Why so late?  I blame Ruin Explorers.  I’ve spent so much time translating this week that I’ve barely had any time to do posts.

At any rate, we’re finally kicking off the main story!  Whooo!

We start the episode with a short flashback to the last episode’s post-credits scene, just in case you missed it.  Because it’s kinda easy to miss it.  Ushio confronts his old man about his mother still being alive, and we go back and forth between serious music and silly interruption.  It’s one of the best comedic scenes of this series, honestly.

Anyway, Ushio’s Dad, Shigure, finally meets Tora face to face, makes fun of him, and runs off on another errand before Ushio can get an answer.  Turns out Shigure’s an exorcist of sorts and he reports to a sect that takes the Beast Spear super seriously.  He tells them about Ushio and Tora and promises to test his son and the youkai haunting him, but not before we find out there are others the sect raised to wield the Beast Spear.

Oh, and the Beast Spear being released could mean the revival of Hakumen no Mono, which we can assume is a super-powerful youkai.

Pops comes back and gives Ushio a load of travel money so he can find out the truth about his mother on his own.  Then he prepares to kill Tora.

Only not really, because it’s obvious he was only testing him to see if he truly was evil.  A bunch of monks from the sect arrive and decide “fuck Shigure” and proceed with their plan to kill Tora and take the Beast Spear.

It goes about as well as you expect.  Well, better: at least they managed to knock Ushio out before they got stomped.

So after that, Ushio prepares to go on his journey along with Tora, and we get a nice parting shot that shows that they’re more or less partners.

Overall, one of the best episodes of the series, and it’ll only get better from here on out.  It probably helped that they only needed to fit four chapters into one episode as opposed to the standard 5-6.  Hopefully, more and more people will start to get into this series, and as the travel arc gets going, the hype levels should increase.