What They Say:
Shinichiro Asano is a penniless high school student who decides to look for a job in order to pay his rent. His teacher suggests that he find work doing housekeeping. While working for the Shimazu family, he meets Sakuya, a beautiful girl who comes off as a bit crude and selfish. But Sakuya is also the 37th head of the Shimazu family and works as an exorcist, capturing and eliminating unwanted creatures. One day, Shinichiro accidentally frees one of these creatures and they must cooperate to recapture it. less
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Isuca managed to provide for some tender moments between Sakuya and Souchiro the last time around, even if it did let her bawl her eyes out like a kindergarten student. Now that he’s gained her true name and understands her a bit more, as well as audiences through the various otherdimensional scenes in the previous episode, things have softened a bit in a predictable way. Sadly, the show is still pretty much hitting all its marks in a fashion that we’ve seen before, which means it’s not really standing out on its own. And even its call to fanservice being a big selling point of the manga feels weak here, as it’s not consistent and when we do get it, it just feels forced. Sometimes a show can certainly be saved by its fanservice, but Isuca isn’t going to be one of those.
This episode starts off with plenty of bland material, such as whited out Tamako nakedness as she pounces Souchiro and Sakuya gets jealous, to some rather mildly amusing moments where Souchiro gets really serious with Sakuya in a way that probably makes her a bit weak in the legs. We do get a little time with our Western mage as she makes it clear that she’s fully about humiliating Sakuya and putting her in her place, which means just a bit more of this silliness ahead. A little change is coming to upcoming fights though as Souchiro has been gifted a special katana that will allow him to fight. He has been frustrated by his inability to do much during a lot of the incidents that have happened so far, which is tied to the fact that he hasn’t had anything to really defend himself with or fight with. So he’s feeling a bit more confident, but we also see how Sakuya is concerned about it all as well.
Naturally, the show doesn’t take long for another encounter with a spirit to be dealt with and we get the group as a whole having to cope with the floating head with smoke that’s obviously resistant to physical attacks. There’s some decent moments to it as the two sides go back and forth, and as our Western mage makes her move as well, and we see Shinichiro doing his best to try and be an active participant in protecting everyone as well. Things do come to a close in a fairly straightforward manner, but we also get the mild twist along the way. Suseri finds herself captured after losing her fight and is in a half-naked stripped down bad kind of way, and this comes on top of Shinichiro getting smacked around a bit too, which has Sakuya all emotional and ready to snap once she sees this brutal treatment of her sister. At least our Western mage finally introduces herself to Sakuya and the others as Isuca, bringing that into play at long last.
In Summary:
Isuca gets us closer to the end of its ten episode run and it’s easy to see the path that the next three episodes are going to take now that the players are more formally introduced to each other. There’s a few rough moments for the cast here, some mild changes such as Shinichiro having weapon in hand and Sakuya being a lot more concerned for him in general, but mostly it’s just the orbit of the series tightening up a bit as the fight that Isuca has started is becoming more real. I do like seeing Sakuya stepping up to things a bit more here towards the end, but what else would you expect after what happened to Suseri? Still, the series just feels weak and pedestrian for the most part as it plays by the standard script of most shows without a lot to really allow it to stand out.
Grade: C
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.
