‘The Girl from the Other Side’ Ending Explained: Can the Curse Be Broken?

Welcome to the Ending Explained for The Girl from the Other Side, an anime film Wit Studio produced based on the manga written and illustrated by Nagabe. The film was created as an Original Animation DVD, which means that the original release went straight to DVD and was given to fans with the purchase of a manga’s bonus volume. This makes the film quite special, so it is great that platforms like Crunchyroll have it available for the general public. The film stars the voices of Jun Fukuyama, and Rie Takahashi.

The Girl from the Other Side is a very special film. Wit Studio goes out of its way to create something quite unique in terms of animation and tone. The studio has proven itself over and over again by changing styles and doing it with the utmost quality. In this case, the film feels closer to something like the esoteric Angel’s Egg than anything else that Wit Studio has ever done. However, where that film was dark and cold, The Girl from the Other Side ends up being much more tender and warm. With a running time of only 70 minutes, the film barely reaches the length to be considered a feature film, but it is completely worthy of the title.

The following paragraphs contain spoilers for The Girl from the Other Side. Read at your own risk.

Who Is The Teacher In The Girl from the Other Side?

The Girl from the Other Side is one of those stories that prefers to be more of a show don’t tell kind of story than one that presents every single detail to the audience and explains them in depth. No, here, the author trusts that the audience can infer most of the information that is being implied on the screen.

There is no moment when the characters stop to explain their world or what it entails to be this or that. These characters inhabit this world, so they don’t need to explain things they already know. And so, the audience must remain active to put the pieces together.

In this case, we are presented with a world full of magic, a dark world, though. In this world, something has been labeled “The Curse.” This curse transforms humans into beasts. Anyone who gets infected by another being that is already cursed is thrown out of society.

The world seems to be divided in two, The Inside and the Outside. For a long time, the Outside seemed to have been the home of humans and beasts, but the spread of the curse has become too big, so the Inside has started to take in people who live on the Outside. As the movie begins, we see people throwing bodies on the outside. It is implied that these were people who had the curse.

One of the soldiers, who is adamant that there should be no survivors, goes further into the forest. There, we see a little girl sleeping on the ground. She is found by a creature, a cursed one, that dresses in a black suit and has horns and the face of a goat.

The creature wonders why a girl like this could be sleeping there. When the soldier arrives, the creature touches him, stopping him from doing something to the girl but cursing him. The creature then takes the girl with him to his home. The girl seems wounded, so the creature tries to heal her the best he can, although he cannot touch her, or she will become cursed.

The creature is quite polite and seems to be quite knowledgeable. The girl who declares she is not afraid of him introduces herself as Shiva, and she starts calling the creature Teacher.

We learn that, like many other cursed creatures, Teacher was a human at some point, and he had a family. However, the curse has made him forget his name and most of his past. He wanders, looking for a cure. The two begin a relationship where the Teacher takes on the father’s role, and Shiva takes on the daughter’s role. They care for each other, play together and live together for quite a while.

Can The Curse Be Broken?

One day, while Teacher and Shiva are playing hide and seek, Teacher is visited by another cursed one. However, unlike Teacher, this cursed one makes it his mission to spread the curse among humans. The creature implies that the Teacher can use Shiva’s soul, which is pure, to break the curse.

However, the simple thought of doing it makes the Teacher angry. He has never had the need or the want to spread the curse, and while he wants to remember his name and rediscover his past, including his wife and kid, he has also become quite attached to Shiva, so he doesn’t even consider doing this.

The teacher decides that it is time to leave this place and try to find a place where Shiva can live among humans. The teacher concludes that this will be the best for her. She cannot stay with him forever. They travel for a long time and arrive at an abandoned village with many trees.

They stay the night, and Teacher has an encounter with a human who ends up killing himself, thinking he has become cursed. In the morning, the soldier that Teacher first turned at the film’s beginning finds his way to them, having become a full beast. But before he can touch Shiva, he turns into a tree. We learn that the many trees in the village are people who were cursed and decided to stay together to the end.

Here, Shiva reveals that she has been cursed, for a long time, even before she met Teacher. This is why she was asleep in the woods the night the soldiers threw the bodies out of the Inside. The teacher becomes quite afraid that he might lose Shiva to the curse, and so he decides to ask for help from the other cursed ones.

They lead Teacher and Shiva to Mother, an entity that is the source of the curse. The teacher asks if there is a way to break the curse so that he can save Shiva, but there is no cure for the curse. Shiva doesn’t care, though. She only cares that there is someone who loves her and is there for her.

The teacher decides that even though they are both cursed and their time will be short, they must try to spend it together as much as possible. The two go back home together to live their lives.

This ending, while sad in some way, it is also very much a reflection of our real lives. None of us are immortals. We are all cursed from the beginning by death, which is a universal truth. Even the people trying to deny this fate will meet it one day. And so, considering that our lives will always be short, the best thing we can do is to share them as much as we can with the ones we love, no matter what. Just like Teacher and Shive decide to do at the film’s end.