I’m the first to say that this run of episodes has been Mononogatari at its anime best. But I have one not insignificant beef at the moment. As you may know my feeling is that in a post that’s mostly going to be positive but with a quibble, it’s better to get the negative out of the way so one can move on to the good stuff. And that quibble is this: I don’t buy the Bureau’s role here. I didn’t buy the original reason Tsumabiki offered for why they teamed up with the Warazamawashi, and I don’t buy that they’re brushing off Tsuzumi’s annihilation so breezily. If they air, the pair of them don’t have much sense of loyalty.
It’s possible the revelations in the next couple of eps may convince me that this development makes sense (though it strikes me as unlikely). It also kind of bugs me that the two of them would be surprised that the “living god” they awakened would be such a loose cannon. I get that it was seemingly different when Botan was a child, but really – they have no excuse to be surprised by any on this. It just makes the absence of a better reason than the one Tsumabiki gave last week that much more grating.
Without any question, this living god inside Botan is a powerful being. Powerful enough to make all the local (and maybe non-local, for all I know) tsukumogami bow towards it. It’s kind of interesting that doesn’t seem to be true of the bridal trousseau, though whether that’s a matter of distance or some other factor I don’t know. What I do know is that Hyouma jumping into the fray was enough to drag Botan back into a sort of standoff with the marebito for control of her body, which annoyed the umbrella academy to no end.
It seems very much as if was the moment (and perhaps the reason) Kushige re-entered the fray, though we don’t actually see his humanoid form. My assumption was that it was Kushige that re-established the Botan barrier (I don’t think she’s strong enough to do that on her own). It’s also around this time that the rest of the Nagatsukumogami drop in, having finally extricated themselves from the barrier. With Hyouma out on his feet their timing could hardly have been better, and if Kushige is indeed back in the fray that probably tilts the scales in their favor.
The other big shoe drop here is that Tenjitsu, the shady seeming leader of the Warazamawashi is revealed (thanks to Nagi shattering his parasol) and he has Hyouma’s brother’s face. Not only that, Takanashi Hideyori, who voiced Hayato, is voicing Tenjitsu. I don’t buy for a minute that this is actually Hyouma’s brother, but it’s odd that the umbrella that (presumably) killed him would have taken on his appearance. This provides yet another test of Hyoums’s resolve, which he passes yet again, but this is obviously a significant twist going forward.
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