Another great episode that has me feeling good about the prospect of compressing what were OVA two-parters into a single episode.

We start off with construction workers being complete dumbasses by lifting a suspicious rock off of suspicious boxes and releasing an ancient evil unto the world.  Wait, wasn’t this the plot of Power Rangers the Movie?

Some floating heads break free and kill the construction workers.  News of this gets out, and Ushio blames Tora for the attack.  Tora runs off to the city to eat some humans but finds none of them are palatable… except Mayuko.

Unfortunately for both Tora and Mayuko, the floating heads are on a warpath to kill Hizaki Mikado, the priestess who sealed them away in the first place, and whom Mayuko greatly resembles.

In the OVA, this involved A LOT of random decapitations.

Ushio finds out about the connection after talking to the old man that tried to warn the construction workers not to do stupid shit, and he makes it in time to save Mayuko… briefly.  Basically, Ushio & Tora take turns saving Mayuko and killing the floating heads one by one.  Mostly Tora though.  He beats the shit out of all but one of them.

In the end, Ushio apologizes to Tora for accusing him, and Mayuko gives Tora a hamburger so he won’t be so cranky.

The biggest disappointment of this episode is that we don’t see Tora actually eat the hamburger.  The camera just kinda pointlessly pans up to the setting sun.  The OVA, however, knew better than to do that shit.

This episode and the previous one compresses 5 chapters into one episode, and it does it rather well.  I feel like it could even go just a bit further.  Let’s say 8 chapters is the absolute limit for where we could go with this.  We have roughly 300 chapters to fit into 39 episodes, and that’s just not happening.  We’re going to need to cut a significant amount of stories to achieve that.  Without cutting anything, here’s the kind of episode list I’d expect:

1. Fated Meeting
2. Stone Eater
3. Demon Painting
4. Tora Goes To Town
5. Exorcist Hyo
6. Ayakashi
7. Legend
8. In The Sky
9. Houriki Heretic
10. Kamaitachi11. Saya
12. Toono Youkai
13. Boat
14. Knife Demon
15. Blood Sucker
16. Lake God
17. Mist
18. The Chosen – Sekimori Hinowa
19. The Chosen – Akiba Nagare
20. Karakuri
21. The Chosen – Moritsuna Satoru
22. Change of Face, Part 1
23. Change of Face, Part 2
24. Tokisaka (The Creation of the Beast Spear)
25. Yukionna
26. Railroad
27. Motorcycle
28. Kirio
29. Destroy the Beast Spear, Part 1
30. Destroy the Beast Spear, Part 2
31. Destroy the Beast Spear, Part 3
32. Party
33. Minoru & Satori
34. Gedou
35. Bakemono War, Part 1
36. Bakemono War, Part 2
37. Bakemono War, Part 3
38. Kagari & Tora
39. Tatari Breaker, Part 1
40. Tatari Breaker, Part 2
41. Kirio Finds A Home
42. Gouki
43. Azafuse
44. Before The Wind Blows
45. Turning To Stone, Part 1
46. Turning To Stone, part 2
47. Appearing and Disappearing in the Rain
48. Sea of Chaos
49. Sea of Thunder
50. Tora
51. Stopping the Descent
52. Opening the Gate
53. Till Our Lives Reach the Sun
54. Finale

So, we’ve got 14 potential episodes to cut.  I’d say the easiest episode to cut would be Gedou.  It introduces a sexy but pointless character that brings nothing to the table, doesn’t add to the main story, and adds to Ushio’s non-harem long after the harem roughly 10 episodes after the harem element exhausted its purpose.  I will be shocked if they keep that episode in.  So, that’s one.

Episodes 13-17 are basically episodic and just fill up time until we see the real stars of the travel arc, The Chosen.  We could easily cut most of the content in those stories out and condense it to one episode.  So that’s 5 episodes cut.

Karakuri is just a filler, so that’s an easy target.  That’s 6.

It’s entirely possible to compress the Chosen episodes into a two-parter.  Let’s just go with that and say we’re up to 7.

Change of Face is by far the most important arc in its position, and it absolutely deserves to be a two-parter.  I can see it cut to a one-parter, but I’d rather have it receive the time it deserves.  Let’s put this one on reserve.

25-27 are filler.  If I had to keep just one, it would be 27.  Let’s say we’re at 9, with 2 episodes in reserve.

Destroy the Beast Spear is one of the best arcs in the series.  It needs to be 3 episodes at least, but I can also see the entire arc getting cut.  Let’s put those 3 in reserve.  So 9 (+5).  We’re already at 14, so let’s hope we can cut something not too deserving.

Party is a filler, but it’s good for a breather.  Let’s put this in reserve.  Ditto Kagari & Tora, which is a BETTER breather episode.

Minori & Satori is an easy cut.  So, 10 (+6).

Hmmm… I guess the only one left is Gouki, but I really love Hyou stories.

The rest is of the utmost importance, and I’d like to see everything get the time they deserve.  I can see some compression-fu shaving off a couple of episodes worth of content, but honestly I would much rather give the important arc stuff more time and cut off some of the reserve stuff.

Bakemono War could be compressed to two episodes, bringing us up to 11.  Kirio and Destroy the Beast Spear are all pretty much one story, so we could compress those into a 3-parter.  Up to 12.

44-46 could be compressed into a 2-parter.  13.

Okay, I guess that leaves us with enough of the final stretch of the series that can be compressed to squeeze out that 14th chapter.

Put that all together and here’s where we can have a 39-episode run that’s still respectable:

1. Fated Meeting
2. Stone Eater
3. Demon Painting
4. Tora Goes To Town
5. Exorcist Hyo
6. Ayakashi
7. Legend
8. In The Sky
9. Houriki Heretic
10. Kamaitachi
11. Saya
12. Toono Youkai
13. [TV-exclusive transitional story]
14. The Chosen, Part 1
15. The Chosen, Part 2
16. Change of Face, Part 1
17. Change of Face, Part 2
18. The Creation of the Beast Spear
19. Speed Demon
20. Destroy the Beast Spear, Part 1
21. Destroy the Beast Spear, Part 2
22. Party
23. Bakemono War, Part 1
24. Bakemono War, Part 2
25. Kagari & Tora
26. Tatari Breaker, Part 1
27. Tatari Breaker, Part 2
28. Kirio Finds A Home
29. Gouki
30. Azafuse
31. Before The Wind Blows
32. Turning To Stone
33. Appearing and Disappearing in the Rain
34. Sea of Chaos
35. Tora
36. Stopping the Descent
37. Opening the Gate
38. Till Our Lives Reach the Sun
39. Finale

In the end, SOMETHING is going to get cut that I won’t like, but a 39-episode run CAN work.  Sure, we could cut out more fillers and put in more time for arc episodes, but I think in the end we really need some of those breathers.  And I’m willing to but they’ll find some way to fit the Gedou episode in, even if it’s completely worthless.  I mean, I liked the manga version okay, but the manga has full frontal nudity going for it.  That ain’t happening in the anime.