Ao no Exorcist: Shimane Illuminati-hen – 10 – Alone No Longer

Nine Tails is an ancient intermediate demon Holy Cross has never figured out how to exorcise, but the Kamiki clan is a different story. Freed from Nine Tails, Izumo’s mother Tamamo is able to see, stand, and perform the dance needed to dodge Nine Tails’ attacks, and transfer it right back to her own failing body.

This way, when Tamamo dies, Nine Tails dies with her. After years of, shall we say, somewhat shabby parenting, Tamamo comes through as a mother when it counts most: when the choice comes between her daughter’s death or her own, there is no choice. With her final breaths, she tells her beloved treasure that she’ll be okay, because she’s not alone: she’s surrounded by friends.

While this death scene is unfolding, Gedouiin prepares a last-resort device that will transfer Nine Tails directly to his body, with predictably grotesque results. I’m not going to linger on how out-of-left-field this is. Suffice it to say, just when Izumo believes she’s powerless, her fox-brothers Uke and Mike return to her. Turns out Shima “went easy” on them, but they still needed time to recover.

Now that Izumo knows she’s no longer alone and doesn’t have to fight alone, she asks her friends for help fighting off the waves of zombies while she recites the most powerful incantation of her life, one that transforms the foxes into fox-men. Resplendent in golden regalia, she rejects Gedouiin’s assertion that they both hate all humans. She once did, but not anymore. With the slash of her fan, she lets Gedouiin have it.

Shima pops in to grab what’s left of Gedouiin before disappearing, and the other Holy Cross branches arrive to bring the situation under control. Rin & Co.’s mission to rescue Izumo is a success, so it’s off to the hospital to heal the many wounds incurred from their exertion.

Izumo comes to in a hospital, still worried about the fate of Tsukumo, but Takara grants her a magic key that she uses to access Tsukumo’s new home. Her adoptive parents are Takara’s relatives, making her his cousin, but when Izumo appears before her, Tsukumo doesn’t recognize her.

That only makes sense, as she was only three when they were last together. Even so, Tsukumo remembers the fox doll Izumo returns to her, as she was told she had had it since she was a baby. It’s a bittersweet experience for Izumo, who returns to the hospital room she shares with a now-awake Shiemi.

For so long, Izumo had feared the worst had happened to her sister, but she was safe and sound all along. It’s a lot to process, and as a result Izumo starts to bawl her eyes out, while lashing out at Shiemi. But Shiemi’s smile is undefeated, and she’s relieved Izumo is able to cry, and be angry, and laugh. They cry it out together, and when Izumo hears Bon, Rin, and Koneko talking in the hall, she unleashes her foxes to playfully punish them.

After paying her respects to her mother’s grave, vowing not to feel sorry for herself any more, Izumo returns with her friends, has a tearful reunion with Paku at the train station (that also makes Shiemi cry, natch), and the whole gang (sans Shima) heads home together.

Despite some crosswinds, Ao no Exorcist managed to land the plane with an emotionally resonant and satisfying end to the Izumo rescue. While Gedouiin is still out there somewhere and the threat of Lucifer remains, all is well where it counts: in this circle of friends, and in Izumo’s heart.

Ao no Exorcist: Shimane Illuminati-hen – 07 – Mall of the Damned

Now that we’re up to speed on the horrific circumstances of her past and torturous circumstances of her present, what does the future hold for Kamiki Izumo? Can she, like, maybe catch a fucking break at some point? The last couple weeks have made clear that she’s not just a prisoner of the Illuminati, but also convinced she is the only one who can and must bear this awful fate.

As she’s walked in cuffs down a long hall to her eventual doom, All Izumo can do is laugh and try to mess with Mr. Pink Hair, asking if he’s enjoying this. When he says there’s a chance she can walk away from this if everything goes well, she tells him there’s no hope for her: she’s a dead girl walking regardless of the results.

Her nihilistic attitude only lasts as long as the corridor, for when they reach Gedouiin she makes such a big loud outburst she’s able to swipe the pen from a guard, stab them with it, then cut herself with the spring and summon Uke and Mike.

When they tell her that people from the Order are coming to rescue her, she doesn’t want to hear it. The only one she’s relying on is herself and her foxes. She’ll escape, find Tsukumo, and get her to safety. It’s a terrible plan with little to no chance of success.

Pheles leaves the operation in Yukio’s hands, promising backup at some point but unable to tell them when. Inari Peace Town is full of brainwashed people who eat all day, like the pigs in Spirited Away. They’re then bussed off to a mall, for some unknown purpose. While Rin and the others ate food from Inari Peace Town, they’re saved from its effects thanks to Shiemi’s medicinal herb sandwiches.

Once they get past the first few guards and infiltrate the creepily deserted mall, they learn what happens to the people bussed there: They become Gedouiin’s experiments. The ones that fail become zombies, and he’s unleashed those zombies onto Yukio, Rin, & Co.

While the general zombie mall atmosphere is pretty creepy, it can’t really compete with, say, Jujutsu Kaisen, especially when the spooky zombies in question are lame CG models, some of which have identical blood splattering on their tunics. Some hand drawn stuff would pack more of a punch.

When Gedouiin learns that Rin and Yukio are among the Order intruders, he changes up his strategy, ordering the floor of the mall opened and all the intruders shunted into the foreboding-sounding “feeding area.” Feeding what fell beasts, I ask?

Izumo, flanked by an Uke and Mike determined to protect her they disobey her orders, try their best, but Shima is able to summon a demon that not only disperses the fox spirits, but eliminates them. Just like that, the foxes Izumo thought of as brothers are gone from her life.

Her spirit newly-crushed, Izumo is re-shackled and her long walk to her doom continues. As for Shima, if he wasn’t before, he’s truly an irredeemable villainous scum now, right?

As if the zombies whose head wounds healed wasn’t enough, now the exorcists are separated in different dark places, next to some kind of horrendous beasts that are excited for food. Rin recalls Shima telling him he’s going to have to be okay with killing humans if he’s going to have any chance going forward. The time for wavering and half-measures is over.

Saving Izumo means Rin will have to do a lot of horrible things and will have to live with himself. Even then, so as long as Tsukumo is in the enemy’s clutches, Izumo doesn’t even want to be saved. It’s just a big old downer. The good guys need a win somewhere in the worst way. Hopefully they can score one next week.

Ao no Exorcist: Shimane Illuminati-hen – 06 – Outfoxed

This week is given over entirely to the story of Kamiki Izumo’s childhood—if you can call it that—and it’s a tough watch, even during its more comedic moments. At no point does anyone in this episode treat Izumo like the child she is. We open with her ostensible mother, Tamamo, crying on her shoulder about Souji, Izumo and Tsukumo’s father. Meanwhile, all of the household duties are handled by the foxes, who love Tamamo unconditionally.

That’s because no one in the long line of Kamiki Tamamos throughout the centuries has performed a more powerful or beautiful dance of appeasement before the Killing Stone, where the Fox of Nine Tails dwells. Even Izumo is in awe of Tamamo when she’s doing her dance, even if the rest of the time she’s a complete train wreck of a mother unable to subordinate her forbidden love of the high priest Souji for anyone, even her daughters.

Tamamo takes every opportunity she can to pawn Tsukumo off onto Izumo, who must serve as a surrogate mother while she hangs out with Souji. When Izumo is at school, she has to leave Tsukumo in the care of other priestesses, who consider the girls bastards who sully the shrine. She’s made fun of and isolated at school for being able to see fox spirits. It’s a lot for a little girl, but this is Izumo; even she smells something shady-af when reps from Illuminati roll up to ask her some questions about the Killing Stone.

Even so, Izumo takes the business card of Illuminati’s Yoshida Maria, just in case she needs advice from someone else who can see what they call “demons.” As for Tamamo, she is responsible for appeasing the Nine Tails, a job that requires extreme emotional focus and stability. All that is destroyed with a few words from Souji, who as high priest should’ve really known better. When Tamamo asks if he’ll visit their children, he says he doesn’t want to, and if she keeps bringing it up, he’ll stop letting her visit him.

In the present, Izumo can’t stop blaming herself for everything that happened that has placed her and her sister in such a predicament. But she’s wrong. This is the fault of one person, and one person only: Souji. He sent Tamamo over the deep end, and eventually the Nine Tails took advantage of her heartbreak, anger, and despair, and possessed her, and transforming her into a murderous demon. That night, it’s all Izumo can do to run off while the foxes protect Tsukumo from Tamamo. She doesn’t even have time to put shoes on.

Izumo calls the only person in the world she can call: Maria, who takes her and Tsukumo to Illuminati, while her Nine Tails-ified mother is captured. Maria promises they’ll all be taken care of and protected from Holy Cross, who will want to eliminate Tamamo on site. But Maria isn’t in charge of Illuminati, and even though Izumo eventually comes to trust her a little bit, Maria never had the power or authority to make any such promises.

When Maria learns how mistaken she was about what goes on here, how much torture Tamamo is undergoing, and how Gedouiin plans to experiment on Tsukumo next, she make another unilateral call and has Tsukumo whisked away for adoption. When she did that, she automatically ruined any chance of Izumo trusting her ever again, no matter how good her intentions. Izumo asks if Maria will keep her cell door unlocked while she’s gone. She does, and Izumo leaves the room and is caught.

Once again, Izumo is subjected to sights and sounds a child should never see or hear, as Maria is beaten and begs for her life, only to be injected with an experimental immortality elixir that kills her after a few moments of unspeakable agony. The grotesque mad scientist Gedouiin is fearsome in his anger, and drunk with the absolute power bestowed upon him by Lucifer himself. Gedouiin doesn’t mince words with Izumo: submit to him entirely and he’ll leave Tsukumo alone … for a bit.

It’s a shit deal, and even young Izumo probably knows it, but she also knows it’s the best deal she’s going to get from this true demon in human skin. If becoming the next Nine Tails vessel will keep Tsukumo safe for a year, a month, or even just a day, she’ll do it.

Because if there’s one thing she learned in these hellish few weeks of her so-called childhood, it’s that she can’t rely on anyone. Not her mother, not Tamamo, and not Shima or Rin or Shiemi or Yukio. The gang rescuing her from Gedouiin and the Illuminati is one thing. Freeing her from the soul-crushing belief that she’s on her own in this wretched world, and always will be? That’ll be a far tougher task.