What They Say:
The Calm is coming. This is a dangerous time for youmu since it is when their powers grow weak. But what does that mean for the ultra-rare half-youmu, Akihito? And Miroku seems to be up to something. What does he have up his sleeve?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Though there’s been some action to the last couple of episodes, it’s been more focused on the character side of things with a bit of fun and normalcy. Sometimes these work well, but most of the time it just feels like they’re too silly and out of place compared to the rest of the show at that time. Beyond the Boundary certainly pushed those boundaries with what it did, but I have to admit that watching the cast come together for different reasons worked a lot better than I expected. But the serious material was edging right around things and we get that from the beginning here, with a touch of sultry as well, that adds a threatening layer to everything.
While things do work through some normal school material here, especially in the fun between Mirai and Sakura as Sakura is completely worn down at this point, we see some common threads coming together. With Akihito coming across as sleepy himself, we learn more of how there’s a growing weakening going on with those that are of the youmu with something called The Calm. Discovering how it affects normal youmu make sense since there are a fair amount of them, but someone like Akihito who is a half breed makes things a bit more uncertain. The reveal about The Calm definitely sets some concern among the friends for those that they know and it builds a nice bit of tension in the first half as there’s just a good bit of uncertainty about what’s going to happen and the real impact of it.
While the show is quite character focused for a lot of it in setting up the mood and atmosphere, it does give us a bit of action in the second half which is pretty exciting to watch since it doesn’t involve Mirai. Bringing Izumi into play, we see the extent of her skill in just a brief moment as she saves the day and it’s just damn impressive. It may be unrealistic in some form, but the visual design of it is just as striking as what Mirai does and it has all the style to pull it off. This all plays out while Miroku and Mitsuki are trying to go through their own issues but end up getting caught up in a youmu incident all of their own as well. There’s some good scenes to the episode, but unlike past ones it feels a bit less formed and directed, like it’s trying to get to the point but isn’t quite sure how to do that exactly.
In Summary:
Discussion of interesting aspects of what affects a youmu with something like The Calm is definitely engaging since you have to wonder how it’ll affect things. Reinforcing the uncommon nature of Akihito in the mix of it all works to remind us that he’s not normal – not that any of the regular cast here really is. But it’s not something that’s delved into heavily unfortunately as it instead prefers to kind of wander through other characters that are coping with their own issues, somewhat related of course. It’s not so much that it’s badly done, but it comes across as unfocused and unsure of how to get from point A to point B in an engaging way. The fun for me was watching Mirai and Sakura and some of the other smaller moments but also getting to see Izumi in action, which is worth the price of admission.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
