The second half of the first season of Ushio and Tora starts of FUCKING CRAZY.  And I love it.  But you already knew that.

Episode 14 introduces some new intro footage and a completely new ending.  All I can say is: SO MUCH KIRIO!  YEEEEEEEAH!  And confirmation that they’ll be doing Tatari Breaker, which… I could take or leave, honestly.  But hey, Breaking the Beast Spear is going to be a huge focus, so REV UP THE HYPE ENGINES!

We begin by completely skipping the entirety of the travel arc, which is… totally awesome.  Didn’t think they’d have it in them.

Hakumen no Mono sends out a legion of its Hiyou to attack the Beast Spear, and shit goes down very quickly.  Ushio starts to defend himself against the attack, but one of the Beast Spear Candidates, Hinowa Sekimori, arrives and fends off the Hiyou.

Hinowa then shames Ushio for not being trained to use the Beast Spear and kinda forcibly takes the spear away from him.  Then kicks his ass just for kicks.  Hinowa proclaims she is now the true user of the Beast Spear and becomes the new target for the Hiyou.

One problem: the Spear isn’t listening to her.

Ushio shakes off his doubts and chases after Hinowa, shows her how it’s done, and saves her.  One of the best scenes in this segment?  The Hiyou trap Hinowa as a hostage to make Ushio drop the spear.  He responds by THROWING THE BEAST SPEAR DIRECTLY AT HINOWA because the spear won’t harm humans.

So Hinowa agrees to let Ushio hold on to the Beast Spear (at least until she perfects her training), and Ushio continues on his journey.

It doesn’t take long before he bumps into Akiba Nagare, another Beast Spear Candidate… but he doesn’t realize his identity.  Tora does, however, and he picks a fight with Akiba, who is more interested in Tora than the Beast Spear.

Akiba proves to a skilled fighter, even successfully trapping Tora in place so he can interrogate him about his intentions regarding Ushio.  Tora turns things around by tearing his limbs out to free his main body and knocks Akiba out in one move.

He lets him live, however, and explains that the reason he hasn’t eaten Ushio yet is because things are never boring when he’s with him.

Meanwhile, the Hiyou have possessed the bus Ushio hopped on, proving once again that Ushio needs to stop using public transportation.

Next episode!

Akiba and Tora come to the rescue and save the bus passengers in a scene that goes on way too long and probably should have been shoved into the previous episode somehow.  Ushio feels bad, but Akiba convinces him to hitch a ride on his motorcycle.

The group is interrupted when a group of Beast Spear Candidate rejects, led by Jun Moritsuna, stop them.  Jun is concerned about her brother Satoru, said to be the most talented of the four Beast Spear Candidates.  She says Satoru changed after it was announced that Ushio became the wielder of the Beast Spear.  As if on cue, Satoru Moritsuna appears with a Shikigami and attacks.

Satoru is fended off, but our heroes learn that Hiyou have possessed his brain.  Ushio consults the Touno Youkai Elder and learns the only way to drive Hiyou out of a human’s brain is to enter the human’s body himself – a feat that can only be done by allowing the Beast Spear to take all of his soul, turning him into a true Beast.

We also get some backstory with the siblings.  A long time ago, Satoru saved Jun from a monster and killed it with one blow, but Satoru appeared so scary that Jun ran away from him instead of thanking him.  It’s important backstory, but the episode really rushed through a shit-ton of content, and the end result is that the flashback seems tacked on and doesn’t really explain much.  I suggest reading the manga version since it flows a lot better.

Anyway, Satoru shows up again, Ushio and Tora beat the shit out of his Shikigami, and Jun gives him a powerful sisterly hug that allows him to temporarily regain control over his body – long enough to jump off a cliff.

I love all the content we’re getting, but the second half of episode 15 really suffered from horrible pacing.  I blame the fact that they spent too much time wrapping up the bus plot that SHOULD have been wrapped up in episode 14.

The next episode should start one of the best arcs of the series, but I continue to question just how far we’re getting into it.  For the first half of this season, the anime has been consistent in wrapping up a single manga story in one episode, with the exception of the Touno Youkai arc requiring two episodes.  Episode 14 ends before wrapping up a story for once, and episode 15 wraps up that story and adapts half of the next one.  It seems the next episode is going to wrap up the Moritsuna story and start what’s known in the manga as “Change of Face.”  Basically, it’s become quite a bit more difficult to predict the anime’s progress.  It’s actually going much faster than I expected.

Anyway, I just want to end this post by saying… WHY THE FUCK isn’t anyone talking about Ushio and Tora?  Whenever I see people complaining about how bad the last season was, my FIRST reaction is always “DID YOU FUCKING WATCH USHIO AND TORA?!”  It’s rather universally praised by anyone who actually does watch it, but barely anyone’s fucking watching it.

Sigh.

Whatever.  I try my best, but I can’t exactly force people to watch.  I just don’t know why no one does.  It makes no sense to me.