An old man arrives at Hime’s house with the mayor Kohime is running against and a powerful monster, and activates an anti-youkai field that weakens full youkai, including Hime, who is badly beaten. The man demands Kohime drop out of the election and for Hime to relinquish her mayorship to him. Juri arrives and takes Hime to the hospital. Akina and Kyousuke fight with the half-youkai Shinozuka while Ao uses her Satellite ability to locate the source of the field: the Tokyo Tower.
This episode is only one half of a two-parter and is mostly setup for a showdown with a so-far nondescript villain, but it was a waaaaay better effort than last week’s dawdling clunker. We already knew from previous version of this anime that Hime was a youkai, but the flashback with Akina was very touching, and we liked Hime’s reasoning for wiping everyone’s memories of what she really is so she can better understand her constituents. This episode did something else gutsy, in taking perhaps the most powerful fighter of the quartet completely out of action in the first minutes.
This leaves her friends to save the day, and so far they seem more than up to the task. Once everyone leave’s Himes house and splits up, there’s a great energy to the story. Everyone is given something to do (except Touka…where’d she go?) and they have to do it under considerable duress (in the form of flying scooters for Akina and a rampaging dragon-thing for Ao and Kotoha). This was more or less table-setting, but highly competent table-setting. We look forward to seeing how things shake out, which is more than we could say after last week.
Rating:7 (Very Good)
Stray Observations:
- That “anti-youkai field” is a hell of a plot device…but we like Yae’s workaround, as well as Yuuhi’s subtle hint to Ao. Gods can only interfere so much, after all.
- As soon as we heard “Minato” and “high place”, Tokyo Tower immediately came to mind. Though we’re a little disappointed it wasn’t the Tokyo Sky Tree.
- About Minato: didn’t Juri point out to Akina and Kyousuke that no one could physically leave Sakurashin? If that’s the case, how are Ao and Kotoha going to get to the field? Hopefully this quandary is answered and isn’t just a plot hole.
- Seems odd how Ao is able to use her ability at such a high level when the anti-youkai field still in place and Yae weakening all youkai power town-wide. Perhaps it’s just evidence Ao is one seriously powerful cat girl. She says all of Tokyo is “no sweat”; perhaps if the field were down she could read the whole country’s minds…
- The huge pile of gifts from townsfolk was a cute little scene that quickly showed Hime that the people in fact do love their mayor. Who wouldn’t? That scarf is adorable.
- So far the nameless villain is pretty damn bland. Here’s hoping we won’t have to watch him standing around yammering all next week.
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