At this point I may as well just accept that I’m probably in for the duration with Tonari no Youkai-san. The show is two-thirds over, and it’s not as though it’s torture to follow it or anything – it’s pretty good most of the time. If it were airing on another day of the week this would probably have been sorted a while ago, but it’s not. It’s never quite closed the loop with me, but I still find what it seems to be trying to do interesting more often than not.
I think what that is, in the end, is to be a musing on mortality. More specifically death, and how humans cope with it. Long-lived youkai (and elves, in western fantasy) have always been a good vehicle through which to explore that topic. If you look at all the major character arcs, they all seem to be variations on that theme. The series started with Buchio and in most respects he’s still the most direct example, as well as the connective tissue for the rest of the cast.
Here we find Buchio going on a trip to London with Sanmoto the demon lord and his nekomata assistant Sakai, ostensibly to help with an assignment but really because Buchio is so down in the dumps. I must say Buchio has more people worrying over him than just about anybody I can remember. London is a sort of magical playground in this mythology, and Sanmoto basically cuts right to the chase of Buchio’s malaise – loneliness. He’s never had to deal with it before but he’s going to have to when he outlives his human family. He’ll make other friends, but no one will ever be quite the same to him as they are.
Jirou is sort of the bookend to Buchio, at the other end of the story shelf. He’s been dealing with these sorts of feelings for a very long time, but he’s been running away from them too. Haru, the woman in the photo and Mu-chan’s great grandmother, is a complicated part of Jirou’s past. Whether they were in love or not she was a vital part of his life, and she had a habit of losing everyone close to her (there were a lot of tragedies to deal with). After her husband died in the war, Jirou was her main source of emotional support at the very least. Then she died too – after admitting that she was terrified of death – and ordered Jirou to forget about her.
Fat chance. Jirou’s avoidance causes a rift with Mu-chan, as it causes him to try and keep a safe distance and protect himself emotionally. Which, in truth, is what people who’ve suffered a lot of personal loss do most of the time. Buchio, Jirou, Wagen and Nishiya-san – as is so often the case with this sort of show the fantasy is a veneer, a means of telling a story about the human condition. It doesn’t always work as well as I’d like, but it is a compelling basis for a series.
Nadavu
May 27, 2024 at 4:32 amI’m left somewhat puzzled over the Haru mini-arc (if we can call it that. If it’s even over). So the reason Jiro was having these dizzy spells is that he literally forgot about Haru as she had asked him, and due to Mu-chan they came back? It seems a bit… Not very consequential, I guess.
Poor Haru, she certainly didn’t catch any breaks. On the other hand, it was cute seeing Jiro wearing period-appropriate clothes. It makes me think that long-living Youkai have more to deal with than just the changing generations, but also the changes in society and every day life brought about by technology. Although they seem to be pretty well adjusted.
Guardian Enzo
May 27, 2024 at 9:22 amI don’t know if we were supposed to take that as literal or not. Did he actually block her out of his memory? Is that a thing tengu can even do?
Nicc
May 31, 2024 at 7:15 amThis episode continues on with the theme of mortality. Sanmoto returns in this episode as he invites Buchio on a trip to England to assist him with a job. We don’t actually get to see what the job was, but here’s somebody else to help break Buchio out of his funk. Last week it was the road trip with Wagen-san and now it’s a trip to England with Sanmoto and Sakai. We learned earlier that humans living with youkai wasn’t limited to their town when Buchio visited Tokyo. And now we learn that the entire world is like this and not just Japan. I wonder how it’s like in the Western Hemisphere and in this universe’s version of the Columbian exchange.
That Buchio got himself a passport seems to indicate that they flew instead of using magical powers to get there. Ah well, everybody should get to experience the hassle of security theater at the airport at least once in their life. Indeed, London is sort of a magical playground with magic being commonplace. They may have crossed paths with Chise and Elias from this universe. Right, Sanmoto tells Buchio that he’ll have to come to terms with loneliness. His family will be gone someday and he may live with their descendants and make new friends, but it won’t be the same.
Buchio is reminded of this again when he gets home and pays a visit to Nishayas’. Kazuhiko again seems to already see the end as he confides in Bucio to remain friends with Chiaki, not realizing that the was listening in. Buchio seems to get the determination to enjoy life with his family. There’s a minor sub-plot involving Nakagawa and Sano. It seems that there are rumours around school that they might be a couple and so he decides to avoid talking to her to clear up that misunderstanding. It did seem like padding at first, but on a second look it did fit the theme of this episode.
We get back to Jirou and his past with Mu-chan’s great-grandmother, Haru. What the extent of their relationship is not known, he was indeed her main source of support after one tragedy after another. Haru lost her mother, husband and children and then her own life. She told him to forget about her, but, yep, that wasn’t happening. He still blames himself for it as he keeps on apologizing to her. Right, trying to keep others at a distance can cause harm. This was a pretty heavy episode and I wonder what’s next.