At this point I need to accept that Dekin no Mogura is never going to be popular in English. Hell (no pun intended), Hoozuki no Reitetsu never was and it was a massive commercial hit in Japan. I know a few people at least are watching it, and one or two have even commented here. There’s even a certain pleasure in being part of an exclusive club, the only ones smart enough to realize how great a totally obscure series is. We’re kidding ourselves, but cope is a fundamental part of life so why fight it?
The sheer goofy energy of this show is one of the things I really love about it. And that’s an Eguchi trademark – that melding of highbrow and lowbrow comedy in an almost Python-esque fashion. From a content standpoint she writes the most culturally-specific comedy in manga, of that I have no doubt. But the style is very familiar to those of us who love the Western exemplars of it. As we pick things up the exorcism is about to kick off at the 100 Yen shop, starting with a conversation between Toshirou and Sukekiya about the former’s tax status (“clean-up and estate liquidation” for legal purposes).
Turns out Toshirou is extremely popular among government ministers, who have lots of issues with possession, and I suppose it’s only natural that they can’t write exorcisms off as such. He’s off the opinion that this is going to be an easy job and tells the manager to just pay him ¥10,000, but when the “harmless” spirits gathered in the store start gawking at something, he realizes this might be a bit more complicated. As I noted last week Yae-chan had a red panda in her Zoom window – based on events here I’m guessing it was a plushie, but who the heck knows?
The subject of spiritual furore is Maggie-kun (Toyosaki Aki), the spirit of a red panda from the zoo (Yaeko’s favorite, and she’s a red panda otaku) who just passed away. Maggie-kun has wound up in ¥100 Home for some reason, presumably because it’s just a place that draws spirits like moths to a flame. When Magi notices Maggie (hmmm) Mogura-san makes a very profound statement: “seeing is noticing”. In other words, the world is full of stuff that’s there but we assume doesn’t exist until we notice it (if we ever do). Animals are good at hiding, whether in life or death – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
At this point Shio and Yaeko show up at the shop, and pretty quickly notice something weird is going down. Maggie is freaking out, and Toshirou gets Ikebukuro to subdue (but not eat) him. Magi is sympathetic (Shio has already noticed that he resembles a red panda in more than name), and the spirit seems to be drawn to him. This may be a bit of a letdown for Yae-chan, who loves red pandas above all, but you get the idea Maggie has had more than enough in life of humans fawning over him. He senses a kindred spirit in Magi, and the result convinces Yae that he’s reached his evolved form.
And so Magi has a new companion – and since that was the lowest-stress way to get Maggie out of the shop, the exorcists are content to let that play out. The next day Kyoushirou (40 kg) and Shio (55 kg) have a hilarious encounter at the school gate, and he notes that spirits are drawn to healthy dunderheads like her because they’re the farthest from death. A classmate mistakenly interprets their exchange to mean the two of them are dating (this may be foreshadowing in two different ways but I’m not sure yet).
Finally, another wildly interesting conversation between Momoyuki and Kuriaki. Kuriaki has gotten a LINE from his little brother (whether this is the kid from Kyoushirou’s school I’m not sure), asking him whether there’s a place where they worship dolls. An interesting question we’re sure to delve into next week, but in the meantime by way of small talk Magi-kun asks Mogura-san how old he is. At his “I’m not sure” he clarifies – he means physical age, to which Mogura answers “my 30’s”.
Magi asks Momoyuki why he didn’t choose to be an energetic teen to chase that ghost fire, and Mogura tells him teens are too expensive to keep up because they’re always hungry. Also they’re constantly distracted by “every boob and butt they see”. But if he’d chosen to be over 40 he’d “feel terrible about 20 days every month”. Finally, a teenage body is peak physical form – it would take too much flame to maintain it. Well, if you’re a person of a certain age the tragicomic profundity of this explanation is sadly inescapable (it’d absolutely be the 30s I chose if I had the choice). It’s fitting, because no one does “if you know you know” humor better or more humorously than Eguchi Natsumi.
