Unlike Yomi no Tsugai, Mao didn’t take a week off between cours. And also unlike, it’s no guarantee we’re going to get more seasons of the anime. I would say it’s fairly likely given Rumiko’s pedigree, but this series is not as commercially successful as YnT. It’s not as if Rin-ne got a full adaptation, so the legend armor only goes so far. I’d like to think we will get more, as I like this series an awful lot. It’s old-school in all the right ways and the production is frankly handsomer than I expected.
With a new cour comes new OP and ED, of course. The OP is a downgrade but the ED is a belter, with a really interesting animation sequence. This episode is a bit of a belter too, with all kinds of plot-expanding going on. We see the man in the military uniform from last week – indeed his name is Hakubi, but he’s known to the muggles as Shirasu – in the act of wiping out a squadron of fellow soldiers. They were staging a coup, apparently, and Captain Shirasu seems to be a guy who takes care of dirty business for the military.
Hakubi is obviously a Goko onmyouji, a fullmetal sorcerer. Is he working with Shiranui? That’s not totally clear yet. It is clear that “Yurako” is working with him, and she’s in Tokyo drumming up business for his fraudulent life-extension business. She and Shirasu wind up at the same salon gathering, and she appears to be surprised to see him. She’s absolutely surprised to see Kamon and Mao (though she did cross paths with the latter on the street) and bolts the party at the first opportunity. They follow, shouting at Nanoka – who’s been waiting outside in a maid uniform with Ootoya – to stop her. That doesn’t go so well, but Kamon’s vine magic gets that job done.
Lots to unpack here. Yurako is, in fact, Lady Sana. Mao and Kamon are absolutely certain of that when her hat and veil come off. When Yurako screams at Nanoka she hears what sounds like multiple voices, though irritatingly Nanoka never gets around to telling Mao. She tells Mao she “didn’t want to meet like this” and then disappears in a fountain of water magic. Mao reveals that Sana was in love with someone else – Nanoka seems quite relieved about this. Was this “him” in fact Hakubi? It certainly wasn’t Shiranui, the one she’s working with now.
Why Sana is alive is unclear. Why she’s working with Shiranui even more so. There’s evidence they’re in league with Hakubi, too. It’s a metal shikigami belonging to him that waylays Mao on the way home. Mao deploys fire against it (metal weak against fire) but it’s got gatling guns built into it. After being shot at least twice Mao is sucked into the beast, and they both disappear. And it’s Shiranui who’s there to greet Mao when he comes to. But then, Hakubi is in the background, hidden – so the exactly relationship between the water and metal sorcerers – and Lady Sana – is hard to pin down.
With all this subterfuge going on, it’s Shiranui whose motives seem the most transparent. He hates Mao and thinks Mao has the secret of Taizanfukun (he doesn’t – or at least, not knowingly). And Hyakka of course, who seems not smart enough to try and deceive anybody. Kamon definitely is, though he seems genuinely not to be Mao’s enemy. Sana, Hakubi, and especially Byouki are full of mystery, though. And by my count we still have two of the original six succession candidates unaccounted for, a discrepancy that seems certain to be addressed sooner or later.
