Much like for its protagonist, leaving the confines of Kotobuki-so has tended to be rather unfulfilling for Youkai Apartment no Yuuga na Nichijou.  The youkai apartments are definitely where this series is most narratively comfortable, where its most interesting characters reside.  If it seems as if the normal human world we see everyday is rather drab in comparison, well – wouldn’t it be?  I know if a place like Kotobuki-so existed I’d rather spend time there than at my school or job (or almost anywhere else, to be honest).

That said, we haven’t had anything quite so dramatic happen on school grounds yet, and the current situation is acting as a conduit for what Yuushi has experienced at the apartments to color his view of the real world.  As we saw last week Tashiro-san and the other girls in Yuushi’s homeroom are currently obsessed with school ghost stories, and some of the boys aren’t pleased at the amount of attention those girls are paying to Yuushi-kun.  But we also saw that these are not the garden-variety fictions kids use to scare each other – and that something very odd was going on with the English teacher, Miura-sensei.

Right from the start Fool is pushing Yuushi to investigate the drama club storeroom – largely, it seems, because the Petit Hierozoicon is rather bored with having nothing to do most of the time.  He resists both Fool and the girls, but when Miura interrupts their attempts to persuade him (the irony here is that he was right about one thing – they were flirting, really) in a rather psychotic manner, it’s now clear to both Fool and his master that something genuinely weird is indeed going on here.  Fool calls forth the Norns to try and divine what’s really going on, but as usual with the P.H. they aren’t much help – though the preposterous cosplay Cat Sidhe has talked them into wearing is good for a few laughs.

One thing you notice about Youkai Apato after a while is that it’s not shy about its roots as a coming-of-age story, and more literally one than most – the lessons here come mostly from the old to the very young.  After the boys try and jump Yuushi in the hallway and he (much to Fool’s chagrin) calls forth Brondis to intimidate them, Fukase-san makes the rather interesting statement that “Life is an endless series of small, stupid experiences.  But if you can’t learn from them, you’ll start refusing to interact with others.”  I won’t wade into American (or British) politics here, but I think one can see a lot of truth in that sentiment – and what happens to those who refuse to learn from it.

As for Miura, the source of his madness most definitely comes from that musty little storeroom – a strange collection of misogynistic diatribes Yuushi and Tashiro find scrawled underneath a slab of cardboard taped to the wall.  Given what we’ve already seen of Youkai Apato’s willingness to go very dark, this development has the potential to get very ugly – something terribly traumatic must have led to the gathering of so much hate in that place, and high schools are good places to find terribly traumatic events…