I would say that for me, on the whole the most recent run of 6-7 episodes has been the weakest for Daemons of the Shadow Realm. Still strong (apart from maybe 17) but not at the level of what came before. Asa has something to do with it because, quite frankly, I can’t stand her. She may be Arakawa’s worst major character. But in fairness she’s not prominent in a lot of those eps (though she certainly is this week), so it goes deeper than her. Interestingly, I think this series is best when it has a strong slice of life element layered in with its heavy plot. And it’s more interesting focused on intrigue than action.
We got a better mix this week in that sense, but the scene with the two pairs of siblings was almost unwatchable because of Asa’s unfunny theatrics. Before that a brief SoL interlude with Hana and Ken, who’ve been abandoned by the side of the road for weeks. I had two main takeaways from this. First – damn, that’s a lot of karaage. And second – damn, are you really going to say “I hate kids” to a kid openly stressing about his place in your house? I get that Hana is just being tsundere but Ken is 13 and not especially integrated socially – he’s not going to get that.
The backstory of the zashiki-warashi was probably the strongest part of the episode. “Asa” has a name too – Kiri – though as with most daemons that seems to come down to the whim of their human partner. Danji and Kiri have a pretty classic zashiki-warashi story – cherished by their house, seen as harbingers of good fortune. They outlive their masters of course, but when one of them goes off to fight at the Battle of Sekigahara (at the time of the previous twins’ arrival, as we know) and never returns, they’re stuck as relics in a box for centuries. Until Roei – Dera and Ken’s father – finds them.
Roei is the obvious X-factor of Yomi no Tsugai. His fingerprints are all over the plot and the lives of the cast, but we’ve still never seen him in real-time. We did hear him (voiced by Koyasu Takehito) for what I’m pretty sure was the first time. He hooked the pair up with their “mom”, who was grieving the loss of her child. But when Granny Yamaha got wind of their presence, it’s pretty obvious she immediately clocked that they could be useful to her later. As indeed Kiri was. It was Mom who directed Danji to keep an eye on Yoru, just as Danji told him.
As far as I know, no daemon – good or evil, if those terms apply – has lied over the course of Yomi no Tsugai. They may not be capable of lying. The obvious key line of the episode was when Yuru told Asa “this world is full of people you can’t trust”. As I said ages ago I think that’s basically the central theme of the series. Often with these sorts of stories we see the world broadly divided into two categories – most simply good and evil (not the case here), or victims and victimizers in Kuroshitsuji. Here those you can trust (tsugai and children) and those you can’t (almost everyone else). That makes the unicorns who defy that rule – and identifying them – absolutely crucial.
As usual it’s Yuru’s clear-headedness that salvages the situation. Asa is unstable but he asks her the right question – what do you want to do with your life? Her answer is a bit hard to swallow given the way she’s conducted herself, but by his nature Yuru will do his best to try and give her the normal life she says she wants. I have near-certainty that their parents are alive – it makes no sense for Ivan or anyone else to kill them with their aims regarding the twins unmet. But Break and Seal – and the twins – are at the heart of what for the participants at least is a struggle for world domination. And it’s hard to see a path where that world gives them anything like what Asa describes.
