Some of the disconnect is starting to connect. Drip by drip we get exposition in Demons of the Shadow Realm, but it’s never enough to have everything totally make sense. That’s because a lot of that disconnect is tonal, and that’s not so easily explained away. sonicsenryaku last week suggested viewing the Kagemori as a yakuza group – which in turn implies that Higashi Village is a rival family – and that does fit rather well. Why matters of cosmic importance would be controlled by yakuza groups (effectively) is another question that would eventually demand answering. But it is a pretext that makes the character behavior a lot more explicable.

The first major event we see this week is one that happened several years in the past. Yuru remembers a hunting trip with his father (I don’t recall whether we’d heard his name – Mine-san – before). A bandit – or so he believes – tries to kill him, and an arrow from his father saves him. Most striking about this is that Mine tells Yuru to keep all this a secret from the villagers, though he does tell the twins’ mother once they arrive home. Given what we see in another flashback – Asa’s this time – it seems very likely this was no random bandit. And to me, likely that it was the village which sent the assassin (which is why Mine doesn’t want them to know what happened).

Suspecting that the village is trying to murder their child would be a logical reason for the twins’ parents to flee it. But certainly not why they would leave their son behind when they did so. Asa’s story differs in that the assassin sent for her succeeded in killing her. But she winds up at the boundary between the world of the living and the afterlife, where she meets Break (Sakakibara Yoshiko). Yes, this is the Break whose power Asa inherits – and it seems that it’s been expecting her. When a fated twin dies, they go to the Boundary and are given a choice – accept their chosen power or die. And we now know at least once, a twin has chosen the latter.

Asa did not. And it was mainly her concern for her then-missing (to her) brother that brought her back. The curse these powers represent is obvious. They can remake the world, but that’s why so many seek to control them. That includes the pair who “killed” her, planning to use her and Break when she returned. That didn’t work out so well for them, but Asa’s life has been no picnic either. The obvious implication of all this is that Yuru is going to have to eventually make the choice on whether to die in order to claim Seal as his own – trusting that he’ll be able to return to life.

Meanwhile, Dera has arrived to pick up Yuru (of Hana there’s no sign). He chooses a non-confrontational approach here, and everyone acts more or less as if this is a dad coming to pick up his son (which fits the yakuza behavior model). The bloodlust is clear – Jin and family head Gonzou want to kill Dera but it’s clearly not in play in this situation. We also get out first look at Hagure (I totally didn’t recognize Yamaguchi Kappei here), who was mentioned last week. When I heard “deadline” I guessed writer, and indeed Hagure is a mangaka. He seems like an affable otaku type but there are definite suggestions that he’s not someone you want to mess with. Stay tuned as far as Hagure is concerned.

Once more, what stands out is how clear-headed and smart Yuru is here. He knows full well nobody in his life has earned his trust. His parents abandoned him, his sister works with the people who slaughtered his village, Dera has been lying to him (including about Seal) since they met. Migi and Hidari are about it as far as trust goes, and they’re basically aliens with their own way of thinking. Yuru is surrounded by people he can’t trust but rather than panic or despair, he draws as much info out of them as he can in order to reach his own conclusions about what’s true and what’s a lie. Even if he weren’t part of this fated pair, he would still be a pretty exceptional kid.