Gedouiin, who I’m thoroughly sick and tired of because he’s such a pathetic joke of a non-character (he’s just evil incarnate), fills in our baby exorcists on just how freakin’ evil he is, getting tourists hooked on drugged food and then using them for human experimentation. But things take a turn for the bleak when they actually parade Izumo right out in front of Rin & Co., and when he rushes in to save her, she refuses to be saved.
We know Izumo’s deal: not only is she going through with this on the slight chance it saves her sister, she also doesn’t believe she deserves to be rescued. Instead, she believes her only path is alone, specifically in a one-on-one battle against the Nine Tails. If she can manage to dominate and control it, she can rescue herself. Dressed to the nines and outfitted with a special “Mask of the Chosen”, Izumo begins what might be her last dance.
The dance brings the Nine Tails out of her mother, but just as she’s steeling herself for the fight for her body, in her mind’s eye she’s impaled from behing by several giant claws. The claws are only in her head, but she undergoes pain unlike anything she’s ever experienced, and boy howdy does Kitamura Eri ever sell the agony. All the while, Gedouiin is barking at her to go ahead and die so the Nine Tails can take over.
Izumo eventually becomes (somewhat) numbed to the intense pain, as she lies on the ground covered in necrotic lesions from the process. Now she has longer nails, fox ears, and those telltale tails. She remembers Shima saying he was “tired” of his friends and family, and Izumo feels the same way: tired. She tells herself she always hated the people who surrounded her. And yet, at the same time, she was sad to see them argue. She finally tearfully accepts that maybe she liked them after all.
She asks somebody, anybody, for help, assuming it’s far to late for anyone to hear. But Rin hears her, escapes from the fleshy prison of a berserk chimera, and crashes down to where a shocked Izumo lies. Rin gives Gedouiin a punch that sends him flying, but honestly I’d have preferred a swift decapitation.
Instead, he’s only wounded, and decides to buy more time by dumping hundreds of zombies into the area. Izumo urges Rin to take her mother and leave her, but that’s not happening. After several episodes of mistery and hopelessness, things are finally looking up. Rin just has to hold out long enough for the others to arrive, and then they can all save Izumo together … because it’s never too late to ask your friends for help.
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