#maibara

Why I say it focuses on chance encounters is because Haruaki meets his students’ parents for parent-teacher conferences. He went through hell trying to meet Renjou, Maeda and Oota’s families as he almost gotten eaten and now, he has to deal with Mame’s. Because of the strain, he asks Sano to tag along as he goes to the Maizuka’s family…who turn out to be yakuza. Mame’s foul mouth makes sense if you think about it… It was nice learning about how animals often produce a litter of offsprings, so this also applies to animal youkai. Mamekichi has over 30 siblings and he’s the eldest while Beans, his three-year-old sister, is the youngest. All I can say is that Mame’s mom really has stamina to pop out that many kids. No wonder she’s crazy strong for being able to beat the snot out of Mame’s dad for going to a brothel behind her back.

Because this is a comedy story, of course Mame’s parents are crazy as heck, mainly his dad. His dad is basically a yakuza who’s also extremely doting and overprotective. He has a weird habit of wanting to test Mame’s teachers’ strength to see if they’re worthy enough to take care of his son. I guess this makes sense in that Mame lives in a dorm, so he lives away from his family. This means that the teachers of Hyakki Academy are essentially his guardians, so it makes sense that his parents would be a bit concerned and since there’s a human teacher at school too, it also gets even more concerning. Though, the protectiveness is mainly used as comedic factor. Also, it’s revealed that he didn’t let Miki do the strength test as he’s acquainted with Miki’s family’s business, which is the brothel that he goes to.

I feel like Ryota Osaka was casted for this anime just to test his screaming skills. Despite that, I do like seeing many sides of Haruaki in the first half of this episode. He may scream a lot, but he knows how to get down and dirty without resorting to physical violence. He legit tried to blackmail Mame’s dad about the brothel because he knows there’s no way he could win in a fight and he also doesn’t want to give a bad impression if he unleashed his exorcist powers. He cares a lot about his students and also wants to prove his worth as a teacher. He can be cool when he wants to be, which is why Beans develops a precocious crush on him. Though, I didn’t like that Mame’s dad thought he wanted to date Beans after seeing the smooch.

The second part of the story focuses on the teachers going to Kyoto for field trip research. It turns out that Haruaki has met Sano, Miki and Hatanaka nine years ago, but they don’t seem aware of it. Basically, Haruaki got lost in Kyoto when he was supposed to go to Nagoya and met the younger Hatanaka and Miki who were on a class trip to Kyoto but split from their group to wander around on their own. That’s when they met Haruaki who was lost. Then they met a young Sano who called himself Mii-kun who was also lost as he got separated from his older brother. 

I feel like this meeting was definitely fateful as Sano became Haruaki’s student nine years later and he finally became friends with Hatanaka and Miki as his first attempt of befriending them was cut short due to the principal. I did like how despite Hatanaka and Miki were delinquents in their youth, they had a kinder side as they stuck around the lost Haruaki and Sano. If they weren’t nice people, they would’ve just left them behind and not helped Sano reunite with Mametaro. I like that little detail. Also, they would’ve been friends earlier had not the maskless principal came to interrupt. It would’ve been crazy how the how foundation of the story could’ve changed if the principal didn’t show up.

This episode also introduces the last of the major supporting cast. Sano’s brother, Ebisu, makes his debut here. He was announced before the anime aired, so it took 11 episodes for him to get a major debut. Although his appearance is brief, I do like that there’s a lot shown about him like his disdain for youkai. Remember that Sano is not a youkai, but a god—that was why Yanagida’s perfume didn’t work on him back in Episode 8. I can’t wait for Ebisu to make his present-day debut!

The voice actors for Mame’s parents, Beans and Ebisu are crazy, seriously! Mame’s dad is voiced by Katsuyuki Konishi who you might know as Uzui from Demon Slayer and Aryu from Blue Lock. Like, first you get Kenichi Suzumura as Haruaki’s dad and now Konishi as Mame’s? Satelight knows how to flex. On top of that, Mame’s mom is voiced by Asami Seto who you might know as Nobara from Jujutsu Kaisen. This is the first time I’ve heard her voice a mom and she did a great job! Beans is voiced by Nao Toyama, who voiced Emma Nakazono from A Sign of Affection and Suma from Demon Slayer. I know that Toyama is popular, but I didn’t expect to hear her voice three-year-old Beans here. This was super unexpected. Ebisu is voiced by Ryohei Kimura. What’s hilarious is that this isn’t the first time Kimura voiced a man with long black hair tied in a braid with red eyes. He voiced Judar from Magi. Not only that, this is another instance where Kimura and Osaka are in one anime! They voiced Bokuto and Akaashi in Haikyuu and Sorey and Mikleo from Tales of Zestiria. This is another reason why I can’t wait for Ebisu’s present-day debut because of this! The Kimura-Osaka combo is just too good!

I’m so glad this anime has 24 episodes. I can’t wait to see what next week’s episode will be. To be honest, I’ve been mentally stressed out a lot for a while, so this anime really brightened my day. I hope that my readers who are curious about this show will feel the same when they watch it! Let me know your thoughts on this episode!