Rie Kugimiya gets more tsundere than usual.
What They Say:
Hiyori rings in the new year by visiting a nearby shrine. Nora and a sinister god of calamity named Rabo have other plans for her, though…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After the last episode, Yukine has become a more responsible person and has started working for Daikoku to pay back the money he stole. Yato and Hiyori are both extremely proud of him. Ah, they grow up so fast…even when they can’t physically age…
Yato visits Tenjin’s shrine to thank him for Mayu’s help with the ablution, but it somehow turns into a shouting match. When Yato asks Tenjin for advice on curing Hiyori’s cat tail ailment, he suggests Yato sever his ties with her. Her connection to Yato and increasing investment in the world of gods and Regalia might be what’s making her Phantom side persist. This foreshadows a future conflict: maybe Hiyori will eventually have to choose which world to live in. It would be interesting to see Hiyori volunteer herself for the type of life that Yukine was so upset about being forced into.
Yato also returns to doing odd jobs with Yukine. He takes one that seems to be a simple Phantom-slaying venture, but a large group of them suddenly appears and surrounds him. A mysterious figure watches over the battlefield, observing Yato’s use of the newly reforged Sekki.
Hiyori hears from her high school friends that it’s a growing fad to pray to a god named “Rabo,” who will kill anyone he’s asked to. We also overhear news reports of a string of recent unexplained attacks throughout the city. There must be some sort of connection there, but I just can’t put my finger on it…
Hiyori also agrees to visit a shrine on New Year’s with her friends, as Japanese people are wont to do. She invites Yato and dresses up in traditional garb, but once she gets there she can’t seem to find him. While searching for Yato (and leaving her body on the ground somewhere), she runs into Nora, who speaks to her in a surprisingly angry tone. Then she orders a pack of masked spirit wolves to attack her. The wolves corner Hiyori on a rooftop, but just before they can attack, the sun rises and the creatures instantly vanish.
When she asks Nora why she’s doing this, Nora’s answer is simply, “Because I don’t like you.” She tells Hiyori in no uncertain terms that a new god of calamity named Rabo has appeared, and Yato is his next target. This is also one of the few times we see Nora in broad daylight; usually she only appears in dark, secluded areas, and hides in the shadows. The openness of the scene symbolizes the revelation of Nora as a villain. Whereas before she was merely a creepy neutral character, she is now clearly asserting herself as the protagonists’ enemy, bathed in sunlight, right to Hiyori’s face, on New Year’s Day.
The episode ends abruptly when Yato and Yukine finally finish off the last red scorpion Phantom and run into Hiyori on the street. Neither of them could have expected to hear the next few words that come out of her mouth.
This episode didn’t do much to hold my interest. Not a whole lot really happened, and the jokes weren’t particularly funny. It was mostly a chance to open up new plotlines for use in the future, though, so I’m sure they’ll be able to use those in interesting ways later on. This type of episode seems to be a stumbling block for Noragami—the early episodes were a bit slow precisely because they had to spend so much time familiarizing us with new characters and concepts, and the show just isn’t very good at introductions.
In Summary:
Yukine has started working to pay off his (and Yato’s) debts. Yato takes on a Phantom-slaying job and ends up surrounded by scorpion monsters; still, they’re no problem thanks to his reforged katana. Hiyori visits a shrine on New Year’s Eve and is attacked by Nora, who informs her that a new god of calamity, Rabo, is coming to kill Yato. The episode ends when Yato and Yukine finally meet up with Hiyori and she says something completely unexpected. Overall, not Noragami’s best work, but it has historically had trouble with these “setup” episodes.
Grade: C+
Streamed By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
17” Lenovo G700 Laptop, 2.10 GHz Core i7, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 720M, Windows 8; Insignia 1080p TV, PS3 with Crunchyroll App
