OP2: “back shot” by Masanori Otoda (音田雅則)

The avalanche is fully upon us now, with a ton of premieres today and both Yomi no Tsugai and Mao carrying over from spring. A lot of these new shows obviously aren’t going to make the cut but as they were in the preview, I’d like to cover most of the premieres. So there’s nothing for it but to buckle down and abbreviate some posts if necessary. Yomi no Tusagi was right there with the best of spring, and with the manga getting a big boost on already strong sales it’s a given that this is only the first of multiple anime seasons.

I’m not normally a fan of recaps – few are. But with a new cour starting and an off week in-between, I get it here. Once those three minutes are up we hit the ground blazing, not always the case with this series. Ivan Yosano is very much at the heart of this episode, and in a show full of moral ambiguity he’s about as clear-cut evil as it gets. Him and his boss, Shingo. Ivan’s two daemons are his swords, Daikyou (Misato Fukuen) and Shoukyou (Hiroyuki Yoshino). Shoukyou is brassy and arrogant, Daikyou timid. These two allow Ivan to do the weird body-portal thing – in addition to also being quite proficient at the mundane duties of a sword.

That’s in evidence here as the residents of Higashimura again find themselves as mulch. I find myself really hoping that these villagers are NPCs of some sort. Because I mean, if these are real people the callous way in which they’re treated by the characters and writing both is pretty grotesque. Ivan’s aim here is to kidnap the fake Asa, who’s a tsugai contracted to Yamaha (the old lady). Just who her other tsugai is Ivan is unable to determine – he can’t lure it out, and we’ve never seen it to my knowledge. Ivan slaughters another few dozen parents, forces faux-Asa to submit, and collects one of the new orphans as a hostage. He then cuts Yama in half and carves a ransom note into his corpse.

Also of note here is that Danji, Yuru’s best friend from the village, is dispatched down the mountain by his mother. You had to figure with Ohsaka Ryouta voicing him (and more of that is always good) Danji had a role to play. He hooks up with the goddess Oshirasama, who offers him a lift to Tokyo (mainly because she wants to see it, one assumes). Judging by the way Migi and Hidari deferred to her I assumed Oshirasama was a Kami, but she seems to have a human master so perhaps she too is a daemon – perhaps faux-Asa’s other half? Or is her other half her horse?

It’s Hana who gets the call to dispose of Yama’s body – this sort of thing is apparently her main gig. The ones who hire her to do so are clearly not affiliated with either Higashi Village or the Kagemori – they don’t know who killed Yama. This means Hana is working for an unidentified third party, which means the big question is what Tadera knows about her and what he doesn’t. The dudes who hire her ask if she knows where Tadera and Yuru are, and she flat-out lies and denies she does. They tell her not to tell Tadera about the ransom note if she sees him, and she later implies that she won’t.

Is Hana playing both sides and working for her own interests? For the interests of yet another unknown party? Or is she truly Tadera’s ally and only pretending not to be for work (and intelligence gathering) purposes? I trust the kids in this series are who they say they are, but pretty much none of the adults (and indeed, that may be very much the point). Yomi no Tsugai is starting to remind me a bit of Kuroshitsuji as odd as that sounds, in the sense that the divide may not be between good and evil, but victims and victimizers.

ED2: “Kujaku (孔雀)” by Kei Sugawara (菅原圭)