What They Say:
Takiko visits Harutora and Natsume at Onmyo Prep while they are still in the middle of their fight with Kyoko.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Though it wasn’t a huge amount of time overall, dealing with the revelation of Natsume’s gender was a nice piece of the previous episode as it added some decent character bits to the show. Some folks handled it better than others who ended up feeling betrayed in a way. Natsume herself got less of the attention than those reacting to it, but she had her moments as well. That first half was interesting enough, but it was lost along the way with the weight of the second half that focused more on the various other stories that are occurring with characters that I continue to have little to no connection with and even less interest since the bigger storyline is one that is so poorly served and executed here, at least on a weekly basis.
The arrival of Takiko in the show previously is something that adds a little more interesting material, especially since she fits in so well with those that came with Natsume to the Prep academy at the beginning of the series. There’s an ease about the group as they come together again, though you can see it getting under some others skin as they see it unfold. Takiko has her own reasons for being there as well and isn’t exactly pleased by what she’s seeing in a more general sense, but a lot of it comes down to the fact that the kids are being kept away from the larger issues going on. This has been a part of the show for some time as the adults in the know are protecting the kids, more often than not, but it’s Takiko who knows a bit about what’s going on and reveals some of it here to them since she finds it unfair that they don’t know.
The show does spend some of its time on a bit of an internal battle that comes up, with Takiko getting on the offense pretty easily with Natsume, but we also get things shifting to more character material as Natsume ends up sitting down with Kyoko and really tries to talk with her. It works well in having Natsume explain that she didn’t really think through how others would feel upon discovery and she manages to have that rare moment of coming across earnestly again. The two have a pretty interesting discussion overall and it also once again brings into light that things that Kyoko knows Natsume must tell Harutora about Hokuto, but that again is something that won’t happen right away.
In Summary:
While we don’t get any really radical changes here, the episode focuses a good bit on what Natsume has gone through and some apologies from her about it all, which is good to see since she did really surprise some folks with what she was doing. It’s given the time to unfold, albeit with a bit of fighting in the middle, and that’s helped to make Natsume a bit more accessible while putting Kyoko in a decent position, one that allows her to push Natsume in a direction she needs to be going. It’s not bad but it’s not really engaging and with all the larger story material floating around, it all still feels very disconnected here.
Grade: C
Streamed By: FUNimation
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.
