You know the drill for this season. Really good show, not much attention. Mao being the work of Takahashi Rumiko might make that mildly surprising, but on closer examination not so much. Rin-ne didn’t get much attention either, and that was a bigger seller than Mao. Rumiko is a manga kaijuu and still commercially successful, but the craptastic Inuyasha sequel (which she had almost no involvement in) garnered far more discussion than any of her recent original works.

I’m a fan of this series, make no mistake. I liked Rin-ne a lot too, but that was a very different sort of Rumiko – much more comedy-driven. Mao is quite serious most of the time, but it wears that face well. It’s an interesting premise and takes no shortcuts. Given the series’ length we’re still in the prologue phase here, but the mythology is already well-established. Nanoka is passing back and forth between the Reiwa and Taisho effortlessly at this point, but it’s the much longer gap to the Heian that seems to be driving most of the events now.

The iconic Ryounkaku seems to be at the center of every piece of fiction about the great Kanto earthquake. It was the most famous building in Tokyo at the time, a marvel of modernity. But the quake damaged it beyond repair and it was sadly never rebuilt. In Mao, it’s where Hyakka has taken up residence. The “Master of Flaming Heads” is in fact one of Mao’s fellow disciples of the Goko Clan from way back – a senior disciple despite being younger. He (like everyone else there at the time, seemingly) blames Mao for the events we’ve heard bits and pieces about – the death of their master and his daughter Sana, the fire that destroyed their compound. We know the Byouki has a different opinion.

We know why Mao is still alive – Hyakka not so much. The fact that he expires after touching Hagunsei and then revives again is highly suspicious. At long last we get a little more about what happened that day. The disciples were studying Jugondo, a Taoist sorcery concerned with illness and possession. It would eventually become taboo, and the branch concerned with it folded into the main onmyoudou division of the government. Mao, despite being the most junior disciple, was chosen by the master to inherit the secrets of the school. That, however, was a sham – in fact he was actually a sacrifice, the pretext for a grisly human kodoku involving the other five disciples.

There’s still a lot we don’t know here, but if Hyakka is still around it stands to reason that some or all of the other disciples might be too. Mao has no memories of the fated day, and thus no certainty about whether he did in fact kill Sana as Hyakka says. He worries that Nanoka will fear him over this, but she clearly realizes something about the whole affair doesn’t add up. It’s also worth noting that Sana had a cat, Haimaru – one which only liked Mao and herself.

Against this backdrop another Taishou drama is playing out. A local rich kid is abducting and killing young women, and his servant and co-conspirator may or may not be another of the five Goko disciples. At the very least he’s highly suspicious. And this isn’t just about the Bo-chama’s kinks – the servant seems to be feeding the bodies to something living in the wrecked greenhouse (or under it). With Tenko being his next intended victim, Mao is certainly about to get very involved in this particular drama.