Oh hey, Yuru and Danji are back to being friends already. As they say, two people fight because they care.
Black Torch Ep. 7
Our trio immediately dive into their next mission. At least the pacing is brisk, but it does feel a bit strange that Jiro doesn’t need more time to get his feet wet. So what’s the gist? A bunch of demons have unleashed a thick fog upon a city. Under the cover of said fog, they’re slowly herding humans like cattle. Fuyo, one of the friendly mononoke helping the team, explains that the mononoke can eat anything, but they need human essence or whatever in order to get stronger. At the end of the day, the details don’t really matter. Save humans, beat evil mononoke. Simple enough.
The gang splits up to fight their respective foes, because why would you ever work together? As such, Jiro gets the meathead because he himself is kind of like a meathead. At first, none of his moves seem to work on the big oaf, who even undergoes a transformation. But that just means our kitty-meathead duo needs to have their own little transformation as well. Jiro removes part of his uniform, which has apparently been a limiter all this time. As a result, he and Rago can now fight at full strength and tear the hulkin’ mononoke in half with a single hit. So what’s the catch? Eh, you gotta be a furry, so that sucks.
Ichika fights a mononoke that can put a spell on people, so he makes it look like she’s fighting atop a giant torii gate in the sky. He even sticks her in a schoolgirl uniform, because of course he does. What would the mononoke have done if he were fighting guys instead? I guess we’ll never know. Anyway, Ichika just magically straddles the mononoke — would either Jiro or Reiji have done the same move? — and cuts off one of the mononoke’s horns. Speaking of which, every single mononoke we’ve met so far has been humanoid — other than Rago, of course. So what’s up with that?
Last but not least, Reiji gets to face off against… his brother already?! But we’re out of time, so I guess stay tuned for that. Woo, so exciting.
Daemons of the Shadow Realm Ep. 19
I don’t know why we were forced to sit through an extended recap of recent events. Combined with the OP, that’s nearly four minutes of runtime wasted.
The first half is a cakewalk. After Asa secures the hostages — she was never going to do anything to them — she and Gonzo steamroll over the rest of the goons in the building. None of their daemons work, because Seal can simply deactivate them. Apparently, Asa is supposed to be weaker at night. Her sharp ears somehow pick up Yuru’s voice when he arrives, so they briefly reunite. Asa gets to be the weirdo brocon again. But they go their separate ways, because she and Gonzo will go after Shingo while Yuru deals with Ivan? I dunno, I feel like Gonzo and his kids are more than enough for Shingo. Isn’t Ivan the bigger threat?
Finally, after all the pointless side stories have been cleared out, we return to Left and Right fighting the assassin. Yuru, Dera, and Danji soon arrive, so it looks like a five vs one. Looks doing some heavy-lifting here. In reality, Danji is just a mere distraction, but he does help. On the other hand, Dera is perched high up on a building with his sniper rifle, but all he does is add commentary. I get that they want to capture this guy for questioning, but I dunno, shoot Ivan in the arm, leg, or whatever.
Ivan tries to rattle Yuru by claiming that his parents are not only dead, but that he killed them. This almost works until Yuru thinks back to his sister’s words. Somehow, this calms Yuru down. I guess I’m a bit unconvinced by all of this, because Yuru hasn’t seen his parents in such a long time. Not only that, from his perspective, it looks like they abandoned him. I guess I expected his feelings for them to have faded somewhat — maybe even significantly — but I’m probably just a cold bastard. I feel similarly about his sister. They’ve only recently reconnected; she’s like a stranger to him. Why would her words have such a calming effect? Ah well, for some people, family is always family. I’m the unfeeling weirdo who would hold a grudge.
With his initial plan a failure, Ivan does what any shounen antagonist does: magically power up. And all he had to do was cut himself with his daemon blades, and now he’s got freaky veins all over him. Left might also be out for the count. I dunno, guess we’ll see in next week’s episode.
Tomb Raider King Ep. 6
The first time I yawned all day was when watching this episode. I don’t even know where to begin. The main character was being confronted by his former boss (former as in the previous timeline) when the Sphinx and Great Pyramids suddenly pop up. I thought we were still in Las Vegas. Why would anything to do with ancient Egypt suddenly appear? Is it because of the Luxor?
Anyway, instead of facing off against this former boss, the main character gets to battle Set and Anubis. I think Osiris is even in there somewhere. We also have mummies — big, hulkin’ mummies. Can you see why I yawned? It just feels like the creator opened to a random page in their big book on mythology, and used the first thing they saw as inspiration.
Also, I’m using terms like “main character” and “former boss,” because whenever anime tries to adapt a manhwa or Korean web novel, they can’t just stick with the original Korean names. I don’t want to make a mental hashmap in my head. Ooooooh, Ryouga maps to Joo-Heon, and such-and-such maps to Kwon Tae-Joon! Nah, fuck off.