I’m going to be brief here I’m afraid, as I have a hugely busy day today and Sundays for anime, well… Mao continues to deliver the mail, that’s for sure. From subtle little amusements like Ootoya smiling when he described how he saved Hyakka to fascinating bits of history and an ever-more complex weave of plot threads. This series has overperformed for me just as Rin-ne did, albeit for different reasons. It really reaffirms the idea that we should trust the big names who are big for a reason.

Ootoya really is supremely capable, as witness the way he took over treatment while Mao slept it off. The problem is yet again we have Nanoka failing to share crucial information with Mao because of reasons – valid ones, but her not actually not wanting to tell him definitely plays a role here. When she gets home Nanoka goes off on a binge researching cats and their role in Onmyoudou, though she doesn’t really get anywhere until Shiraha steps in (as usual). That stuff about cats not coming to Japan until the Asuka period was new to me, but the most relevant bit of Shiraha-info seems to be the existence of “Maogui” – cat-based kodoku curses from China. Even if the name didn’t translate as “byouki” you couldn’t miss the significance.

There are two more crucial developments which may or may not be interrelated. First, we get a bit of Mao origin story, where he tells Nanoka that he came from an orphanage that was actually a farm team for the Goto Clan (he doesn’t get the reference but plays along). It was a sempai named Daigo who eventually got Mao chosen to follow him to the compound. Daigo was an earth sorcerer and a good one, who expressed an interest in using his talents to change the world.

In the “present” – Mao’s at least – a doctor named Domon is treating patients with soil-based poultices which are not effective in the long-term, to say the least. Nanoka wonders if it could be Daigo, but Mao is skeptical. It turns out Domon is an older gent who isn’t an onmyouji at all, and probably unaware that their treatments are actually killing people (which would have included the young boy Shobo if Mao hadn’t intervened). So the questions here are, whgo is this onmyouji that trained Domon – and what was their motivation in doing so?