Why are we introducing these things if we’re not going to use any of them?
Impressions:
Playing the game “How much of this episode actually needed to exist” with myself probably isn’t healthy, but I’m addicted to it. Especially when it comes to episodes like this where the answer ends up being like 80% of the episode. Hell, the first nearly five minutes are about how sickly and infirm he is, the OP plays, time skips forward like 15 years and now he’s completely fine. Not just fine. Running away from street murderers with knives. He’s not a body builder. He has a weird haircut like every Edo dude. But you just spent a quarter of the episode introducing his character only to immediately abandon it. Was that time really well spent when you have youkai and serial killers that you could be exploring instead?
But at the same time, let’s look at the youkai side of this story. What do they do? They… hover around him, literally. One of them eventually spooks off the killer by popping up and being bright. That’s it. So is that gimmick really a core part of the setting and story either? And then he goes back to… placidly strolling down the street as if he hadn’t just been chased by a blood-drenched maniac until the episode ends with him stumbling on a stabbed dude. A shocking occurrance, or at least it would be had he not just come from a blood-drenched maniac with a knife and then forgotten about it. Or had it not been proceeded by them announcing “Wait, the smell of blood is here” and then taking an entire minute to slowly pan around to get both the corpse, his reaction, and the girl youkai’s reaction. The pacing is awful, but that’s all there is to it.
It doesn’t offend my sensibilities for aspiring to be terrible and just being tediously boring like all the cheat power RPG things. It’s just tediously boring, and doesn’t aspire to be anything. It’s a distinction, but I don’t think the difference is all that important.
Next Episode:
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