Kemono Jihen – 09 – Kabane the Casanova

After she was born and learned to control her golden webbing, Aya had been treated like a tool, and when she was insolent she’d be beaten “like banging on a piece of malfunctioning equipment”. Still, she knew Akio needed her so she was able to live in relative comfort with dresses and books. When Aya learned she had a brother, she imagined him to be like the Prince Charming in her book, taking her and their mother away to live happily ever after.

While a happy ending was deferred, it is still possible. Aya learns this when Shiki welcomes her into the hospital room where their mother is resting. Aya may think she’s a bad seed that should be “done away with” like the other kemono Akio created, but thinks Shiki won’t kill her simply because she looks like a little girl and speaks. But that’s not the reason.

Shiki does not detest Aya, he’s grateful to her for being with their mother and keeping her alive, even though she was all on her own while her big brother had run away and was living in comfort. When she hears Shiki and Aya talking together over her, she wakes up and opens her eyes, and the Tademarus are a family united for the first time. It’s perhaps the sweetest and most moving scene in the entire show, and it was the perfect payoff to the emotional stakes built up the last couple weeks.

Of course, Kumi now being alive and awake means Shiki has some things to think about, and is away for a week, causing Akira to frets and Kabane to bear an all-too-forced smile when asked how he feels about it. Shiki may have his family back and will need to help support them, he promises Kabane he won’t leave the agency before he helps Kabane find his family.

Unbeknownst to Shiki, Aya followed him to the agency and we see that her own style is quite a bit more…modern and mature (read: jailbait) than the frilly dresses Akio gave her. Her precociousness extends beyond wardrobe, however: she’s already planning to work with Granny at her clinic, with plans to start her own “kemonopathy” clinic using her healing webbing.

When Shiki begs Kabane to talk his sister out of this, as she’s only eight, he simply responds “If she has a power shouldn’t she use it?” It’s that cold, certain, honorable logic that draws Aya to Kabane’s side, and she declares him her boyfriend. Then Kon shows up, armed with the absolute worst timing—she had a week to see Kabane alone!

Just like that, Kabane has not one but two would-be lovers, who immediately exchange lightning glares. Inugami interrupts the spat to announce that they do have actual business to attend to: there have been reports of an invisible kemono ripping pieces of women’s faces off in stylish Harajuku.

The three who will go investigate are Kabane, Aya, and Kon, the latter relaxing her no-working-with-tanuki policy by declaring herself a mere “observer”. Really, she wants to closely observe Aya to ensure nothing happens, but it’s also never a bad idea to bring some kitsune muscle as backup.

After Kon’s failed attempt to impress Kabane by trying to order a cop around (Inari’s power doesn’t extend to her anymore), Aya ends up being the kemono’s next victim on accident when she pulls on her hair. Taking the form of a black smoke cloud filled with floating pieces of women’s faces she collected, the kemono’s story is pretty simple: she fell in love with a man who works in the area and wanted to look more human so he’d notice her.

When Kabane says love is about giving, not taking, the kemono is unconvinced, because Kabane has a girl on his arm. Instead she appeals to Kon, who looks like she’s in pain like her. She’s not wrong; ever since watching Kabane and Aya together she’s felt all “mushy” in the chest.  Being with Kabane has always been fun until now, and Kon blames Aya for making it not fun anymore.

Taking on her kitsune form, she tries to eat Aya, but only ends up biting Kabane’s arm. Then she runs off in tears. Aya uses her webbing to create a human body for the kemono, and referred her victims to the clinic where she’ll be able to heal him. Back at the agency, Akira is threatened by Aya’s frightening competence, while Aya thanks Kabane for protecting her with a smooch on the cheek.

Kabane may not quite understand love, romance, or jealousy, but he knows he and Kon didn’t leave things in a good place, so he rushes to the park where she lives and shakes her out of the tree (the gag about her never landing on her feet never gets old). Sure enough, Kon’s face is a mess of big soppy tears. She thinks Kabane must hate her for trying to eat the “bug-smelling girl.”

To Kon’s surprise, when Kabane takes her cheek in his hand, all the chest-mushiness goes away instantly. She sees that Aya wants to be Kabane’s “number one” because in Aya she sees herself having worked tirelessly to become Inari’s number one. Well, Kon wants to be Kabane’s number one, and asks what she should do to do that?

The obvious answer is to kiss Kabane, but not only does Kon not know that, but even if she did kiss him neither of them might understand what it means. They’re basically the most adorkably hopeless couple ever and I will never stop shipping them. I won’t deny Aya is both cute and capable, but she’s also way way way too young for Kabane. Also, Kon was first!

We get a nice scene of closure where Inugami helps Kumi arrange a memorial for all of her children who were killed. She ask him to keep it secret from Shiki and Aya, but in truth I think they’d understand her need to honor all of the life she created, as they’re in that group too.

Kon is realigning her primary allegiance from Inari to Kabane, but Aya once again beats her to Kabane’s arm at the agency. The two stare each other down once more, with Aya even telling Shiki he shouldn’t mind if she and Kabane married, since that would make them brothers. Akira, the Best Boy, finally steps in to break it down for Kabane: he can only have one lover, so he has to choose.

For Kabane, “lover” simply sounds like “one you love”, which he extends out to the terms “boyfriend” and “girlfriend”. As such, the one he chooses is Inugami, again failing to grasp the difference in kinds of love, and also shocking both Aya and Kon with his apparent confession to “preferring older men”. Inugami, meanwhile, obviously wants no part in a Kabane love polygon!

Kemono Jihen – 08 – A Sister Richer

Right in the middle of Shiki considering killing his Uncle Akio with neither Inugami nor Nobimaru not standing in his way, a filthy Akira emerges from the woods having pissed himself with fear. Then a whole mess of Akio’s kemono creations arrive, surrounding the area. Akio informs Shiki that while none of them can produce the golden webbing, they’re still smart and can even speak—in Kumi’s voice.

When the monsters start to rush everyone, Inugami steps in, but his arm is poisoned, keeping him from producing a gun. Hearing his mother’s voice tell him she loves him through all the monsters paralyzes Shiki. Kabane’s lights up as he draws close to Shiki and asks once more “How can I help?” Inugami has Akira freeze his arm, but they’re saved from the charging kemono by the little girl Aya, whom they listen to.

When we cut back to Kabane, he’s already demolished all of the dozens of kemono protecting Akio, leaving Shiki free to kill him, or otherwise ask Kabane to kill him. Kabane is simply “happy to help”, as there’s apparently zero psychological cost to the carnage he causes.

The thing is, Shiki no longer wants his uncle to die. He wants him to live with the torment of all the things he meant to leave behind erased, and dying many years from now a forgotten man with no legacy. Aya doesn’t want Akio killed either, and not for sentimental reasons: he knows the location of a certain cocoon.

A bitter Akio refuses to tell her, but fortunately for her Inugami & Co. are detectives. Aya has no leads, but with one call to Mihai, they get a location: the same secluded spring in a patch of skunk cabbage where Aya had Inugami heal his arm. Aya prepares to plunge in, but Shiki goes in her place; she’s just a little girl after all.

At the bottom of the spring, Shiki finds something he’d never expected: his mother, still alive, encased in the cocoon. A bodyguard kemono attacks him but he defeats it and surfaces with his mom. Aya reveals that she herself is the golden webbing, and created the cocoon to keep their mother alive.

When Akio tries to rant more about “nearing mass production”, Shiki knocks him out with a slug to the face. Aya and the still-unconscious Kumi pile in the car with Shiki, Inugami, Kabane and Akira and they head back to Tokyo. Kabane noticed Nobimaru slipped away at some point, but Nobi doubles back give Akio at taste of his kitsune flames.

With his mom alive and suddenly possessed of a little sister in Aya, Shiki’s had a considerable turnaround in his fortunes. But Kumi still won’t wake up, so Inugami takes her to a clinic in Tokyo run by a diminutive ohana-basan—who doesn’t seem to mind the after-hours visit when she learns it’s Inugami.

If Kumi woke up fully restored, she could presumably pick up where she left off before falling into Akio’s foul enterprising web. That could mean Shiki and Aya would go live with her, either in their hometown or Tokyo. If the latter, Shiki could still work at the agency and hang out with Kabane and Akira. But this is all academic. First Kumi must be revived.