It’s a travel day today (Nagahama) so I’m in express mode. A busy episode for Reiwa no Dara-san too, exposing a lot more of the mythology behind the story. The tonal extremes here continue to be one of the most striking parts of the series. I think in the end it’s rather an optimistic take on existence. But not because of any idealistic sense that humans are inherently good. Rather, that goodness can survive and even prevail in spite of the species tendency towards great evil.
Indeed, while anything having to do with Dara-san’s past is grisly, the overall spin on her was rather more positive this week. It seems that some semblance of the truth has managed to survive. She’s seen as a protector and not just a destroyer, at least to some extent. And that’s very much thanks to Jurota, it seems. After the tragedy Dara used what was left of her power to reach out to him, but he suspected the truth anyway. Indeed, he researched things on his own and deduced some of it. Part of this was obviously personal – Dara and Jurota were in love. But she also knew she had to protect the survivors – both from herself, and Yamatagi-nagara.
Dara-san makes good on her promise to finally share her backstory with Hinata and Kaoru. Naturally it’s done manga style – though she does use a soundtrack, with Shouwa technology. The two kids are understandably pissed off on her behalf – they love her, after all – but seem sufficiently convinced that there’s some stuff here they don’t want to deal with. Hinata asks what seems to be to be the pertinent question – what happened to Dara-san’s other arm? She has no idea – but reasons that if it hasn’t caused any trouble for hundreds of years, someone must have dealt with it.
That someone, it turns out, was likely Jurota. He seems to have consecrated a grave for her, interring her remaining limbs (was her human name “Juu” – Juu and Jurota?). Not only that, given that it’s Tomita-san’s family that’s been looking after it all this time, it seems as if she’s descended from Jurota. That gives her an interesting connection to Kaoru-kun, though I’m not sure her constitution can handle any more connections to him…
