What They Say:
Long ago, a ferocious monster terrorized the land, until a samurai, wielding the legendary “Beast Spear”, sealed him away. 500 years later, a middle school student named Ushio Aotsuki accidentally uncovers the monster in a hidden cellar under his family’s temple. The unsealed monster and the spear attract many other supernatural creatures to the temple and Ushio is forced to release the monster in order to defeat them. Ushio names the monster “Tora” and unwillingly work together to battle other spirits and demons.
The Review:
Content (warning as portions of this review may contain spoilers):
Despite last week’s cliffhanger concerning Ushio’s transformation, this week’s episode actually has very little to do with our hero. Well at least directly anyway. Instead the focus is mainly on the people his actions have helped to save, and particularly all the ladies in his life. This makes for some pretty amusing interactions, and a few good bits of material, but with the way it all goes down, there’s a sense of incompleteness that kind of makes it come across as half an episode stretched out into one.
With Ushio now on a monstrous rampage, the founder of the Kouhamei sect named Jie Mei (who coincidentally is also a spirit) decides to intervene in order to save him. To that end she calls out for Ushio’s dad along with every girl he’s saved since having picked up the Beast Spear so they can rescue him by…combing out his demon hair (I’ll give the show the benefit of the doubt and assume there’s an actual Japanese myth behind that, otherwise it just comes off as silly). This includes Nakamura who finally pieces together that Ushio was the one who saved her during that whole demon mirror affair and isn’t too happy about having been in the dark about things for so long. It leads to some tension between her and Yuu in regards to Ushio’s reliability along with a few more comedic arguments but in the end they all decide to come together in their love for him (which is eyerollingly highlighted outright in the show itself).
Speaking of our “beloved” hero, there’s at least a bit of actual focus on what he’s going through in this ordeal as it turns out he’s actually quite conscious. Usually these “berserk mode” storylines in battle shonen tend to remove any self-awareness of the event so it’s interesting to see a somewhat different approach taken here and it makes the situation all the scarier as Ushio’s consciousness can only look on in horror as he goes on a mad yokai hunting spree. To make matters worse there’s another consciousness inside the spear and it’s even angrier than he is, since it’s driven by an unrelenting grudge against Hakumen no Mono. Presumably said consciousness probably belongs to the person who created the spear in the first place, but we’re likely to get a more detailed picture of that for the next time.
As the episode wraps up, the girls make their attempts to remove the hair, with Yuu and Saya trying to remind Ushio of how much he was able to save them. While it’s kind of touching, it also feels a tad repetitive since it’s already pretty clear how much he changed them, but it’s a decent enough cliche that there’s not much point in complaining about it. At the very least it’s nice to see Ushio being the one who gets saved for a change and at least Inoue’s attempt comes with a comedic “no one else takes my food” save from Tora rather than a third speech so there’s that. Still, with Yuu and of course Nakamura’s attempts up next and nothing too compelling in this episode outside of the latter’s frustrations, this episode feels kind of half-done so hopefully next week’s payoff to this storyline is worth it.
In Summary:
Ushio’s transformation is still at the forefront of events for now, but the character himself takes a backseat this time in favor of the ladies in his life. While this leads to a few good laughs, and the much needed addition of Nakamura finally being in on Ushio’s exploits, the lack of resolution makes this episode feel almost like it was half of one. Though since the next episode actually should bring a resolution to this whole affair, it should probably be a bit stronger and since Ushio’s quite aware of what happened to him this week, I’m curious to see how it’ll affect him when this is all said and done.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll, Hulu