa: Since there’s bloodshed and things getting smashed up, we usually shoot in places like warehouses that haven’t been used for years—it’s really tough … You know the episode “SHADOW,” where we fought that tall guy?7 It took place in a chocolate factory that hadn’t been used for years— a place where oil drums were lying around and dust had piled up about ten centimeters deep. Everyone got taken down.
Takeda: One of the staff members actually collapsed.
Toyokawa: The script supervisor — from carbon
monoxide poisoning.
Takeda: And right in the middle of that, we were acting out scenes where we had to take deep breaths. (Laughs)
So, who knows – maybe the brilliance of this episode is thanks to carbon monoxide poisoning!
- This is the third greatest mystery of NIGHT HEAD. ↩︎
- I’m not sure this happens for the reasons the team working on this show seem to think it does… ↩︎
- In 76 seconds total, they managed more interest than in the entirety of THE OTHER SIDE! ↩︎
- The script only says he “loses consciousness”, so I’m praying to the BL gods that he’ll stick around. Hell, bring him back now for a special – gimme some old man toxic yaoi! ↩︎
- This was episode 13, though I didn’t quote it in the synopsis. ↩︎
- I will be doing a more in-depth look at this interview later! ↩︎
- Incredible to think of Yutaka Matsushige ever being just “that tall guy” ↩︎
