Till hunger do us part
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): After almost an entire
After almost an entire cours worth of serious affairs, this week’s episode decides to dial things back a bit. Instead, we get a little side tale involving Mayuko and Tora along with some old monster of the week shenanigans. Given exactly how hefty the last few episodes have been, this kind of thing would normally feel out of place and it kinda does, but the weird chemistry between these two is enough to make for an acceptable detour.
Since Ushio’s stuck battling against a severe case of diarrhea, Tora decides to ditch him to hang around Mayuko instead. However she has her own set of plans as she’s been invited to a dinner party, but Tora suspects there’s yokai trickery afoot and decides to disguise himself as her in order to move around the city undetected and follow. Unsurprisingly Tora’s suspicions prove to be true and Mayuko gets attacked by a pair of yokai looking to learn about why some humans can die a “satisfying” death until Tora comes to her rescue. As the two try to make their escape and run across a wedding dress, Mayuko reveals to Tora that she’s in love with Ushio (what a shocker! *eyeroll*) but has held back for Asako’s sake. Tora can’t understand why she’d do that given it’s human nature for people to put themselves above others and that get the short end of the stick because of someone else is foolish.We quickly learn, though, that Mayuko’s sense of altruism comes from none other than Ushio himself (again, shock) who has since inspired her to behave the same way, and while she thinks she can’t have Ushio she’s more than happy to pose as Tora’s bride.
It doesn’t take too long for the yokai duo to show up and while trying to outmaneuver them, Tora manages to take one of them out, which doesn’t raise much concern from the other since empathy is lost on them. Mayuko on the other hand gets a chance to display it when she attempts to save a stranger and ends up trying to sacrifice herself in order to kill the other yokai and rescue Tora. This act is enough for the yokai to see the strength of compassion before shortly getting offed by Tora, and the experience is enough that Tora decides he’s going to take care of Mayuko no matter what and even starts calling her by her actual name, cementing their little relationship.
This was certainly a strange little detour, but not one I have too much issue with since Tora’s relationship with Mayuko has proven to be just as satisfying as the one he has with Tora. Not sure if the whole “well she likes Tora but she really loves Ushio” thing was really necessary to highlight since it doesn’t really seem like the show is too interested in doing anything with those minor harem elements (nor am I sure I’d even want it to try since that kind of thing generally doesn’t end well) but thing she has with Tora is clearly what mattered here so I guess it balances out and it certainly made for a cute little affair. The morality aspect of things not so much, since it was pretty straightforward and it felt a little too overt, even compared to what’s been going on the last few weeks in the show, but it’s not quite enough to make this one a drag. All in all, this certainly wasn’t an unpleasant side trip and I wouldn’t be surprised if some aspect of this ends up being important later, I’m eager to see the next phase in the war on Hakumen
In Summary: Ushio & Tora opts for a side story this week as we instead follow Tora’s going on a little adventure with Mayuko. It feels a little weird for the show to suddenly bring up Mayuko having a crush on Ushio since I doubt the show’s going to do much with that, but her chemistry with Tora in this episode was more than enough to make up for that, and those two have proven to be a pretty entertaining pair. With
Ushio & Tora opts for a side story this week as we instead follow Tora’s going on a little adventure with Mayuko. It feels a little weird for the show to suddenly bring up Mayuko having a crush on Ushio since I doubt the show’s going to do much with that, but her chemistry with Tora in this episode was more than enough to make up for that, and those two have proven to be a pretty entertaining pair. With that though, I’m looking forward to getting back to to major events next week and hopefully they’ll be a lot stronger
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll, Hulu
