Jujutsu Kaisen – 40 – We’re the Ants

Megumi can’t compete with Berserk Touji’s speed and power, so he tries to use fleeing hares to cover him while he puts some distance between them and formulates a strategy for victory. Unfortunately, Touji is so goddamn fast and so goddamn strong, he’s able to kill every single one of Megumi’s thousands of hares with flung bits of debris,

Kusakabe, who has Panda assigned to him, is absolutely determined not to get into a fight he won’t survive. He abhors a hassle, and thankfully Panda doesn’t know Shibuya well enough to locate B5 on his own, which is the one place Kusakabe is certain they’ll both get killed. Touji and Megumi continue their cat-and-mouse, with Megumi trying to use office sprinklers and Nue’s lightning to zap Touji, to no avail. Worth some style points, however.

Knowing Ieiri Shouko is somewhere on site to patch him up, Megumi decides to push his limits a bit for an all-or-nothing last-ditch attack against Touji. Of course, even with near-perfect timing he fails, but demonstrating his skills jolts the real Touji, whose body is being borrowed by another curse user, back into lucidity. He realizes this is his son he’s fighting, and when he learns his name is Fushiguro (and not Zen’in), he stabs himself in the brain to break the curse user’s link and end their fight.

That’s probably as close as we’ll get to Megumi meeting his father, because there are much bigger fish trying to fry each other. Taking up Sukuna on his offer, Jougo throws everything he’s got at him, but his attacks and defenses are just as ineffective against Sukuna as Megumi’s were against Berserk Touji. That said, two Special Grades going at it certainly makes for some striking visuals as they tear through downtown with no regard for collateral damage.

Kusakabe, delayed by Getou’s secretary Suda Manami, is the first to sense they all need to get the heck out of there, but they’re too late: as Jougo brings a freaking meteor down on top of him, Sukuna insists everyone remain still until he says so. He finally tells them they can go less than a second before the meteor falls on him, but it still misses, and Sukuna decides to whip out his own flames.

The result is academic; Jougo perishes, and meets his departed friends in a white void, lamenting that he lost and that only Mahito is left. Sukuna even invades this void, but not to continue the fight; instead he tells Jougo that in a thousand years, he was one of the more entertaining fights he’s had, so he should be proud he lasted as long as he did. This moves Jougo to tears.

Then someone named Uraume, perhaps drawn to Sukuna’s presence comes to his side, apparently ready to continue serving him. Sukuna seems pleased to see him at least. I’m not pleased to see ponytail guy, AKA Shigemo Haruta, still alive, but after bashing Megumi’s head in it looks like he won’t be for long as he’s being stalked by a hulking (and pissed) cursed spirit.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 39 – Murder Machine

Rather than escape Dagon’s beach domain through Megumi’s hole, Touji enters and joins the party. Only he’s not quite himself; the Old Lady’s technique was left on after she was killed, so he’s in a continuous state of murderous frenzy, drawn like a guided missile to the strongest one in range—in this case, Dagon. He “borrows” Maki’s staff then gets to work.

It’s a pretty fun (and very wet) battle, but we all knew it would end with Dagon gone and the beach domain with him, and what seemed like a temporarily alliance would break down. After all, this version of Touji likely wouldn’t join forces with the Zenins if he was in his right mind. He isn’t, and his next target is Megumi, apparently the next-strongest.

Just because he tosses Megumi out onto the street and joins him there doesn’t meant Nanami, Maki, and Naobito are in any better a way. In fact, this just isn’t their arc. Were it not for Touji, Dagon would have killed them all. But now that Dagon is dead, Jougo shows up to mourn his comrade’s death, then burns Nanami, Maki, and Naobito to a crisp. Then he senses Sukuna, or rather one of his fingers. Sure enough, Nanako and Mimiko are feeding one to an unconscious Yuuji.

Jougo shows up in a hurry and burns the girls, but they survive thanks to Nanako’s cameraphone. Jougo feeds Yuuji ten more fingers, so Sukuna can be temporarily awakened while Yuuji’s body takes time to repress him. It works, and Sukuna’s first act is to cut Jougo’s arm off then slice off the top of his head for not bowing low enough before him.

The Nanaba sisters raise their heads when ordered to and make their case: if Sukuna kills the fake Getou, they’ll give him another finger. This displeases him, and he beheads Mimiko in an instant. When Nanako screams in anguish, and prepares to attack him with her phone, he slices the top half of her head off, then cuts her into a gory fine dice.

RIP Nanako and Mimiko, trapped between allowing the fake Getou to continue desecrating the man they loved, and having to ask Sukuna for help. I guess they figured it was better to at least try with Sukuna. He wasn’t interested in helping them, but he tells Jougo he’ll fight for the cursed spirits if Jougo can score one hit on him. Like the sisters, Jougo prepares to go for it, because what the hell else is he going to do?

Jujutsu Kaisen – 38 – Mollusk Melee

When we left Mei Mei, she had been sealed in a coffin and buried under a giant gravestone within the domain of one of Fake Getou’s cursed spirits. While she’s able to break out of the coffin in under three seconds, thus avoiding her guaranteed hit of the disease curse, she knows she can’t keep it up indefinitely.

She determines that the attack targets the greatest concentration of cursed energy, so she momentarily diverts all of her cursed energy to one of the two crows in the domain. Then she asks Ui Ui if he’d die for her, and of course he will, because he’s infatuated with her, so he makes his cursed energy loud while Mei Mei turns hers off.

As a result, the spirit puts Ui Ui in a coffin, but in the moments before he’s buried and killed instantly by the disease curse, Mei Mei uses her remaining crow as a kamikaze bullet. In both Ui Ui’s and the crow’s case, putting their lives on the line is rewarded with a boost of cursed energy.

Mei Mei and Ui Ui make it out of Getou’s cursed spirit’s domain, but their reward is having to go up against him directly…but that’s for another week. The balance of the episode deals with Nanami, Maki, and Naobito doing battle against an octopus cursed spirit named Dagon.

Initially, it seems like a weakling. Nanami and Maki are certain the drunk Naobito will be of no help, but are shocked as he makes the first move, sealing the diminutive octopus in a flat frame and tossing him across the platform. A swole octopus man emerges from a great rush of water. The little guy was still in a larval state…but now he’s all grow’d up.

Naobito then exhibits his other superpower: being able to talk someone’s ear off. He has a particular axe to grind about the default settings of 4K HD televisions, specifically the “soap opera mode” that eliminates motion blur and the like. As someone who immediately turns all that shit off when I buy a computer, I felt seen. I like this guy.

But his ranting is germane to the battle, because his technique involves splitting seconds into 24 frames and being able to track and move within and through those frames. Contacting Dagon places him in the same time space as Naobito, only without the tools to operate. In this way, Dagon mops the floor with Dagon.

Unfortunately, Dagon isn’t damaged, either by any of Naobito’s attacks or Nanami’s, despite the two of them being Grade 1. When they and Maki try to launch a three-pronged pincer attack, Dagon uses Domain Expansion, which is appropriately a tropical beach.

Within this domain, Dagon can summon virtually infinite stream of sea creature shikigami. Naobito is able to hold out longer than the others with his anti-domain technique, but eventually all three end up mobbed by the shikigami feeding frenzy.

Maki manages to escape the first wave, already ashamed that Naobito had to save her earlier. But it’s okay, Maki isn’t Grade 1, after all. She’d be a goner a second time were it not for the timely arrival of Megumi, bursting through the wall of the domain and giving Maki a three-section staff to stay in the fight.

As Megumi fights to keep his domain within Dagon’s domain active, he’s an easy target for Dagon’s shikigami, but fortunately Nanami takes care of them for him. He’s missing his glasses and most of his shirt, and Naobito lost his right arm, but both are still able to fight, and do.

Nanami feels good about the current state of affairs, but he knows it won’t last. That’s when Megumi tells him his actual goal isn’t to play tug-of-war with Dagon’s domain, but punch a hole in it, large enough for Nanami, Maki, and Naobito to escape.

Lacking any better options, Nanami makes Megumi promise he won’t leave himself behind alone, he beckons for Maki and Naobito to hurry over. Before Dagon can respond in time, Megumi makes a hole in his domain. But before anyone can jump into the hole, someone else emerges…Touji. That’s…certainly not ideal!

With Yuuji KO’d and in Nanako and Mimiko’s hands and now this situation, the battles keep getting tougher and tougher. A lot will depend on what becomes of Yuuji and how well Mei Mei fares against Fake Getou, because I don’t see a battered Team Nanami being able to make a much of a dent in Touji.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 36 – Hammering In My Head

Mei Mei and Ui Ui had no trouble at all with the curses they fought, while Yuuji and Megumi have to catch a KO’d Ino out of the sky. He’s alive, so Megumi will stay with him while Yuuji heads back to the station. As for the people who did this to him, Granny gets her comeuppance when it turns out Touji’s soul was able to overpower her grandson’s body. She ordered him to kill sorcerers, and Touji starts with her.

Finally, Maki sends Nobara back up to street level with Nitta Akari to assist Ijichi, after word came down that supervisors were dropping like flies. They encounter the kid with the creepy hand-sword and blonde ponytail, whom Nobara assumes got to Ijichi. But the kid is sharper than he looks, and sends his familiar-like cursed tool after Nitta and handles Nobara with relative ease.

I’ll admit that watching Nobara get jobbed in the first time in forever we’ve even seen her fight is not the coolest, nor is watching blondie repeatedly stab poor Nitta in the leg and backside. But at least he pays dearly for these heinous actions when Nanami struts in, ready to rumble. He has no patience whatsoever for word-sparring, and instead just bashes the kid into oblivion when it’s clear he has no useful intelligence.

With the veil that was keeping sorcerers out lowered, Mei Mei and Ui Ui’s next opponent is a bit tougher: Getou, or as Mei quickly realizes, the fake Getou. She’s ready to fight him, but he summons a Special Grade Disease Curse called Smallpox Deity, who is able to use Domain Expansion to shut her in a coffin.

Mei Mei gets a kick out of having her life be seriously threatened for the first time in years. Nanami prepares to head down, and brooks no argument from Nobara when he tells her to stay put: she’s not Grade 1, which is the minimum level needed to fight the guys down there. That includes Choso, whom Yuuji runs into when he arrives at the otherwise eerily deserted station. Nothing’s going to come easy from here on out.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 35 – The Slow Blade Penetrates the Shield

Takuma, Yuuji, and Megumi determine that the ones who lowered the veil keeping sorcerers out is actually positioned outside that veil, from a conspicuous vantage point. That point turns out to be Shibuya Central Tower (AKA Cerulean Tower), where they find and engage the three curse users stationed up there.

Using Megumi’s shikigami Nue to fly them up, Takuma engages the granny and her grandson bodyguard, while Yuuji and Megumi snatch up a swole mustached guy and send him plummeting to ground level.

Takuma demonstrates his ability to summon the powers of the Four Auspicious Beasts by donning a hood and serving as a medium. It’s a nifty ability, but the grandson proves adept at protecting his granny from harm as she chants.

Meanwhile, Mustache guy proves quite a tough cookie, as he suffers no ill effects from the sudden 41-story drop, while hand-to-hand conflict proves just as fruitless. Yuuji even gets scratched by his dagger, and he should consider himself lucky it wasn’t poisoned.

When Granny finishes chanting, her grandson transforms into Touji. In a flashback to 1989, we see her using the corpse of a target’s daughter to get close enough to stab him in the neck. She and Mr. Mustache were “free” back then to do as they pleased, and licked their chops at the prospect of earning a huge bounty from assassinating the newly-born Gojou.

Unfortunately, by the time they’re able to get close to him, his aura and mere gaze are so powerful they have no choice but to retreat. When Gojou was born, it upset the balance between cursed spirits and humans, and virtually everyone else has been paying for that ever since.

Back in the present, Mustache is in no hurry to retire or surrender; not as long as these whippersnappers don’t know his technique. Unfortunately for him, Megumi is quite astute, and correctly surmises that it’s Inverse, which reminds me of how personal shields in Dune repel bullets and knife strikes that are too fast.

Basically, the harder you hit him, the weaker that blow is, and vice-versa. After summoning a horde of hares to surround Mustache so they has time to strategize, Megumi and Yuuji then come at him with full force, to make him think they haven’t discovered his ability.

They then attack him simultaneously with both weak and strong attacks, and in this way they’re able to negate his Inverse and deliver critical damage to him for the first time.

Unfortunately, Takuma fares far, far worse atop the tower, as Touji pulls off his hood and proceeds to mop the floor with him. If he’s even still alive up there, he could use some backup from his underclassmen.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 28 – There Has to Be a Point

I’m a little mad at Jujutsu Kaisen. If it were a person, I’m not sure I’d be talking with them at the moment. It digs the hole a little deeper by making us relive the terrible moment of Amanai Riko’s death.

While I appreciate Suguru’s rage, and he clearly knows his way around summoned cursed spirits, his entire battle with Touji seemed futile; pointless. The mission failed, the damage done. Touji even told Suguru he was free to go. But of course, he didn’t go.

But once more, Touji is a tough customer. At first Suguru’s onslaught of spirits seems too much to handle, but then Touji slashes Suguru’s ace, the Rainbow Dragon, right down the middle.

When he summons a spirit that freezes time, Touji overcomes that too, and Suguru is left with a huge, nasty X-shaped gaping wound that doesn’t kill him, but sure as shit puts him out of comission, along with Satoru. It’s also heavily implied Kuroi is dead too.

What makes Touji’s easy victory so maddening is that he has absolutely no philosophical horse in this race. He’s simply an assassin hired by the Star Church to kill the Plasma Vessel, and the job is done. He delivers Riko’s body as proof, and it’s clear the church rep who receives it fell off the deep end a long time agooo.

The one single, insufficient consolation we can glean from this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day is that Touji’s mediator straight up declines the offer to take him out to dinner, saying there are only two reasons for him to see him and no more: for work, and in hell. Touji seemed genuinely hurt by that rejection.

And then Satoru appears for round two.

Something’s off, Touji repeatedly says in his mind. This Satoru is different; more serene and unhinged…maybe even high. We learn that, after using the reverse cursed technique to heal, Satoru is currently at a state of being beyond simply seeking revenge for Riko. If he’s high, he’s high on the world itself.

And while Touji knows quite a bit about the Zen’in clan and Satoru’s Limitless abilities, he doesn’t know everything, and that’s why he dies. Satoru has his Red, and he has his Blue, and Touji is confident he can deal with both. But Purple? He ain’t ever seen that, and it puts a gaping hole in him.

With his last words, Touji mentions that the Zen’in will be taking his son Megumi in two or three years, and Satoru can “do what he will” with that info. But Satoru’s primary concern is recovering Riko’s body from the church. When a healed Suguru enters the church, there’s an eerie bluish-white light and constant applause from the brainwashed flock.

As Satoru somberly carries Riko out, he asks Suguru if they should kill everyone there. Suguru considers this, but says there’s no point; these aren’t the bigwigs who ordered a hit on Riko. But as Satoru walks into the blood red hallway, which might as well be hell itself, he asks if there really has to be a point to killing the followers.

Suguru insists that there absolutely has to be. After all, Jujutsu Sorcerers aren’t supposed to harm non-sorcerers. But in his current state, it’s clear Satoru doesn’t care about that, or much of anything.

This was another tough watch, packed with beautiful combat animation which only served to underscore how pointless it all was. Amanai Riko is dead, and for all their combined power, there’s nothing her former protectors can do about it, except grieve her if they wish (or can) and move forward.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 27 – Born Special

When Kuroi is kidnapped by the Star Religious Group, Amanai Riko insists on accompanying Satoru and Suguru to the exchange location. Riko is upset by the prospect that she may not be able to say goodbye to Kuroi before she assimilates. Satoru allows her to come along, and rescuing Kuroi turns out to be such a dawdle that they get to relax and have fun on an Okinawa beach.

Satoru and Suguru even give Riko an extra day on the island, simply to have fun being an ordinary girl for that much longer. The montage of fun activities is as bittersweet as it is beautiful, because all of the things we watch Riko doing will be the last time she does those things…at least in her current form. They don’t feel like death flags because we’ve already known Riko’s chosen fate beforehand.

When the four make it back to Jujutsu High and its protective barrier, it feels like a relief, right up until a katana blade slides out of Satoru’s chest. Fushiguro Touji has made his move, and he’s so goddamn good at what he does, neither Satoru or Suguru even noticed he was there until the blade was in. It’s the first time JJK fucks with our sense of security, but definitely not the last.

While it initially looks like a bad wound, Satoru assures Suguru he’s fine; his abilities offered a measure of protection as the blade was going in, and it missed his vitals completely. He tells Suguru to hurry off with Riko and Kuroi while he’ll handle Touji.

But Touji ends up handling him. With a combination of a cursed spirit familiar, incredible speed and agility, and a complete lack of spiritual energy to sense, Satoru can’t find his opponent until it’s too late. For all of his talent and immense power, it’s like he’s trying to fight smoke.

That smoke takes the form of a cloud of minor cursed spirit “chaff” in which Touji hides, only revealing himself when he’s in position to deal a much more fatal-looking slash. Then another, and another, and another. Touji had been patiently biding his time, waiting for Satoru’s senses to dull. Were they dulled by his sentimentality surrounding Riko?

On the one hand, I know Satoru is in the “present” timeline of JJK (as covered in the first season), so I know he’s not really dead. On the other hand, I’m able to suspend my disbelief in his death for the purposes of this episode. While he certainly doesn’t win his battle, he at least buys time for Suguru, Riko, and Kuroi.

They descend into chambers far beneath Jujutsu High, and the time comes for Riko and Kuroi to part ways. When Kuroi can’t hold back tears over their farewell, Riko takes her into a big hug and tells her she’s always loved her; Kuroi says the same.

Then, when Suguru shows Riko to the core Tengen-sama’s territory and gives her instructions on how to enter his realm so she’ll be protected, he also tells her she only needs to do those things if she chooses to. He and Satoru agreed that they would let her, Amanai Riko, decide if she really wanted to sacrifice herself—and be erased—by Tengen-sama.

At first Riko puts on airs like she’s come to do the very thing she was born to do. She’s always been special, to the point where special felt normal and normal felt special. Now that she’s here, facing the end of herself, she tearfully admits there’s so much more she wants to see and do and experience with Kuroi and her friends. She doesn’t want to go through with it.

Tsuguru accepts her decision and offers her his hand in preparation to leave this place. But as she reaches out to take it, she’s shot in the head, by Touji. Here I was, ready, if unhappy, to say goodbye to Amanai Riko, along with Kuroi and Suguru and Satoru. Then Tsuguru reveals that he and Satoru never intended to make her sacrifice herself, and my hope was revived.

And then JJK ripped that hope to shreds in one single heartbreaking bang, followed by the sound of Riko falling to the ground. At this point I’m not sure I care how badass a form Suguru’s revenge takes, or whether he’s just as incapable of beating or even harming Touji. Right now I’m simply gutted, and I miss Riko, the girl we met only just last week.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 26 (S2 02) – Blue Steel

Suguru uses his curse manipulation to make quick work of the Q agent who attempted to kidnap the Star Plasma Vessel, AKA Amanai Riko. When she comes to in Satoru’s arms, she slaps him and leaps out of them, believing him to be another attackers. It’s only when her minder Kuroi Misato comes in riding one of Suguru’s curses that she lets her guard down.

Amanai Riko is voiced by Nagase Anna, who brings the same raw youthful energy and toughness as she did Summertime Render’s Ushio. Riko is also extremely full of herself, not concerned at all about being lost once she assimilates with Tengen-sama. She will be Tengen-sama and Tengen-sama will be her. It’s not an absorbing, but a merging.

While her haughty brattiness irks Satoru, Suguru comes off looking like the more emotionally intelligent of the pair, reassuring Kuroi that she’s Riko’s family and he knows their real mission is to ensure Riko is not only safe, but able to live a happy, normal school life with her friends as long as possible.

Naturally, Fushiguro Touji is hired to ensure that doesn’t happen. But this week Touji is who we all aspire to be: a sweatshirt, sandals, some rustic grub, and a betting form. Dude may look bone idol to his mediator, but he’s set things in motion to make his job easier.

Rather than go after Jujutsu High kids directly, he instead sends out an APB to all the curse user assassins in the area that Riko is wanted dead or alive for 30 million he doesn’t even have. He’s fine with the dead part and with such a high reward because he knows no one will be successful.

He only wants these cursed bounty hunters to wear themselves out for free making Satoru and Suguru exert themselves so they’re as weak as possible when he comes at them. And we see from the force with which a rando slams into him as if he’s made of solid granite, Touji can handle himself. He just prefers the boat races.

The first of his proxies is an older guy who believes his experience will win out over the whippersnapper Suguru. He’s so busy trying to read Suguru’s mind and predict his every move, Suguru does the same with him and counters them, such that the poor geezer’s life flashes before his eyes before Suguru punches and kicks the ever-loving shit out of him.

Suguru may not be breaking a sweat, but he’s still fighting. Satoru, meanwhile, tracks down Riko, who is in the middle of choir practice. I wish we could have heard her sing a bit more, but I love how hers is the last voice we hear as everyone else stops singing, stares at Satoru for a beat, then explodes in middle school euphoria over the arrival of a stone hottie rushing in calling Riko’s name.

I love the exchange that follows, from Satoru’s poses (man this guy is full of himself), the unified screams and squees of the enthralled young ladies, and Riko’s embarrassment over the whole ordeal. But what’s best of all is their teacher coming in to presumably bring and end to all the disgraceful ruckus, only to catch a look at Satoru and hand him her phone number.

Jujutsu Kaisen has long since proven it can deftly balance comedy and goofy hijinks without neutralizing the underlying danger and seriousness of the narrative, and this episode is a prime example of that. Kuroi gets her own awesome-looking fight scene, only she’s nailing her opponent in the gentleman’s vegetables with a mop.

The thing is, this guy isn’t human; not entirely. He’s a curse user, able to multiply himself. But Satoru quickly deduces the dupes aren’t shikigami, but clones, and when he knows what he’s up against, he knows he can handle what’s to come with his unique skillset that makes his battle scenes beautiful.

From making clones collide in midair to smashing through an office window with Riko in tow and almost firing off a reverse curse “Red” but settling for a knockout punch. All the details are right, from the use of the score to the smooth motion of Riko’s hair as she tries to maintain her sanity while Satoru plays around with the laws of physics.

This makes a nice bookend to Suguru’s scene at the very beginning of the episode, when he’s already pacified the Q agent. While Satoru is floating like a demigod in a cloud of shattered glass and cement, Suguru is a picture of tranquillity, quietly making himself a cup of tea while his curse puts the squeeze on the baddie.

I officially don’t miss the main cast in the present-day timeline. I’m sure they’ll be around before the season’s out. But even if they aren’t, I’m deriving vast enjoyment watching Suguru and Satoru wield their powers so effortlessly. The thing is, they haven’t yet clashed with a legitimately worthy opponent; the arrival of Touji should change that.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 25 (S2 01) – A New Vessel

After two years, JJK returns, but not with its youthful main trio of Yuuji, Nobara, and Megumi. Instead, we’re reintroduced into some of the creepier investigative aspects of the series, as a young Iori Utahime and her mentor Mei Mei explore an abandoned mansion rumored to house cursed spirits.

Utahime bursts into every room with an exhortation of surprise, but finds nothing and no one of note. But when she meets up with Mei, she realizes the hallway they’re in is a seemingly endless loop. Utahime flexes her noggin and determines the proper way to escape the loop is for the two of them to run at top speed in opposite directions.

Once they do this, not only does the cursed spirit’s barrier fall, but the entire mansion self-destructs. Utahime is found under a pile of rubble by a young Gojou Satoru, who at this point hasn’t yet swapped his glasses for a mask.

He’s joined by a young Ieiri Shouko, whom we know becomes a doctor, and Getou Suguru, who we know becomes a Bad Guy. But at this time, the three Jujutsu High second-year classmates are thicker than thieves, with a vibe and chemistry very similar to their younger counterparts in the present timeline.

Gojou and Getou are also prone to getting into little tiffs, the latest of which happens in a gym with a basketball. Getou says “survival of the weakest” are their watchwords as Jujutsu sorcerers, but Gojou thinks that’s patronizing bullshit. He’s all about power. In this little exchange, Gojou seems more like the one who’d eventually become a villain, not Getou.

But even if they quarrel and almost come to blows at times, they still clearly work effectively as a duo, because their teacher assigns them to a task of utmost importance to the Jujutsu Sorcerer continuum: they are to serve as bodyguards to the Star Plasma Vessel: a young girl who has been chosen to be Tengen-sama’s next vessel.

The episode doesn’t really get into the morals and ethics of using this girl as essentially a sacrifice are; suffice it to say she is a necessary element in keeping Tengen-sama from going berserk and unleashing hell on the sorcerer and non-sorcerer worlds alike. But she still doesn’t say a word until Getou rings the doorbell to her room.

Doing so triggers a bomb, set by one of the two groups trying to kill the Vessel: the Q Group, who want Tengen-sama to go berserk, and the Star Religious Group, who worship Tengen as a god and are defiantly opposed to him transferring to the Vessel. The bomb blast sends the girl flying, but Getou gets airborne and deftly plucks her out of the sky.

Both he and Gojou are confronted by members of Group Q, who are sorcerers that don’t take kindly to them trying to protect the Vessel. As for the Star Religious Group, they may not be sorcerers, but they have the means to hire one: specifically Fushiguro Touji, Megumi’s dad.

I imagine we’re in for at least one or two cool sorcerer battles next week. Even if it delays the return to the screen of Yuuji, Nobara, and Megumi, I’m enjoying this look back to simpler days when Gojou and Getou were on the same side, even knowing full well that whatever efforts they’ll undertake, there’s still plenty of evil left to fight in the present.