This week in 90’s tropes: Environmentalism. (It’s less painful than it sounds)
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):
Last time I lamented that the storyline the show chose to go with that week was a little bit too predictable and it wasn’t that interesting as a result. This week would seem to be the same on paper as the series opts to go with the most dreaded of all 90’s plots: the environmentalism episode, and it’s about as hamfisted about that as you’d expect. Though while there’s no subtlety to be had on that end, it also manages to work in a somewhat more interesting message and while it’s not the best about that one either, it manages to keep things afloat.
The basic plot here is pretty straightforward: While continuing their road trip, Ushio and Tora encounter a trio of demon siblings called Kamitachis. The youngest brother named Juurou has been going around attacking humans indiscriminately and his siblings, Raishin and Kagari ask for Ushio’s aid in killing him. To absolutely no one’s surprise it’s revealed that the reason he’s been going around killing humans is because he was driven out of his home by humans tearing down his forest to build on it, and he’s decided to pay them back for their carelessness. It’s about as 90’s environmentalism as you can get and while it’s not as though that isn’t relevant anymore, it’s been (no pun intended) recycled so many times that it’s kind of eyeroll worthy at this point, and even more-so when something’s as in-your-face about the message as the show is here.
However while it’s about “humans should stop destroying the environment” on the surface, the show also manages to throw in an interesting little message about empathy. There’s a bit in the episode where Ushio tries to help patch up Tora after he got hurt and while neither can really understand the exact reason behind why he’d do it his answer is “because I’m human”. This later comes into play when Ushio tries to relate to Juurou’s story about losing his home, because he also knows how it feels to have something you love taken away by other people. At first it’s not enough to change his point of view as the construction workers responsible for destroying his home come back and start harassing him. But when a fire breaks out and Ushio goes out of his way to Raishin and Kagari, the workers decide to save Ushio because that’s the “human” thing to do and the display is enough to make Juurou realize that humans are indeed capable of helping out someone other than themselves. All’s well that ends well right? Wrong.
Seeing that display of empathy isn’t just enough to make Juurou reflect on his view of humans, it also makes him reflect on his own actions in the darkest way possible. He realizes that he truly has become a monster and forces Ushio into killing him since he feels he has no place in the world now. Environmentalism aside, it’s a pretty dated message and the show’s not really subtle enough when it comes to this message either, though I imagine this probably would have been/was more impactful during the time period when this was actually written. However the show choosing to end it on a tragic note rather than an upbeat one is just short enough of being par-the-course for this kind of plot to a least feel a little compelling so it’s a little harder to fault the cliches here and it certainly drives the whole thing home. There really isn’t much that can be done to ever make this kind of storyline feel fresh again but the show does a good enough job of trying to at least make for another worthwhile entry to the series.
In Summary:
This week’s Ushio and Tora brings out the much loathed environmentalism plot that plagued the 90’s and it’s as preachy as we’ve come to expect from that sort of thing. To the show’s credit though it also tries to weave in a message about empathy to go alongside that, and while neither message really has any level of subtlety, the combination of the two is enough to make things work. It’s certainly an example of 90’s tropes that haven’t aged well but at least it’s mostly painless one-and-done entry, so now it’s onward to whatever the show has planned next.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll, Hulu
Hamfisted environmentalism messages are not just something from the 90s, The first one I remember was Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster (1971’s Godzilla vs. Hedorah).