I’ve found myself having to forcibly correct myself a lot and not saying “Rock Biter.”

This story follows pretty much the same structure we’re going to get for the next few episodes, which should be expected.  Something supernatural is going on, Ushio finds out about it, and he and Tora need to find some way to work together to take it out.  That said, I don’t see any reason to do an in-depth recap.  Just know that the Rock Eater is the monster of the day.

This episode is pretty much identical to the OVA version, just a lot livelier.  We also get a scene where Ushio’s classmates mock him for being crappy at art, culminating in a scene where Asako throws a literal flower pot doodle at Ushio.

In general, the OVA leans more toward the darkness of the manga and doesn’t put nearly as much emphasis on the comedy, and that’s a major problem of the OVA.  Still, it does do a few things better, like the animation of the petrification.

Another little effect I liked better from the OVA was when the girl gets completely petrified, a tear drops and lands on the floor as a pebble.  Little things like that can be surprisingly effective.

The OVA also had much better, more active action in the final fight.  On the other hand, for some reason it skipped just how public the fight was made.  Ushio found the petrified girl in the old building, not the main building, so no one was aware that something bizarre was going on until the final fight.  There was no police and no newscasters, and I have no idea why that aspect of the chapter was skipped.

Another thing the TV episode got right was getting across Asako’s personality and defiant nature.  It’s part of why I like her so much in the manga (not so much in the OVA… she’s pretty much just a generic tsundere there).  I like that this series is fully prepared to give us plenty of great Asako expressions.

Another thing this episode gave me was reassurance that we’ll be getting the fanservice that the manga delivers.  I mean, probably not nearly as much (no nipples), but we’ll get it.

Lastly, we end the episode with Tora learning a bit more about how TV works.  Amusingly, he watches the newscast on a mobile phone.  He also destroys a flatscreen in the beginning of the episode.  Gotta love those modernizations.  Strangely, the TV episode makes a mistake that the OVA didn’t, in that the newscast showed footage from inside the old building when no one should have been in the building.  And coincidentally, the footage is from the exact same angles that we the viewer originally saw the action from.  Which of these two versions was from the 90’s again?

Speaking of stupid 90’s tropes… it took fucking forever for the Rock Eater’s barrier to close.  It literally wasn’t a problem in the OVA (the entire scene took MUCH less time), but it really bothered me here.

Hopefully, we’ll get fewer lazy errors in the future.