Annoying recap – a weekly feature by now – aside, it was wall-to-wall action this week. I still don’t think that’s Yomi no Tsugai’s best face forward, but at least you know Bones is going to do their part. The intrigue and slice-of-life are what this series does best. And while we certainly haven’t gotten much of the latter lately, this ep was to the brim with the former. Including a first-time name drop that projects significant importance in the plot going forward.
Ivan Yosano emerges more and more as the key opposition figure as the story progresses. He’s obviously a hired hand, so not in truth the big bad himself. But he’s the strongest guy around, that’s for sure, and he’s closely connected to whoever is. Basically he took on two of the strongest Daemons, a guy with an anti-material rifle, Yuru and his arrows all single-handedly. And while it wouldn’t be right to say he was unscathed, he seriously wounded three of his four opponents and walked away from the battle (admittedly with a limp). He’s the biggest badass in the cast until proven otherwise (Gonzou is the other candidate for obvious reasons).
One of Ivan’s many abilities – I feel confident we haven’t see all of them yet – is what’s effectively teleportation (I don’t think we’ve seen that light box before). He winds up back in the office, where Asama has just revealed his hand to Uncle Shingou. Shingou gives orders to kill glasses guy (whose role in the story is clearly not finished) but Asama flips the script, using Yozakura to immobilize Shingou and keep Raijin and Fuujin from attacking him. Then Ivan arrives, takes in the scene and pieces together what’s happened, and seems quite unperturbed about it. He proceeds to kill Shingou – obviously to keep him quiet – and has a rather tense standoff with Asama.
Asama made it clear that he knew someone else was pulling Shingou’s strings – the old “you’re not smart enough to come up with this yourself” thing. Ivan clearly knows who that is, and that makes him a valuable asset to the Kagemori, but Asama and his daemons lack the firepower to take even a wounded Yosano down. That’s not true of Gonzou and Asa though, and Fuyuki’s tsugai are something he wants no part of. So after wounding Asama (never take a knife to as sword fight) Ivan takes his leave, clearly much the worse for having ingested some of Left’s energy.
There’s a lot to parse here. Asama’a reference to Shingou as “my uncle” pretty much confirms that he has a different mother than his brothers, and that Shingou was her brother. Stealing life force or mana or whatever is yet another ability Ivan (or his tsugai) has. That surely explains some of his crazy strength. But Left’s energy takes a toll on him – “like chugging a case of energy drinks”, he tells Mineyama (Uesaka Sumire). Who’s that, then? A high school girl who works for the same side and seems to be in charge of cleanup, thanks to her dung beetle daemons.
Most interestingly of all, though, is Mineyama’s final line, “I’d rather not take you back to Nishino Village as a meatball”. I’m pretty sure I’d remember that if it’d been mentioned before. Nishino Village are who Ivan is working for – again for money, or is he actually from there? An ancient rival of Higashimura for Break and Seal perhaps, or maybe something even more convoluted than that. At this point I think we can assume they have Mine and Nagisa – or if they’re dead, they killed them. Kidnapping them as a means to get to their twins makes more sense, though. That gives every faction we’ve met so far a common enemy – but do they have it in them to put aside their animosity and present a united front?
