This week’s episode of Dororo had all the makings of a “calm before the storm” interlude – a break from the increasingly high stakes struggle playing out over Hyakkimaru’s fate.  And it’s probably going to be the last lighter episode too, with only 5 left until the end.  As such it was obviously not going to compare to the series’ hugely successful dramatic efforts (like last week), but it really didn’t try to – and having emotional buy-in with the characters makes this sort of storyline a lot more effective.

This week’s body count was zero, and the bakemono was really more of a mischievous troublemaker than a real threat.  In a sense this almost played like an OVA placed in the middle of the series.  Seeing a normally pretty sober show go for fairly broad comedy in this fashion causes a bit of a disconnect, and some of the humor didn’t quite click, but on the whole I rather enjoyed the way this episode fully embraced that approach and didn’t try and have it both ways.

The spine of the premise is Dororo and Hyakkimaru visiting a village in search of a swordsmith to reforge Hyakki’s blades, which is certainly logical enough.  A local artisan named Munetsuna comes highly recommended, except when Hyakkimaru and Dororo arrive at the village one of the locals complains that a hatchet Munetsuna forged is no good (it’s clearly sharp as sin) and that his daughter is ugly.  The daughter, Otowa, certainly doesn’t match that description any more than the hatchet did, and the gruff and dour Munetsuna agrees to reforge the blades – but only after they’ve been purified.

It isn’t immediately clear what’s going on here – I initially thought the wearing of the masks was causing all the weirdness – but it turns out that a youkai called Amanojaku (very much a prominent creature in Japanese folklore).  Historically this is a spirit that can pervert human thoughts, and it was eventually subdued by Bishamonten – which very much matches up with the way things play out in Dororo, where the ghoul was sealed at the local Bishamon temple before somehow being released and causing havoc.  In effect, it makes people say the opposite of what they mean – and it also has the ability to directly control their actions.

One upshot of that is that Hyakkimaru ends up agreeing to marry Otowa, a development which understandably alarms Dororo more than a little.  It seems the opposite effect isn’t working on Otowa, because she’s clearly more than cool with the idea of marrying Hyakku-sama.  One wonders if there might actually come a point where Hyakkimaru becomes capable of thinking of another person that way, but he’s certainly not reached it yet – this us all the Amanojaku’s doing to be sure.

Since there isn’t going to be any demon slaying or canon confrontation this week, the main thrust of the story is giving Hyakki and Dororo a chance to be immersed on a range of comic situations – starting with Hyakkimaru’s new habit of rubbing his face against new things, which he has a hard time understanding is socially unacceptable.  There is a bit of philosophizing between Dororo and Munetsuna, who dreams of creating a blade so perfect that it will immediately cause an opponent to abandon the fight and stop bloodshed before it happens (tortured swordsmiths are a staple of historical fantasy, to be sure).  But mostly, it’s about the comedy here, and mostly it works pretty well.  As does the episode itself, as a respite from the dark material that preceded it, and that’s still to come.