Best episode yet, and we still have 34 more to go!  WHY AREN’T YOU WATCHING USHIO & TORA YET?!

We start the episode out with Hyou, badass exorcist extraordinaire, killing two bakemono.

He sees a news report from a couple episodes back and sees the youkai he’s been looking for is in Japan.  So he goes there and bypasses airport security – a scene that was in fact in the original manga and OVA, yet is somehow more relevant nowadays than then.

Meanwhile, Ushio is pissed after Tora’s latest attempt to eat him.  When Ushio and Hyou meet, Hyou talks about how a youkai that looks like Tora killed his wife and daughter, so now he’s out for revenge.  Ushio tells him to kill Tora rather than correct him by telling him Tora couldn’t possibly be the youkai responsible, and this decision weighs on him for the next day.

Hyou and Tora fight for A FULL FUCKING DAY, which I actually started to doubt was going to be the case in this adaptation, but they went with it.  I mean, yeah, they had to fill up time and get that Asako interaction in there, but… Okay, moving on.

One thing that really deserves props his how much focus we got on Hyou’s spirit-seeing right eye.  It’s a detail that isn’t quite as easy to pick up on in the manga and barely got use in the OVA, but here it’s effectively established as one of the many weapons in his artillery, like Kin and his wires.  Speaking of Kin though, I don’t understand why we got exposition into what his wires are made out of, but we couldn’t fit in the explanation for Kin.  Luckily, he repeats how Kin works a couple of times later in the manga, so maybe we’re saving it for then.

Anyway, Asako snaps some sense into Ushio, Ushio returns to the park to stop Hyou from killing Tora, and Hyou snaps out of his rage.

Eventually.

Hyou admits that this isn’t the beast that killed his family, and he says he’ll stay in Japan since it seems many youkai and bakemono fled from China to Japan.  This was a scene in the manga but not in the OVA, presumably because the OVA had no intentions of adapting the manga that far.  Which is the problem with most OVAs of that era.

So Ushio thanks Asako for her help, and Tora refrains from attempting to eat Ushio after looking at all the wounds he suffered from saving Tora.

Next episode is Ayakashi Sea!  Everything’s pretty much going according to plan so far, and I am hype for shit starting to hit the fan.