#ushiotora

Tora

It's great to have Ushio to Tora back. My 5th favourite series of 2015. A solid shounen battler without most of the nonsense, and with a heavy leaning into emotions? Hell yeah.

So of course, the important things first: I'm glad to announce the show's face-game is as serious as ever. I told you it's a serious and emotional show, didn't I? :P

Ok, with that out of the way, man, this episode was packed. I actually thought we're going back to the slice-of-life episodic content the first season started and ended on, but considering the show is adapting 313 manga chapters to 39 chapters, I wondered how they'd make it work.

So of course, it wasn't even 8 minutes into the episode, and I teared up. The show earned this, by giving Asako and Ushio their time beforehand, and actually showing us them going past blaming the other one but being unhappy with their actions, and the very serious realization by Ushio he might not be alive next year.

Ushio dwelling on how "alone" he is is nice. This is the main difference between protagonists of LNs aimed at the shounen demographic, and manga aimed at the same crowd. We make fun of how the theme is "The friends we made along the way are the real treasure," but that theme works, and yields much more emotionally resonant content than the loner who never feels anything. Besides, Clint Eastwood already cornered that market decades ago ;)

Ushio's friends being real people who have their own discussions and personalities is a large part of what makes me invested in the show. And these idiots really haven't realized until now Mayuko is related to Jie-Mei? They had those ghosts who went after her in the opening arc because she looked like a seer from 200 years ago, and they commented on how she looks like her before. What dorks they are. And she's always accomodating of spirit-dorks.

OP - The music is fine, and the vocals could be fine, but it's as if the balance got warped, cause the vocals seem hollow, and lack conviction. It could be just a question of a misaligned volume knob, but as it is, the OP falls flat.

ED - Nice, nothing much to say either way.

Before I leave, a few more random thoughts: It's nice they've given us a wallpaper-worthy shot already, of Ushio and Tora standing in for hope, but if the hyoko could get into people's heads, why not eat their brains, or even make them turn on all their allies? I'm unlikely to cover the show weekly, but I'm going to watch it while having fun, so see you all around :)

So, a week after I say how this show can make me tear up on a consistent basis in my mid-season overview, this episode comes along with some of the strongest face-game yet, and this show has always had strong face game to start with? I see how it is.

I had to give them A for effort, but F for how badly they botched the execution with the golem. This is based on the story of the Golem of Prague, which had "אמת" ("EMT", pronounced "Emet"), meaning "Truth" on its brow, or an "Explicit Name", or one of the 72 names that stand for it in Kaballah. When the Golem couldn't be turned off, the rabbi scrubbed off the first letter, Aleph, forming "מת" ("MT", pronounced "Met"), meaning "Dead" in Hebrew (think of "Check-mate", coming from "The Shah is dead"). But the Explicit Name only works in one language, and that's not the one we use for English :P

Also, speaking of western traditions fused with eastern, we have a priest who is led astray by a woman, and the "devil" (most probably an aspect of Hakumen no Mono, same one we saw in China all those years back) who is leading men to ruination.

Also, the bit where they go from "We need more weapons to take down Hakumen no Mono, the Beast Spear is not enough alone!" to "Let's destroy the Beast Spear!" was a bit much.