Yomi no Tsugai is a messed-up world full of messed up people. As I said last week, Asama and Uncle Shingou may be the two most trustworthy adults in the series, because they make no bones (no pun intended) about what they want. All the others (well, Hikaru is a possible exception but I’m still skeptical there) have some sort of hidden agenda, even the “good” ones. I don’t think I would call those two good by any stretch but they seem to be pretty transparent.
What they want is Yuru dead, and his power awakened. Shingou and Asama more or less pull the good cop/bad cop routine on him, but it’s only a difference in style. And to be blunt, Shingou is not wrong about Higashi Village. He may or may not be lying about Yama siccing the bandits on Yuru, but the village has an agenda here too. And it’s the reason Tadera can’t be trusted either, although he seems to be having a genuine moral transformation as he and Yuru (and Hana) spend more time together. For Yuru’s part he says all he wants is a normal life with his family. But it’s obvious that’s something the Shingou faction have neither the interest or inclination to provide.
Ivan is transparent too I suppose, to give him his due. He’ll kill anyone or anything as long as he gets paid, and he’s killed a lot of people. He no slouch, even if his sword daemons have a lot to do with that – his skills are the real deal. He manages to chop Left’s er, left arm off (she tells Dera all that’s required will be a trip to the home center) before Right joins the fight. Right smells the blood of the twins’ parents on Ivan’s blades, though I’m nowhere near ready to assume that means he killed them. He’s not forthcoming with the confirmation. Right dispatches Dera to try and find Yuru and says he and Hidari will deal with Ivan themselves. That trick with the lights was very clever, by the way.
That battle progresses in the dark, which Ivan recognizes is to his disadvantage. He eventually manages to bring it to the roof. Meanwhile Dera runs into one of the bandits, seemingly the only survivor of Ivan’s rampage. There’s obvious bad blood here – the bandit considers Dera a traitor to the cause, and is pissed that he discovered what was happening (Dera declines to throw Hana under the bus). Dera rejects the notion of trying to conquer the world at the expense of two kids, and seems sincere. But these two have a common purpose and a common enemy of the moment in Shingou and Asama, and a temporary truce is called.
All these factions are constantly spying and plotting against each other so it’s hard to say for sure why things happen when and how they do. Take old man Gonzou arriving at the Shingou warehouse district when he does. How did he know what was going down here (the cockroach?), and what is his purpose in busting things up? It may be simply striking out against the Shingou fraction for breaking his word to Yuru, or there may be more to it. In any case we haven’t seen Gonzou unleashed yet, but from the looks of things he might be the strongest tsugai user in the entire cast. He has a veritable night parade of 100 daemons working for him, and he’s not afraid to use them.
And then, one more betrayal. Akio – the bald guy in the Kuroya, the clan serving the Kagemori – seems to be planning to kill Asa (not that he’d be able to) when Hikaru and Tachikawa-san leaver her alone. He may be being controlled, but given that Akio was the one who “accidentally” killed the leader of the group who attacked the compound so he couldn’t be questioned, it seems more likely that he’s been a mole all along. Which faction would have interest in killing an already-awakened twin, though? Certainly not Shingou or the bandits, one assumes. Maybe whoever took – and maybe killed – her parents.
