#like how he doesn’t assume that all Yokai are bad anymore

[wtf-a-psychoanalysis]

Like i also find the character development interesting

Also comic spoilers.

Yuichi probably knows that Miyamoto had allied himself with Ninja in the past, one also named Chizu. It's funny because both Chizus upset both Usagis by kinda lying to them and put them in harms way, leading to fighting ninja, and then the Usagis did eventually forgive them and the Chizus end up being besties with the Kitsune's

Also out of the four Yuichi and Kitsune's past is what we least know about, Yeah we get bits and pieces but not flashbacks like the others and it tells a lot about those two not being too attached to their past.

Like i wish for a season 3 so bad to dive into this aspect. Tho honestly if Yuichi's life is kinda mirroring Miyamoto, I would like to see his father being a magistrate that gets killed by Samurai Rabbit's Version of Hikiji or Hebi and Yuichi having to run away with Auntie.

There is so much more to talk about too

I'll reblog your tags for additional context ok

I want more people to talk about Usagi Yojimbo and Samurai Rabbit with.

[goodlucktai]

What about some hurt/comfort for Natsume & Natori? (Not slash tho)

Natori doesn't seem like he has anyone in his life to take care of him except his shikigami :(

x

"You need to sleep," Hiiragi says. Her tone is unchanging, an unhurried monotone, but somehow it manages to carry a thread of concern.

Shuuichi waves her off, sifting through papers. "In a minute. I just have to finish this."

A group of exorcists in over their heads sent these reports earlier today. Yesterday, now, Shuuichi amends inwardly with a bleary glance at the clock in the kitchen, which reads an inappropriately cheerful 6:07 AM. And they'll arrive to collect them, along with Shuuichi's notes, in just a few hours.

"They are presumptuous," Hiiragi says, "to assume you had this time to spare them, and on such short notice. You're busy."

"Not with anything that matters," Shuuichi laughs. It comes out not sounding like a laugh at all. Hiiragi tips her head incrementally to the side, no doubt staring at him behind her mask.

"Your work does matter."

"This work does," Shuuichi says, laying a hand on the papers scattered across the desk. "The other stuff-- "

"The 'stuff' that pays your bills," Hiiragi says. "The 'stuff' that keeps you fed, and gives you reason to leave your house and interact with people who won't make you think about ghosts."

It's Shuuichi's turn to stare. "I didn't realize you were such a firm believer in my acting career."

"I don't understand it," she says frankly. "But you enjoy it. It may not be.... 'vanquishing evil,'" she goes on, quoting the report the exorcists sent as if it's something slimy she's peeling off her shoe, "but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter."

It might be the lack of sleep talking, but Shuuichi feels strangely touched. He has to swallow before he can reply, something that happens rarely, if at all.

"I'll make sure to sign an autograph for you," he teases, grinning. "But only after I've finished this."

"Hm," Hiiragi says. She doesn't call him an idiot, at least. A few minutes after that she leaves from the living room window, ostensibly to patrol the neighborhood.

Shuuichi will just finish his notes, and then set an alarm for-- he checks the clock again, and winces-- and hour and a half. He'll get that much sleep, at least. He's worked with less.

At some point, the front door opens. That's odd. Only a few people have a key to his apartment, and none of them who do live anywhere near here. His shiki certainly don't use the door.

A familiar voice says, "Hi, Natori-san."

Shuuichi lifts his head, so fast his vision swims. There's Natsume, standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the sitting room, hands full with a cardboard drink tray and a brown paper bag bearing the distinctive golden arches. He looks decidedly windblown, as if he flew the whole way here. He probably did.

His brow is wrinkled, mouth tucked into a frown. It's the way Shuuichi imagines Hiiragi's face looks behind her mask at least ninety-percent of the time.

"What on earth are you doing here?" Shuuichi says, pushing himself upright. He has to lean on the desk to get there. Natsume clocks it with a flick of his eyes but doesn't comment. "Don't you have school today?" Shuuichi goes on, desperately trying to remember what day it is. Friday, right?

"No school," Natsume says, putting the drinks and the bag on the counter. "Teacher's institute."

"Are you in trouble?" Shuuichi asks carefully.

"I have to be in trouble to come visit you?"

Natsume wanders into the sitting room and sets his messenger bag and his ugly cat down on the sofa. He actually points a stern finger at the cat in clear warning that it needs to behave itself, as if it isn't actually a giant monster capable of leveling buildings should it so choose. Something about that manages to be hilarious, where it isn't slightly horrifying.

Shuuichi smiles a bit. This weird kid means the world to him.

"Did you bring me breakfast?" he asks lightly. "I hope that's coffee."

Natsume is so receptive to any manner of kindness, even after the life he's lived, that he smiles back like a knee-jerk reaction. It still feels like an accomplishment when he does.

"Tea," he corrects. "And some egg sandwiches. The sausage ones are for sensei. Can you eat with me, or-- if you're too busy-- "

"I can take a break," Shuuichi says, and slings his arm around Natsume's shoulders, steering him back into the kitchen. "Let's talk about what dragged you all the way out here in the early hours of the morning, shall we? Does your mother know where you are?"

"Of course she does," Natsume insists. "She even sent some leftovers with me. I put them in the fridge already."

Shuuichi is in a vulnerable state, and that just about undoes him. He clears his throat and takes a big, scalding gulp of tea instead of saying or doing anything embarrassing. "Tell her I said thank you," he manages.

"Or you could just call her," Natsume points out dryly.

"Or I could just call her," Shuuichi agrees.

In his defense, Shuuichi truly didn’t stand a chance. The combination of heavy food and a hot drink… the pale fingers of dawn creeping through the shades at the kitchen window… the steady back-and-forth of comfortable, friendly conversation… no one asking anything of him, expecting anything from him, except his company…

He dozes off in his chair at the counter, face buried in his folded arms. He feels someone draw a blanket around his shoulders, their cold fingers lingering protectively near his nape, and Hiiragi’s voice says, “Thank you. He’s very stupid.”

“No he isn’t,” Natsume replies loyally. “Well, not all the time.”

It’s ridiculous how well Shuuichi sleeps after that.

He wakes up a solid ten hours later, the blanket slipping to the floor. The TV is on in the next room. Hiiragi is perched on the counter beside him. Her mask somehow manages to appear both smug and judgemental without actually changing at all.

“Sleep well?” she asks with no inflection.

“What-- time is it?” Shuuichi asks blearily, looking around for the clock.

“A little after four,” Hiiragi says. “Those exorcists have come and gone.”

“What?”

“They didn’t come inside. Natsume dealt with them at the door.”

“Sorry, Natori-san,” Natsume pipes up in the doorway. He shuffles a bit, self-conscious until Hiiragi seems to catch his eye. Then he lifts his chin a little and says, “You seemed tired, so I handled it. Hiiragi and Sasago both said it was okay.”

Betrayal, Shuuichi thinks, glaring hard at Hiiragi. She gazes serenely back, entirely unmoved. He’s firing her.

“Natsume, I appreciate it,” because there’s very little in this life that Natsume could do that Shuuichi wouldn’t back him up on, “but don’t talk to strangers. Even though they’re exorcists, that doesn’t automatically make them trustworthy.”

“I don’t trust most exorcists,” Natsume says plainly. “You’re one of, like, two exceptions.”

And there’s a lot to unpack there, but for some reason the first thing Shuuichi thinks of to ask is, “One of two? Who’s the other one?”

After a beat, in which Natsume looks as though he doesn’t want to answer, he admits, “Hakozaki-san.”

“Hak-- the recluse with the dragon shiki? The owner of that mansion we watched burn?” Shuuichi laughs, unable to help himself. It unwinds tension in his body he hadn’t even realized he was holding. “Natsume, you never even met him!”

“I still liked him!” Natsume says hotly, embarrassed. “He was friends with yokai!”

“And I’m sure if he’d had the chance to know you, he would have spirited you away as his son and heir within two business days.” Shuuichi chuckles, leaning back in his chair. “Lucky for me he didn’t have the chance, I suppose.”

Natsume huffs, but he still climbs into the seat next to Shuuichi. After a beat, Nyanko-sensei hops up into his lap.

“I might have gotten you in trouble with those exorcists,” the boy admits. “I told them to do their own homework from now on. That if they kept taking advantage of your kindness, you wouldn’t help them anymore.” He glances at Shuuichi sidelong from beneath his fringe, and adds, “They got mad, so I sicced sensei on them. I, um, think they thought he was my shiki. I also think they thought I’m from your clan. I couldn’t tell ‘cause they were all, um-- screaming, at the same time.”

And-- okay. There is a right and a wrong way to react to this, clearly. A teenage boy using his terrifying yokai friend to menace people within Shuuichi’s network? Not good! Very bad, even!

But Shuuichi has to lean forward against the counter, face buried in his hands, because he’s absolutely howling with laughter. Natsume is stammering, trying to explain himself, but he doesn’t say sorry. He isn’t sorry for sticking up for Shuuichi. He showed up at Shuuichi’s apartment at seven AM with McDonald’s on his day off from school, and chased a bunch of exorcists out of the building, because his friend needed a break and that’s just the kind of person Natsume is.

The kind of person who deserves something fancy for dinner tonight, Shuuichi decides, and he’s still smiling as he reaches for his phone.

Hiiragi places it neatly in his hand.

“I don’t want your autograph,” she says. She doesn't call him an idiot out loud, but she's probably thinking it.

Hell, he’ll order something fancy for her, too.

[evergreen-dryad]

thoughts about spook 65

...Although, it’s more like a stream of consciousness commentary. I try and fail not to make this too long as usual, so warning long post ahead.

Summary: Aidairo leaves us on that cliffhanger by giving us a break with tension-breaker Kou with his caring friends, more Mitsukou, and then dun dun dun they encounter a Wild Comic Relief of Universal Proportions Natsuhiko (poor fish and tarantula I hope they got back safe) and apparently Natsuhiko wants to capture No.6 like he’s the rarest pokemon of all and might have the secret key to the immortality fountain?? Will we ever know more about these mysterious man stay tuned next month. And oh yeah also No.6 always wanted to throw Aoi into the hole to rot away because he’s also a necromancer. Just great and swell here folks, don’t know how Nene and Akane are faring ~

whaaww Kou’s feeling really overwhelmed I mean this is a lot for like what a 13 year old boy

LMAO IS HE WIPING THE MOKKE OR DID HE READY A KERCHIEF FOR NENE

‘Teru-nii hasn’t been home recently’ -- hmmmmm? What’s he up to? Is he out on a journey to exorcise bigger fish out there?

...Or it could be just a field trip lmao

lol. out of context -- 👀

(I love that white-black juxtaposition between the two of them)

AWW WHAT GOOD BOIS

KOU HAS SUCH GOOD FRIENDS I’M MELTING HEREEEEE

ahahahahaha ofc Satou sugarboy here has his priorities right. ‘Get sweet drinks and sweets for us you simp’

awwww

I love it, we’re getting outside perspective from the supportive side characters. It’s the Arc for no1 Supportive Side Character Ao-chan after all!

ooooooohhhhh Satou’s the observant one here. Starting to love him now~

what a cheerful sandboy Yokoo is holding that carrot

oyo it’s Mitsuba but I’m just distracted wondering if those plants on the left side are mimosa plants, le touch-me-not

LMAO

MITSUBA YOU NEVER HOLD BACK

omg you just popped right outta the mirror like that. I would have screamed and flung my hands everywhere. Kou you have nerves of steel or in this case your brain is a steelwool scrubber right now

Yeah man that’s his job your man’s a ghost in case you forgot

AWW HE’S ALSO CONCERNED

MITSUBA DOING THE BLESSED WORK AROUND HERE HE JUST OUTRIGHT ASKED KOU WHAT’S UP

LMAO KOU

It is unbelievable to him since Mitsuba has always been such a prickly tsun before he’s probably never shown much common decency let alone common friend interaction like showing concern esp since Kou to him is a blokehead

Awww, Kou

(oh? oh? what was his wish again exactly, to be friends or for him to be human somehow?

and lmao Kou is going doki-doki when Mitsuba for the first time ever asks if he’s okay)

Aww, Mitsuba misses his Daikon-senpai, this is too cute guys I--

Nene your fantasy came true Mitsuba’s looking for you like a lost puppy

LMAO HANAKO IS THE BAD FRIEND IM SCREMINH BUT KOU HONEY YOU’RE RIGHT HE FIGHTS BEATS STABS PEOPLE UP AND INTRODUCES YOU TO PORN AND EVEN GOES YANDERE FOR AN ARC

really. why am I so intrigued Teru is gone. Where did he go. There must be a story somewhere.

oh whoa there goes Kou acting all otome ML again (callback to Hanako wanting Nene’s wish to come true too with the shoulder-clutching?)

HAHAHAHA YEAH HE DIDN’T LISTEN AT ALL. THIS SIMP. YOUR BI HIMBO. YOUR MORON.

Mitsuba’s face is sending me I swear

Yes Mitsuba he deserves that kick to the arse. Teach him to listen to you

There we go again~~ *Kou otome ML move count: 2*

A scream??? COULD IT BE---

BUGS AND TRASH PLS PLS BE OKAY

wow Mitsuba just suited up. our two superheroes on the move

AAAAAAAAAA

IT’S A FISH???? WHOSE LEGS ARE THOU TOO LONG?? DON’T TELL ME IT’S NATSUHIKO

also lmao these phat daikon arms. And these rando fish are all so cute. Look at this guy on the right. So smooth and chill like a seal

Ya jeez more and more apparitions are showing up y’all it’s becoming a yokai manga (I’m not complaining I love them all.)

Oh that dramatic foot in a spotlight, Natsuhiko you dramatic hoe, it’s you I’d know you anywhere (jokes aside I saw that Sailor Moon edit of him so)

HAHAH THE FISH LOOKS SO HAPPY. PEAK COMEDY THAT FOOT SILENTLY SLIPPING OUT OF SIGHT I--

HONESTLY HOW DOES NATSUHIKO KEEP GETTING INTO THESE SITUATIONS

Good shonen boy Kou finally jumping into action to the rescue, because god knows without Hanako around there’s no one to do the saving of damsels in distress around here

‘I want to join too’ -- AWWW LOL THIS IS SO CUTE

and off they go bullying a fish like it’s a game, so sad I liked that whalefrogfish

is it ded. rip.

oh wow Natsu you kissed fish gullet, look how red your face is wow. Also you really shouldn’t think that you’re too funny to let die. You survived being thrown into Nowhere, you’ll survive fish llke Jonah did. But fr did Sakura throw you into a fish trash pit or smth

LOL OH YEAH KOU DOESN’T KNOW AND YEAH HE IS THE NO1 AIRHEAD FOR MITSUBA NOT KOU LOL

OHMYGOD HE DID A DRAMATIC SELF-INTRODUCTION WITH THE FLASH STEP AND ALL I LOVE U YOU DORK. YOU HUGE SHONEN DORK OF INDESTRUSCTIBLE COMIC RELIEF PROPORTIONS

ohmygod he called himself an Onii-san. He wants Kou to call him Onii-san. I am crying. Teru come back your lil bro’s being propositioned (w hA T a tiME for YoU TO Be GonE eH)

HAHAH THAT IDOL POSE. NO WONDER SAILOR MOON I AM DECEASED

KOU BABY IS SUSPICIOUS IM CRYING YES AS YOU SHOULD BE HUN (that font is just perfect *chef’s kiss*)

Natsuhiko just awkwardly perched there in the background

Touchy touchy LOL MITSUBA YOU SAID WHAT I THOUGHT

and yikes Natsuhiko’s pulling the same moves as Nene to gain kouhais lolol, aaah I’m starting to see similarities between them

HAHAH OMG *Kou otome ML move count: 3*

ooh what a shady guy. Natsu what do u know tell us tell us tell us

omg y u like this. whY do you sound so threatening now. I take it back you’re not harmless

W H A T

Natsuhiko do you mean to tell me you’re immortal????? Is that why you survive all these ridiculous levels of eldritch horror????

Fml he really looks like a vampire in that lighting. Esp since I can like see all his individual teeth what on earth is this level of detail Aidairo for once Natsuhiko looks like the cool mysterious guy he was meant to be

Just realised he has like a dyed hair thing going on kinda like Tsuchigomori. Don’t tell me. Natsuhiko are you Tsuchigomori’s secret love child.

‘There’s a bad energy coming from here’ --- pFFFT. He sounds like he’s trying to be a fengshui expert now. A conman

hmmmm??? Oh that wasn’t a phone?? what is that it’s an onsen...?

wait that is probably a phone nvm. I’m just jumping at every little detail like 👀 

so huh I’m assuming Tsukasa can’t handle no6 on his own either, so....or possibly Natsuhiko is acting on his own??

Ooh cool blankets, everyone has different flowers!! (*squints* no stop you can’t go looking for flower meanings everywhere)

And yes that’s a phone. Naatsuhiko just canonically has an onsen symbol phonecase just to show he’s a Chill Bro

lol Mitsuba i don’t think you need to worry you’re not a whole soul anymore

D’AWWWW LOOK AT ALL THOSE LITTLE CUTIES (sheep, elephant, bunnies (multiple), rubber duckling)

You. Natsuhiko. You’re the one most like a cat.

omg what a braggart. what a chest-thumping man u are Natsu-senpai

OMG KOU NOOO WE WERE MAKING PROGRESS HE TAMED YOU ANYWAY

hahahahha I’m crying. Even Natsuhiko’s conscience is touched by Kou’s trusting naivete I can’t

oh my god. but thank god Teru-nii still comes first he still hasn’t completely seduced you over to the dark side just yet

awwww, Kou. Awww. He really, really wants to do his best to save them all. I--

Aw yay Natsu is touched to the point he’ll help!! Hopefully he wasn’t lying!! I hope there isn’t a sacrifice involved-

oh???

Onix (srsly I really love all the lotuses everywhere. really going Buddhist symbology there)

look at dat foot. it go.

oh!! we’re fresh at the battlescene!!

!!!!!!

IT’S ALIVEEEE

I guess these guys are too useful to let rot in the trashpit eh

?? For one moment I thought we were looking down into the trashpit at our missing 4 lmao. But why. No 6 you’re coming off as ...naturally innocent??? Dang. Let this cutie rest

I’m genuinely curious how on earth this no 6 is not a god on his own. (It’s funny to me that I’m coincidentally writing about a god like this as well at the same time.) How does he rank equal to the others. How is Hanako even his boss have they ever met before I demand a full show of Hanako’s powers one day. We’re not even sure what his boundary is. Or is it that he only has the power of life and death on those in his boundary?

(edit: just realised that if Tsukasa is behind Natsuhiko then no6 is basically Tsukasa’s dream power - necromancy. He could build all the Frankensteins his little heart ever wanted)

oof there go the minions. I love how they have little buds on their heads. Every minion of his is ‘living’! And they’re like the first with individuality I’ve seen...?

oh he thinks Aoi did this purposely? Pfft she got dragged in there

juijuirjfuerjcjkekerjckdediejdiedmwec. I am so worried. But fr this one panel of Aoi is so beautiful.

Huh the hole is a starburst shape? 6 points hmm --oh wait im dumb it’s closing up oh no

LOL KEIKAKU DOORI

But shiet really how did he see to that. By giving her power over those specific bugs?? Planting info of that hole in her?

IM SCREAMING THAT’S THE END OF IT THAT’S IT TILL NEXT MONTH

[espbee]

i wasn’t originally going to post this since i’ve seen several other (perfectly valid) mob psycho timelines out there but you all wanted to see it so here it is!

this does not include pre-canon or the reigen spin off. the first b/c i didn’t really care lol and the second b/c i haven’t read the spin off for reasons i’m sure you already know.

almost every single one of these dates is based on canon evidence (see notes below) but a few are speculation. i go into depth under the cut so if you want to know, say, exactly what day mob buys the monkey shirt you can find out. if you want to see a specific panel hmu!

feel free to use as reference when writing fanfics or meta or whatever else you might want to use it for :D just please don’t repost 

Spring of Youth Arc

it’s not super important how many days pass in ep 1 but i think it’s all within a week. might be some overlap with ep 2 (tunnel exorcism on same day takenaka quits club? according to the manga it happens later anyway)

going by anime here: takenaka quits the club monday or tuesday, tome asks mob to join the club wednesday if i remember right (also the day he goes to the girl’s high school) and he joins the body improvement club friday)

(LOL) Cult Arc

not much to say. it’s literally an afternoon and the teru arc starts the very next day

Teruki Hanazawa Arc

happens basically immediately after the cult. like mob knows dimple for like 3 days before he’s “exorcised”

fight on a friday bc it’s on weekend news

aftermath: mob in pink hoodie probably on saturday, mezato interrogates him monday

Big Cleanup Arc

shigeo mentions in the divine tree arc that student council meetings are on mondays. however only having weekly meetings would make this arc take a really long time so i’m guessing it’s semiweekly. i’m guessing the other day is thursday because ritsu says he has a meeting on the thursday that mob confesses

same monday as end of teru arc: student council meeting where ritsu suggests a big cleanup, mitsuura gives ritsu his card

thursday: big cleanup plan submitted, mezato and onigawara look for mob (for totally different reasons), ritsu in the street w/ tokugawa

next monday: student council plans to get rid of onigawara

awakening lab might be on the same day as above but i’m not sure, mob also goes on a “date” with tome that day and sees koyama for the first time. that night is when shinji’s family gets after him for not being perfect and he decides to go apeshit

i’m guessing the recorder scandal happens the next morning (wednesday?). it doesn’t actually say if ritsu awakens that exact day but i’m just going to say it does

a little bit of time goes by (about a week?) ritsu’s becoming popular and he develops his psychic power. teru vs ritsu happens somewhere here. people are complaining about the big clean up

the day that ritsu and kamuro confront onigawara in the body improvement club room is the same day that ritsu first attacks the delinquents from the other schools (monday)

im guessing a day goes by before kamuro is beaten up (tuesday), then another day before he’s beaten up again (wednesday)

kamuro is absent from the student council meeting the next thursday

ritsu only has his powers for 9 days before announcing that he’s obtained loss

7th Division Arc

one month before touichirou arrives in japan. this makes sense because it’s not like the day he arrives he’s going to attack. touichirou probably arrives in late september or early october, prepares things for a couple weeks

mob goes to shinji’s house on sunday, ritsu and mob talk on the swings monday, shinji apologizes to onigawara tuesday. the kageyama parents know about ritsu’s power by tuesday night (what was that conversation like)

Mob’s Girlfriend Mini-Arc

2 weeks long: one for the elections and one for the dating

sidenote: psycho helmet cult has gained 700 followers by now and it’s been about a month according to mezato (and the timeline!)

mob works the monday after his brother’s kidnapped jeez reigen give the kid a break

going to say it’s wednesday when shinji resigns

mezato talks to mob about running on thursday

one week later: elections! (going to say they’re on a friday). emi asks him out that afternoon

mob and emi “date” for a week. im guessing she “breaks up” with him friday and he fixes her torn up story on monday since there’s enough time for everyone to react. i think the anime has all that happen on the same day though. either way is good

Urban Legend Arc

reigen complains about four days without customers

kuchisake-onna: it’s the weekend b/c mob’s wearing a sweater instead of his uniform and also b/c i doubt mob skipped school

reigen makes his website overnight and mob’s wearing his uniform the next day which means the trip to the urban legend town has to be on sunday

the first trip to the ghost house is on a sunday (what a busy day!), and the second trip is on monday

Keiji Mogami Arc

literally the day after the ghost house wtf (so… tuesday?)

if it feels like 6 months for mob would that mean he’s almost a third year in the dream world? or already is a third year? oh no…

uh technically there’s an aftermath the next day but really the arc is one day

Separate Ways Arc

kumagawa’s birthday is in late september btw. idk if there’s any kumagawa stans out there but now you know he’s a libra

kijibayashi’s birthday: 10/5? (also the day mob finally cant take reigen’s bs anymore)

mob doesn’t show up to work for at least four days pre-birthday (probably five days since kijibayashi’s birthday needs to be on a school day)

reigen’s birthday: 10/10 (also i’m assuming this is either the day of or the day after he defeats the video game thing)

he has to have enough time to offer classes and become a local celebrity… i’d assume he offers that course at his office that friday night (10/12). he’s interviewed that day too. a few days later he goes on tv (i’m going to say 10/15)

goes to bar 3 days after the tv show (wednesday 10/17)

thursday 10/18: reporterless-day

friday 10/19: press conference, “my master… he is a good person” *sobs*)

World Domination Arc

mob has 10 days to prepare for the marathon

marathon on friday (11/2)

teru fights shimazaki for the first time saturday morning, mob doesn’t wake up until sometime in the afternoon, and rei-gun is in the evening

mob sleeps like 18 hours… oof

the kageyama parents return home monday evening

Yokai Hunter Mini-Arc

this isn’t listed as seperate from the Divine Tree Arc according to the wiki but i’m calling it a mini-arc because the broccoli isn’t really the focus

mob mentions the future prospects assignment is due in a week

seri starts working at spirits and such a few days after the wd arc ends

going to guess there’s some overlap with the future prospects assignment and that it’s due sometime during culture festival preparations because otherwise the timeline breaks

okay everyone i know culture festivals are usually on or around november 3rd but according to all canon evidence there is absolutely no way that can happen on time. there’s literally no time. it has to take place at least 2 weeks after the wd arc

going to say the culture festival is nov. 18 because that’s all that makes sense (the previous weekend is too soon, and the next weekend is after the divine tree arc

Divine Tree Arc

Friday: Tsubomi sneezes �� why dont u stop doing bad things

Saturday: buys The Shirt

Sunday: Psycho Helmet

Monday: Teru, Ritsu, and Reigen all brainwashed, Mob vs Dimple part 2

Telepathy Mini-Arc

finally a nice long break :D

find out about takenaka about one month after Divine Tree Arc

aliens on New Year’s Eve/Day

inukawa’s abducted by aliens for 10 days

???% Arc

inukawa has to be back by the time school starts

Mob finds out Tsubomi’s leaving the day he gets back from winter break (monday) :(

i think he calls her two days later?

the day after that mob is hit by a fucking car (also student council day so… thursday)

Epilogue + Omakes

we all know the epilogue is on 10/10/2013

the summer omake has to be after the ???% arc but i’m not sure what day. probably july

idk what else to say other than i can’t believe i spent so much time on this

[kaialone]

Quick question. I saw on twitter that you mentioned that the Shadowside had things set up, but were changed after Hino stopped writing. You said something about Junior, but were there any other things you think were supposed to be different. Genuinely curious, because I haven't noticed anything, but I'm usually not very good at noticing these types of things. (Love your blog, and I hope you have a nice day!)

Thank you! (Sorry for the slightly late response ^^;)

Well, I’m not sure if I have much to say on this, I don’t have any actual background information of course, there’s just a bit one can read into it.

It’s gonna be a bit long, so I’m putting it under a read more.

-

The first episode is written by Hino, and in it we see some set ups that don’t really get picked up much afterwards.

-

One simple example is actually that Movie 4 and the PV for the first episode still used the OG tribes, Charming, etc, but by the time the first episode came out, the Charming symbol on Jibanyan’s arc was changed to Mononoke, from the new system. This means at that point, the new tribe system was just getting invented, and it also indicated Shadowside was kinda suffering from the fact that it was made before YKW4, so changes in mechanics like this were harder to implement.

I feel this is prolly why we don’t got tribe songs anymore, which is a real pity. Like Shadowside the anime couldnt have them, cause the tribe system was literally still being invented as the show was made, and YKW4 the game couldnt have them because well, gotta stick to what the anime did.

But thats more a mechanics thing and isnt tied directly to the narrative.

-

For a narravtive example, the first episode is mostly told from Keisuke’s perspective, and while I don’t think that has to mean he was going to be the main character at some point, it did make it seem like there was at least  the idea of more character development for him.

It made sense to start the series with him, since he has this outsider perspective, but it also sets him up as this easily frightened kid who denies the supernatural. So in the first episode, a major point for him is accepting the existence of yokai, partially through the help of his deceased friend, who has become a yokai.

The episode ends with him saying to himself “Yokai definitely exist, I know this because my best friend is one”.

And yet, immediately afterwards in the next episode, we see Keisuke trying to calm himself by singing “yokai dont exist at all”. Now, one could do something interesting here, like Keisuke fluctuating between what he wants to believe, and have some conflict with that, but

From that point on, all Keisuke ever does is be frightened as a running gag, like the once per episode rule is that he gets scared by the yokai of the week, and thats it. He gets one or two episodes, but even those dont do anything with his character.

In episode 1, Keisuke was a multi-faceted character who happened to be easily frightened and insecure. Every episode after that reduced him to the single trait of “scared”, which maybe a little bit of sass sometimes, but everyone is sassy in the YKW animes.

And then in the final episodes he gets the confidence to help out, but there isnt really much that causes it, outside of a speech from Junior, but in either case, like 50-ish episodes of 0 character focus doesn’t get undone by a tiny bit of focus at the end.

Adding to that, another interesting thing is that like, even though Bourei Banchou is literally his best friend, he never has any interaction with Keisuke again, really.

He gets summoned once in episode 5, where he is taken out in 1 hit with no lip service, and then he is summoned again in the finale as a bit of a nod, but there is no real character there.

What makes this interesting is that in merchandise, Bourei Banchou was actually shown to have a Lightside, Banchō, whom we even get to see some anime-style render of on some cards/stickers:

Considering the development of YKW4 was probably really early at this point (see the part about tribes) it’s unlikely they wouldn’ve created this design unless it was meant to be in the anime.

And when you look at him, he has very typical Yokai Watch sidekick look, doesnt he? So based on that I feel it’s likely that at some point, Banchō was meant to be Keisuke’s yokai partner, and be shown hanging around him and be an actual character and stuff.

But who knows.

One might say “well I don’t care about Keisuke, so I’m glad this didn’t happen” or something, which is a valid opinion to have, I’m just saying it seems obvious there was something dropped here.

-

Next we get the “Kaima” aspect. In episode 1, Fukurou’s dart hits a human which transforms him into a “Kaima”, which is what “Wicked Yokai” are called in Japanese, but the Japanese term has slightly different connotations, so…

Anyway, the question in hindsight is like: What the heck was that about?

This never happens again.

In episode 2 he hits the boy, but it doesn’t transform him, it shoots “evil” at Charlie the bike yokai, and Charlie turns bad.

After that he accidentally hits Jinta while trying to hit a human? And I think from that point on he either misses all the time or just hits the yokai directly.

And we never really get any explanation of what these darts even are, really.

Like, we know that supposedly it’s to look for the princess, but why?

Why does hitting humans and/or yokai with evil darts help?

One could assume make it’d awaken the Princess, but then why did he aim for what was clearly random punk jerks?

Did only Fukurou have those darts? If yes, how? And if yes, why was Shuten Douji not upset when Fukurou perished, at the very least over losing those darts?

Why did it only transform people in episode 1? In the very finale, we get people being transformed again, so I feel it maybe have at some point been tied to that, if they had a vague idea of what Soranaki was going to be yet.

But it’s clear there’s specific details that were meant to different.

Also, given what we learn later, why was Fukurou serving Shuten Douji, considering Shuten Douji’s main agenda is eventually revealed to be tied to restoring the power of the Oni Tribe, which Fukurou is not a member of.

It’s not like Shuten Douji has countless minions, he just as Douketstu and Fukurou, so I really gotta wonder why the latter is there.

-

Lastly a bit about Junior.

Now, Junior does not appear in the first episode, so this has less to do with Hino’s writing in particular, but I still think there might’ve been different intentions for Junior originally.

In the show itself, Junior is eventually revealed to have been born from pieces of Jibanyan’s body, and that’s really it. Despite this reveal, Junior doesn’t even get any major interactions with Jibanyan.

That in itself kinda feels to me like the anime writers didn’t have much of an idea of what to do with Junior, like they do with most characters.

And in any case, I really do think that originally, at some point in the production, Junior was meant to be born from Jibanyan and Whisper.

I’m not saying he was meant to be their literal baby, but I think he was probably meant to have been created in a similar manner to the show, but with parts of Whisper involved as well.

I mean, Junior’s design invokes traits of Jibanyan and Whisper alike in such a way that I have a really hard time to believe this wasn’t the intention at first.

There’s another reason I believe this, too.

Before Shadowside the anime was out, Hino showed of some early art during an “Inazuma Walker” stream, which mostly focused on Inazuma Eleven, but has some other stuff, too.

When Junior was shown, his co-host jokingly said “Well, everyone can tell this the child of Whisper and Jibanyan”, to which Hino replied “Um, it’s a bit different.”

While Hino does say that “it’s a bit different”, I also feel the co-host probably wouldn’t have made the “it’s Whisper’s and Jibanyan’s kid” joke unless there was a bit of truth to it?

But this is only speculation on my part again, I could be wrong.

Regardless of what Junior’s origin was going to be, we can also see early teasers of YKW4 showing him next to Natsume, almost like a counterpart to Whisper&Jibanyan for Nate, and Nekomata for Shin.

This makes me think that earlier on, Junior was possibly intended as Natsume’s main yokai “sidekick” or at least one of them, possibly fulfilling a role to her that would be similar to Whisper and especially OG Jibanyan.

But in the final product in both Shadowside and YKW4, Junior is more of a tag along, who doesn’t have a particular bond with any of the human characters.

-

Alright, those were just some of my thoughts, I hope this is what you were asking about?

Note that I have no idea what the behind-the-scenes of YKW looks like, this is just speculation. And even if I was right, that doesn’t mean any of this was done “behind Hino’s back” or the like. Even when he’s not writing directly, he could still be approving of any change, as far as I know.

To me it just personally felt like the anime writers couldn’t, or didn’t want to, follow up with some of the set-ups Hino made, not just story-wise, but especially characterization-wise.

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[fuanteinasekai]

Meta #3: The One Where It Gets a Little Weird

Please note: this meta is heavily focused on recent manga developments, so if you don’t want to be spoiled by it you should catch up on fan translations. Okay these aren't spoilers anymore.

Also, while I think reading my previous two metas would be useful in understanding some of this, I don’t really consider this a continuation per se, since this is purely focused on developments in the manga. I really didn’t want to get distracted by anime issues, for reasons which will perhaps becomes clear. 

There are two recent stories with particular relevance to Tanuma and Natsume. (Well, three, in a way, but we’ll get to that later.)

First, “Tenjō-san,” a story that’s mostly about the four boys tracking down a mysterious, supposedly yōkai-related artifact for Himura-Sempai, a graduating senior from a different high school. Of particular note are two things: 

The unusually strong theme of mortality. The story opens with Kitamoto in the hospital, having scared the boys with a bad fall. He’s fine, but Natsume and Tanuma are very worried. There’s also a subplot about an elderly man who once went on a similar mission with his own boyhood friends. He speaks wistfully of “Tetchan and the others” as if he lost contact—or they died. It's a reminder that human life is short—sometimes shorter than expected—and one cannot wait forever to figure things out.

Tanuma’s complicated feelings make a spectacular comeback. Both chapters of the story have at least one meaningful exchange between Natsume and Tanuma. In the first chapter, Tanuma encourages Natsume to be open about his doubts by telling him, “I still sometimes want to see the same world as you, but I think it’s because we see different things that we’re able to confirm things for each other.” In the second, he tells Natsume that he might need to keep Nishimura and Kitamoto in the dark just so he can have space to be normal, “Since I, out of worry, ask you if there’s a yōkai straight away.” This is framed as a self-deprecating remark and an expression of deeper insecurities, but also as something Natsume doesn’t understand (that is, doesn’t agree with).

The next arc is another long Natsume-Natori-Matoba story about the complicated lives of those who can see yōkai, and the different paths those lives can or should take. This story reinforces the image of Natori as a protective and somewhat controlling big brother, complete with another incident of Touko-san aggressively adopting Natori. It also emphasizes the difficulty of intimate relationships, implied to be romantic, when one has a connection of responsibility to the yokai world.

The story after that is where it gets… interesting. Setting aside my own personal preferences, at the same time as I’ve seen a lot of queer subtext between Natsume and Tanuma, I’ve also always [until recently] assumed Taki would be the eventual implied wife. She’s the only girl Natsume counts as a friend, much less close friend, and she’s the closest anyone gets to being on Tanuma’s level of intimacy. Having said that, I wasn’t happy about it. Compulsory heterosexuality is one of my least favorite tropes, because it always cheapens romance and I am a huge romantic. There are essentially no obstacles between Taki and Natsume—certainly none she wouldn’t share with basically any other girl—which makes the concept of a romantic arc extremely weak.

Yet not only did the opening of the next story appear to confirm our compulsory heterosexuality, it did so in such a laughably cliche way it seemed to circle right around to subversion: 

It opens with a girl who acts like she has a crush on Taki (but not explicitly), squealing about how “lovely” but “difficult to approach” she is.

Nishimura-the-Projector assumes Natsume will be upset by Taki’s “boyfriend.”

Natsume claims to be upset because he was left in the dark, rather than because she has a boyfriend per se, which under cliche-logic reads as “denial” even though it’s a perfectly valid reason.

Jealousy trope-storm without actual jealousy.

The boyfriend is actually a relative! Heehee! Nobody acknowledges that this is heteronormative gossip at its finest.

Taki talks about her brother as if she’s trying to hook him up with Natsume??

Natsume notices… the brother… is “the cute type”???

No seriously, why would you do that now of all times?

In any case, this was all tremendously upsetting and frustrating. Since I would have to wait yet another four months (or longer) to see Tanuma again, I decided to temporarily skip the second Taki chapter and spend that time on a thought experiment/coping mechanism: What if it were a subversion?

At first I toyed with the idea of writing platonic Taki/Natsume and romantic Tanuma/Natsume separately, but it didn’t work out. While the idea of subverting “boys and girls can’t stay friends” in isolation is admirable, it’s not something with any basis in Natsume Yūjinchō. That is, Taki’s lack of romantic potential—if intentional—has always been illuminated by contrast with Tanuma, whether through the Furry yōkai/Ito-san pseudo-arc I described in Meta #2, or through more direct comparisons as in “The Time-Eater.” Thus, platonic Taki/Natsume and romantic Tanuma/Natsume are two sides of the same coin, and I approached my theory with this in mind.

Since this story was obviously heavily centered on Taki, with Tanuma having nothing more than a brief mental cameo, the only way to draw Tanuma in for comparison is the “pseudo-arc.” In that light, I created an outline of how the next three chapters should proceed if Midorikawa-sensei did intend a subversive, queer platonic Taki/ romantic Tanuma theme.

First, the real-world logic. There are two basic reasons why Midorikawa-sensei might write romantic Natsume/Tanuma the way it’s gone so far:

Standard editorial censorship. Natsume’s Book of Friends isn’t an international juggernaut, but it’s popular enough to be a reliable cash cow. So there’d be more pressure to stay within the heteronormative lines than in an “indie” manga. In this case, Natsume/Tanuma would never be fully canon, but consistent subtext.

Quiet natural development. That is, if Natsume/Tanuma wasn’t originally intended but grew organically out of character development, then there’d have to be a transition period from “nominally platonic” to “explicitly romantic.” Since they’re both boys and this is a mainstream manga (not BL), it would have to be handled much more delicately than M/F romance.

Some combination of 1 and 2.

The first is actually fairly common and much more likely than the second, though the second is technically a slightly better fit with how things have gone so far. Either way, we’d still be at the “subtext” level for now. With the socio-cultural context Natsume is being written in, shifting a character from “presumed straight” to “explicitly queer” is a complicated maneuver. M/M ship bait is very common, and even a sympathetic audience won’t necessarily trust build-up to be real. So if you want your audience to actually follow the romantic development, it makes sense in theory to present it as platonic emotional development (with subtext) as long as possible before moving on to romantic text. And the subtext, for the most part, can’t be the sort of thing that reads as ship-bait. Which makes “eventually canon” difficult to distinguish from “intentional, but permanently subtext.” For this reason, I won't bother to separate the two.

So, drawing on the way Midorikawa-sensei has written in the past, my theoretical pro-Natsume/Tanuma progression looked like this:

A second chapter of Taki, in which Natsume is implied to be a brother figure (consistent with my initial subversive reading—there are a lot of parallels between Natsume fretting about Taki and Taki fretting about her brother + Natsume and her brother both have complicated relationships with yokai that conflict somewhat with Taki's fangirl-glasses). This creates a sense of depth and longevity to their relationship, while at the same time pushing a more explicitly platonic reading. The “omg Taki has a boyfriend” opening subtly injects a question of romance into the entire pseudo-arc (not so subtly into Taki’s half), answering with “no, they’re like siblings” to the Natsume/Taki question, but leaving Natsume/Tanuma open in the second part. Ideally the girl with the crush on Taki from the beginning should return at the end as a nod to the queer reading, and to close the “Taki needs to talk to more girls” loop that was interrupted by the fake boyfriend. 

The second part of the “pseudo-arc” would be two chapters heavily centered on Tanuma where:

There should be some sort of thematic parallel to the first (Taki) part, with a corresponding focus on Tanuma. I speculated that there might be a family theme, since we don’t know anything about Tanuma’s mom (in retrospect a poor guess—in Taki’s story the “family" was mirrored to Natsume), but it doesn’t matter what as long as it’s a definite parallel. [This is the basis for subtextually carrying the romantic question over to Tanuma.]

The parallel should be explicitly acknowledged in some way, however brief. [This acknowledges the existence of subtext and invites the reader to notice and pay attention.]

There should be other, smaller parallel moments, akin to the previous pseudo-arc’s Taki-Tanuma “lonely” mirroring. [This reinforces the existence of the parallel even though the plot is very different.]

The Tanuma story should escalate emotionally. For example, since Taki “listens to Natsume,” Tanuma should do something stronger like “take care of Natsume.” [This reinforces the romantic imagery, in contrast with something more brotherly.]

The trend of Tanuma being emotionally centered on Natsume, in contrast with Taki’s family focus, should continue. [ditto]

Tanuma’s feelings for Natsume should be more romanticized than Taki’s feelings, ideally on a level with “The Other Side of the Glass” and similar stories. [ditto]

No explicit references to romantic feelings, but a story more like a love story than Taki’s. Depth vs. surface. [ditto]

Ideally a reference to the “pond of emotional intimacy” would be super-great, but probably too much to ask. I think Midorikawa-Sensei forgot about it.

So what really did happen?

Just before returning to university, Taki’s brother says “I suppose I could leave [someone like] you in charge of my little sister,” which could be interpreted as deputizing Natsume as “older brother” in his absence. [I don’t want to make any definitive statements about translation at my level of Japanese—it can also be read as a patriarchal approval of the “presumed boyfriend,” though if Natsume is considering Taki that way, it doesn’t seem to fit Natsume and Sensei’s identical reactions.] Natsume then proceeds to explain her brother’s situation to Taki before happily allowing Girl-With-Crush to distract her with sweets. The ending feels very neat—as if their relationship issues have all been more or less dealt with. It’s essentially the opposite of what I expected from romantic Taki, in which we might see a certain ambiguous open-endedness, tension, or a sense that Natsume is reevaluating the way he sees Taki. There is none of that here.

And then there’s the next story. As predicted, it was heavily Tanuma-centered. This alone isn’t terribly meaningful, since we hadn’t seen Tanuma in a while. However, it also had a few… similarities to my outline:

It parallels Taki’s story with a “visitor” theme, and with the way the visitor arguably mirrors Natsume himself. 

Natsume acknowledges the thematic parallel: “A visitor every day? I wonder if it’s family like that time with Taki.” I had to take a moment here to laugh hysterically; I wasn't expected it to be this obvious. (Taki: “boyfriend” → family | Tanuma: “family” → ??)

Several mirrored moments, mostly in the first chapter, including “what kind of person?,” Nishimura as contrast, the running, the explanation-of-the-problem, the shocked reaction to meeting, the final-bench-discussion and so on.

“I always get her to listen to me.” → “He always listens and smiles for me.”; “I too [will listen to you] the way you always listen to me.”  → “You’ve kept me company so many times when I was mixed up with yōkai, so […] I will keep you company, too.” (When I initially wrote my outline, I had missed that he uses もらう for Taki’s listening, which downplays her intent. So even though his description of Tanuma is similar, this is an upgrade.)

Pretty blatant difference in romantic subtext, here. Taki is emotionally preoccupied with her brother and their grandfather. The climax is her brother giving her the gift he made with their grandfather as a small child. Tanuma is emotionally preoccupied with the gap in power between himself and Natsume and how that affects their relationship. The climax is watching their yōkai mirrors, in matching vessels, spiral together into the sky.

Tanuma clutches at his heart when Natsume calls his name. Tanuma wants to “see the same things Natsume sees, together,” Tanuma wishes he could be strong so Natsume wouldn’t “worry and [I/we could]…”. Natsume feels that Misuzu is “seeing through” him right after Tanuma calls him a friend. A lot of interruptions, unfinished sentences and unspoken feelings. Etc. Though Taki’s story opens with romantic cliche, and Natsume is very determined to be helpful, it’s Tanuma’s story that’s thick with romantic imagery. Taki’s story, by contrast, romanticizes the protective, sheltering image of the older brother, who cares for his little sister (and vice versa) even though they can't quite understand each other.

In terms of the “love story”: again, Taki’s emotions are centered on her brother. Tanuma’s are centered on Natsume, with even his desire to get to know yōkai being fundamentally tied to Natsume. Tanuma in particular is written with strong undertones of longing and trying to find a way closer, while Natsume gets little chance to think deeply or speak to Tanuma alone, distracted by the Misuzu problem and how it relates to Tanuma’s health and happiness. Tanuma’s story is also much more open-ended. While Taki’s story seems to end with a sense of satisfaction, Tanuma’s is full of tension. The question of how they come together safely (platonically or otherwise) remains unresolved.

The pond continues to play a metaphorical role as a place that symbolizes what they do or don’t share. Though Tanuma cannot see the pond itself, he can see shadows ordinary people cannot—in “Same Scenery” he referred to these shadows as something only the two of them could see. For Misuzu and Sasame, it is a literal halfway point between their marshes, and a place where they meet specifically to be together.[IMO, this is why it doesn't appear in "The Days-Eater": the symbolism of the pond is specifically tied to the two of them, so it would be inapproprate to reference it in Taki's presence.]

So… what does this mean? I don’t know. I promised myself I would let go of the queer reading if I got anything less than a Taki-Tanuma pseudo-arc—even if I got a story that heavily romanticized Tanuma without paralleling Taki’s story. Actually getting what I wanted, exactly what I wanted, is less satisfying than it might seem. Set against the overwhelming prevalence of heteronormativity, it's left me in a curious limbo of uncertainty. It’s hard to swallow the idea that my accuracy was a complete coincidence, but I may have been wrong about the reasons for this pattern. 

While it’s objectively lazy, there’s a great deal of precedent in letting superficial romantic features like “cuteness” supersede features like devotion, so long as the former is opposite sex and the latter same sex. In other words, I may have the pattern backwards, with Tanuma being set up as platonic soulmate, and Taki as the romantic lead. Perhaps we are meant to draw a parallel between Tanuma and Taki’s brother as a “difficult older brother” figure (even though Tanuma is younger), given they are both “easily possessed.” If so, they have little else in common. The (simultaneous??) mirroring between Tanuma and Taki would probably be for the purpose of establishing Natsume’s most important platonic, non-family-like relationship as equally important to romance. This isn’t exactly inconsistent with the emphasis the manga places on the importance of platonic love.

Still, it’s an odd choice to make Taki’s feelings primarily about someone else if the story is meant to set a romance in motion, particularly in contrast to Tanuma. And the older brother/Natsume mirroring would have to be unintentional, since it’s a bit, um, awkward otherwise, which would mean the undeniable Misuzu/Natsume mirroring is coincidental. And so on. At its heteronormative best, “The Troublesome Two” is a story about Natsume’s crush on Taki, and Taki’s love for her brother and late grandfather. At its potential best, it’s a subversive story about how an unrelated boy and a girl can care deeply about each other without having romantic feelings—and about how girls aren’t necessarily more emotionally and socially competent than boys just because they’re girls.

In any case, Tanuma’s story is worth looking at a bit more closely.

First, a summary of the actual plot:

Tanuma receives a mysterious, persistent, explicitly gender-ambiguous “human” visitor who turns out to be Misuzu (the powerful horse yōkai) in disguise. He’s excited by the opportunity to get to know a yōkai, so Natsume decides to support him, despite his fears, by hovering like gnat and glaring at Misuzu while they go around looking at scenery. Eventually it’s revealed that Tanuma has been quietly possessed by Misuzu’s fellow marsh guardian… soulmate… friend thing, and that it’s this “Sasame” who Misuzu has been interested in, rather than Tanuma. There’s a climax where Sasame tries to escape being removed from Tanuma, and Tanuma empathizes with their relative lack of power because he sees Sasame (who is very weak) with Misuzu as being similar to himself with Natsume. Sensei confronts Sasame about their motivations, thereby leading to Sasame voluntarily leaving and joining Misuzu in their wooden-doll-possessing-competition… thing. 

Though nominally platonic, the story is romantic and emotional, centering on the gap in power between Natsume and Tanuma and their mutual attempts to bridge that gap without actually talking about it.

The first thing I’d like to talk about is the imagery.

Chronologically left to right this time. Tanuma looks odd on the right because of Sasame. Friendly reminder that Midorikawa-Sensei hates drawing hands.

Japanese culture is not physically demonstrative or openly emotional in general, but young children and teen girls are allowed far more leeway than teen boys and adults. So much so that teen girls can even hold hands in a “romantic” way and still be assumed to be straight. This is not as visible in Natsume Yūjinchō as in Midorikawa-sensei’s other work, since there’s only one recurring teen girl. But it is visible in her art for Season 6 of the anime, where Sasada and Taki are holding hands in the background. It’s also apparent in the way that different characters express themselves. Female characters are more physically emotional, and more visibly vulnerable than male characters. For example, male characters do not usually hold their hands in front of their stomach or their chest—a somewhat defensive gesture—and will ball up their fists at their side instead. (Or use Sensei as a shield.) Male vulnerability is mostly expressed through facial expressions.

So even for a boy like Tanuma, this kind of emotional gesture is notable. A single example would be interesting. Two is suspicious. Three is a pattern. This fits the theory that this story is meant to break open a new arc in Natsume and Tanuma’s relationship; changing course requires far more effort than staying on the new course. It’s exactly what Taki’s story was yelling about right before it veered off into “family” territory—except Tanuma’s story stayed consistent. The hand-over-heart, standing-on-water scene was on the very first page, without even a chapter cover to get in the way. The longing, out-stretched hand is from a scene that sets the emotional context for Tanuma’s behavior. The heart-clutching is part of the climax. Every one of these is directly or implicitly linked to his feelings about Natsume.

The out-stretched hand is particularly important. This is the dialog that sets it up:

あのヒト妖だったのか… すごいものだな　普通に人間に見えているのに… ささいで小さな妖との繋がりのかけら　夏目はいつもあんなに苦労している　それを知ってるのに夏目が見ているものを一緒に見てみたいと思ってしまう　ー夏目は強い　おれもそうだったらあんなに心配させずにー　… どうしたんだ　おれらしくもない　…なんだか欲ばりだ

“[Spoken aloud to himself] That person was an ayakashi…? What an amazing thing. Even though they look like an ordinary human… [Internally] Such a tiny, insignificant fragment of a connection to ayakashi. Natsume is always going through so much trouble. I know that, but I still find myself thinking I’d like to see the things he sees, together. —Natsume is strong. If I were too, without worrying him— [it would be possible to do something]… What’s the deal? That’s not like me. …Kind of greedy.”

When Tanuma is talking to Natsume about something similar in “Tenjō-san,” his wording is vague, potentially even reading as envy though that doesn’t really suit the context. He says he’d “like to see the same world as [Natsume], sometimes.” Here in the privacy of his own mind, he’s more clear. This scene, with it’s implication that Tanuma wants to share Natsume’s world, is implicitly romantic—particularly in light of Taki’s furry yōkai story. 

Though there were several moments when Natsume seemed suspicious of the nature of the furry yōkai’s feelings for Taki (never explicit), it’s reading the letter at the end that seems to convince him. In this letter, the yōkai expresses their gratitude for Taki’s help, and their desire to “see the beautiful mountains and beautiful valleys” with Taki. In fact, the wording itself is suspiciously familiar.

If we set aside the obvious differences and focus on the emotional core of the letter, we get:

[~]をともに見てみたいと思ってしまった。

“I found myself thinking I’d like to see [the beautiful mountains and beautiful valleys] together.”

Compare Tanuma:

[~]を一緒に見てみたいと思ってしまう。

“I find myself thinking I’d like to see [the things Natsume sees] together.”

There are two differences here. One, the word for “together”: the yokai’s letter uses the formal/written ともに, whereas Tanuma’s thought uses the casual/spoken 一緒に. The words are otherwise completely identical in meaning, so this difference should probably be considered functionally meaningless. The other difference is actually in Tanuma’s favor.

What I translated as “I find/found myself thinking” is the auxiliary verb しまう. This word has no real equivalent in English. It means “to finish completely” but is commonly used to add a nuance of lack of intention and probably regret to an action. For example, where an English speaker might say “Oh no, I forgot!” the Japanese speaker would say “I forgot—shimatta!” If “shimatta” sounds familiar, that’s because it’s very common and can even be used on its own (where it is frequently—and hilariously—translated as “damn”).

Here both furry yōkai and Tanuma are using しまう to express regret or even self-reproach for their seemingly futile desires as well as (in Tanuma’s case) the sense that the desire is selfish. The difference is the conjugation. Furry yōkai uses the perfective aspect—often taught as “past tense” because that’s the primary use—which indicates the completion of an action. Tanuma is using the imperfective, which indicates a lack of completion either because something is ongoing (recurring, not continuous), or because it is yet to be performed at all (future).

Grammatically there are a few different interpretations of perfective vs imperfective, but in this context only one thing makes sense. The furry yōkai is encapsulating his desire as a singular experience, something they have wrapped up and set to the side (consistent with their refusal to engage directly with Taki or allow Natsume to do so for them) and don’t expect to deal with in the future. Tanuma, on the other hand, considers this desire to be an issue he struggles with repeatedly and sees no quick end to. Even though he, like the furry yōkai, knows it to be impossible, he can’t let it go—and nor can the story.

Regardless of any potential parallels to Taki’s furry yōkai, this desire to see yōkai in order to share them with Natsume is a major theme. While we do occasionally go a few pages without being reminded, Tanuma’s motivations in this story are neither subtle nor subtext. The logic is fairly straightforward:

Knowing a yōkai ⇒ having a connection to the yōkai world ⇒ having a connection to Natsume’s world ⇒ being closer to Natsume.

The scene above lays it out all but explicitly, but this motivation is referenced multiple times (not in order):

—“I can’t let him keep worrying forever. If there’s anything that would help hurry things along even a little…” [While investigating a dream.]

—“I was happy that your ayakashi friend seemed to take an interest in me.”

––“[I miss feeling like I knew a yōkai but] I still had a good time, in the end. I got to see the same things as you.”

—“So that means I get to know a yōkai Natsume knows?”

The last one is rather telling. First, because it confirms the connection to Natsume is important to him. Second, because he says it while holding Sensei. Sensei does not “count” for this purpose because Sensei is not inaccessible. Even completely ordinary people like Nishimura and Kitamoto interact with Sensei on a regular basis, albeit without realizing he can talk. Tanuma wants more than that. But even more, he wants more than what’s available to, well, Taki—the other “ordinary” person who talks to Sensei.

Yet all of this serves only to reinforce a pre-existing theme. For Taki, the yōkai world is intrinsically emotionally bound to her grandfather. For Tanuma, it’s emotionally bound to Natsume himself. Further, he sees it as a barrier between them that he needs power to overcome. This has a long-running basis:

—When they first meet, Natsume makes it clear he wants to talk to Tanuma because he believes Tanuma can see the same things. Tanuma, likewise, wants to meet Natsume because he’s heard they’re similar. It makes sense, then, that he would see their relationship—and his worth as a friend—as being strongly tied to yōkai.

—In Tanuma’s special, his second major appearance, he frets about his weakness being the reason Natsume always lies and disappears without warning. He knows that Natsume is trying to protect him from yōkai trouble, but secretly fights the fear that Natsume is disappointed in his lack of power. The story ends with him wondering whether Natsume will ever tell him ���what color the fish [in Tanuma’s yōkai pond] are” and whether he’ll ever be able to ask. Natsume talking about the yōkai pond, then, is established as a metaphor for Natsume opening up and treating Tanuma as a genuine friend.

—In the mirror arc, Tanuma borrows the yokai’s sight (i.e. power) because he wants to see what Natsume is reacting to. The yōkai later tells Natsume “It was what he wanted. […] Even though he knows [you’re trying to be kind] he doesn’t understand. Even though he’s right beside you, not knowing…” Earlier in the story, there’s a mildly comic set of exchanges where he repeatedly gushes about how “amazing” Natsume’s ability is.

—In “The Other Side of the Glass,” Tanuma’s flashback to Natsume not paying attention while he plays shogi connects the yōkai world to Tanuma’s perception of being kept at a distance. That is, Natsume is mentally drawn away from Tanuma by things that Tanuma (normally) cannot even see and therefore cannot work against. Tanuma eventually breaks down because he feels that in trying to be involved, he’s become “a burden” who “doesn’t know how far to intrude” and “doesn’t want to put up walls because of that.” At the end, he’s wistful about leaving the yōkai world and losing his sight.

—In “Distant Festival Lights” Tanuma reveals he “never even imagined” that yōkai were real until he met Natsume. Thus yōkai as something real to be wondered at must be inextricably bound to Natsume himself.

For several stories afterward, this desire is shifted to the background as the narrative focuses on what Tanuma can do: provide emotional support (as with Natsume’s story about his unwed grandmother) and run interference in the background. Tanuma’s desire to see yōkai does not come up during this calm period. However, the theme starts to creep back in with the ryokan story, along with his lack of faith in his own abilities—he assumes a real vision was “just a dream” because there’s nothing there when he wakes up, and apologizes to Natsume for reacting to it.

In Tenjō-san, he talks about how he feels about Natsume’s world:

夏目の世界はあいまいなものがいっぱいなんだな　おれは…やっぱり時々夏目と同じ世界を見てみたいなと思うけど　見えるものが違うからこそ確認しあえることもあるのかもしれないなって…

“Your [Natsume’s] world is full of ambiguous things, isn’t it? I… still think I’d like to the the same world as you, sometimes. But I also think maybe there are times when it’s because the things we see are different that we can confirm things for each other.” [Emphasis is original.]

In other words, this story is really just foregrounding something that’s always been subtext.

Which brings me to my next point: the use of mirroring. I assumed from the start that Misuzu was a mirror for Natsume in order to parallel Taki’s brother as a mirror. There seemed to be some basis for this in the first chapter—in spending so much time talking with Tanuma, Misuzu was preventing Natsume from talking to Tanuma. (Natsume frets about not getting to talk to Tanuma “at all” because the guest had been coming “for a few days.”) And in taking Tanuma around to look at various scenery, Misuzu’s actions are suspiciously similar to what Natsume worries about failing at: “Even though I have him right beside me, I keep him company with nothing but talk of scenery we cannot share.” [Emphasis mine.] The mirroring ended up being more explicit than I expected: Tanuma openly compares Sasame and Misuzu’s relationship to his with Natsume. This is an interesting narrative technique, for a couple of reasons.

Sasame—and Misuzu in particular—are not just yōkai. They are yōkai who act very differently from humans, to the point that it’s specifically highlighted. Of all the yōkai Natsume knows, Misuzu is one of the least human. They chose the form of a horse. They have a frog as a “retainer.” They once “tested" Natsume’s worthiness with a deadly curse. And in this story itself, they complain that they don’t understand why Natsume won’t just order them around, even though they specifically allowed him that power. In other words, they express themselves in ways that are not easily mapped onto human behavior. This is important because it allows the Misuzu/Sasame to Natsume/Tanuma mirroring to be opaque in many ways. For example, it’s not at all clear what the Natsume/Tanuma equivalent of possessing identical dolls and having a boisterous contest would be. This means that the story can move forward with strong emotional overtones while also refusing to define exactly what kind of relationship they’re supposed to have. It’s a convenient excuse to have two characters behave in a very romantic way without having to justify why they’re not actually in a romantic relationship. This is nearly the opposite of Taki’s story, where the use of her brother as mirror (if intentional) has strongly platonic overtones.

Another example of deliberate (and clever) muddling is in the presentation of Sasame and Tanuma’s emotions while Sasame inhabits Tanuma. Both characters are implied to be influenced by the other. Tanuma says “What’s the deal? That’s not like me. Kind of greedy.” Later, Sasame tells Sensei not to worry about Tanuma because “There was something off with me. [It’s not like me to] take advantage of the child of man this way.” Neither of them are really suggesting that the nature of emotions are strange, only more self-centered than usual. This suggests that their desires are so aligned, they effectively amplified each other, creating a stronger sense of desperation and thus greed. For example, both of them enjoyed their “daily routine” with Misuzu and Natsume, for related reasons. Sasame wanted to share Misuzu’s world, and Tanuma wanted to share Natsume’s world via Misuzu. 

However, since Sasame!Tanuma’s actions are influenced by the emotions of both characters, it’s difficult to tease out exactly who is feeling what. When Tanuma is so happy to get dragged off by Misuzu, is that because—as he later tells Natsume—he was “happy that your ayakashi friend seemed to take an interest in me”—happy that part of Natsume’s world was actively trying to involve him? Or was it because Sasame was happy about Misuzu’s active involvement? To a certain extent, it’s beside the point. These characters are mirrors. What Tanuma feels about Misuzu is what Sasame feels about Misuzu is what Tanuma feels about Natsume. Both want to be closer and more involved. Both are afraid of being left behind, of being “unable to keep up.”

On a similar note, we return to the mirroring between Natsume and Misuzu. Misuzu smirks through much of the story, but shows serious vulnerability on more than one occasion—right before returning to smirking. This suggests that Misuzu is hiding just how invested they are. Though they express themselves in very yōkai-like ways, Misuzu is just as concerned about Sasame as Natsume is about Tanuma. Misuzu even uses the same phrase, 付き合う or “to keep company,” as Natsume. That is, Natsume says he will “keep [Tanuma] company” with Misuzu because Tanuma has “kept me company so many times when I was involved with yōkai.” Misuzu later explains their own behavior, saying that they only intended to “keep Sasame company in whatever it is they want to do.” Both, then, are shown to not entirely understand their companions motivations, but to want to indulge them regardless. The implication is that they mirror each other in their style of showing affection.

Further, both Misuzu and Natsume seem clueless as to their companion’s desires. Natsume shows progress in understanding, but is repeatedly distracted by Misuzu. Misuzu, for their part, claims that Sasame retains possession of Tanuma because Tanuma is “comfortable” and “easy to possess,” apparently unaware that Sasame is specifically enjoying the new type of companionship with Misuzu that having a human body offers. On the same note, Misuzu’s confusion about why they want to spend time with Sasame!Tanuma in such “odd” ways is interesting in the context of being Natsume’s mirror. It suggests that Natsume himself does not quite understand how he feels about spending time with Tanuma like this. The reveal that Misuzu was actually talking to Sasame only makes this confusion more poignant: Misuzu does not understand why they are enjoying simply walking around, looking at nostalgic places with their favorite companion, when they had come for a boisterous contest. This is another good example of how being yōkai make the parallels somewhat opaque.

Another interesting point is the way in which Natsume’s feelings balance Tanuma’s. Though we’re given somewhat more access into how Tanuma feels, due to Natsume being distracted by Misuzu, we do get a hint of the broader problem. Natsume is worried about whether Tanuma will “listen and smile” for him “forever.” Then he chides himself for only “keeping Tanuma company with nothing but talk of scenery we cannot share.” When Tanuma sympathizes with Sasame, he points out how “unbearably painful” it is to be “unable to keep up with your friend.” Both Natsume and Tanuma use いつでも “forever” in the context of trying to make their companion happy. For Tanuma, it’s because he knows he worries Natsume. For Natsume, it’s the concern about Tanuma's interest in "scenery we cannot share." Tanuma is worried about spiritual power, and how it would (in theory) facilitate being closer to Natsume. Natsume, on the other hand, is worried about his actual relationship skills. He knows that he’s not giving Tanuma as much as he should, but doesn’t seem to have any ideas about what he should give. The only thing we have to go on is “scenery we cannot share,” which suggests that moving forward might involve finding scenery they can share—exactly like they did with Misuzu. So there’s a sense that they’re both actively trying to find a way forward, but they’re not communicating well enough to do it right.

There is one way in which the story could be read as explicitly platonic. When describing the marshes that they and Sasame protect, Misuzu describes them as being “like identical twins.” If this is intended to mark them as “surrogate twins,” then obviously that would be a platonic reading. However, I don’t think this is the case. Instead, I think this more “soulmate” subtext. After all, it’s not Misuzu and Sasame who are described as “identical twins,” but the appearance of their homes. And place, in Natsume Yūjinchō, is often a stand-in for something like heart.

For example, many of Taki’s stories happen in her home, to symbolize the importance of family to her. Likewise, the Fujiwaras home is a symbol of the affection and safe boundaries they provide to Natsume. Natsume had to let go of the “Natsume” family home before he could move on from the loss of his parents. More dramatic is Reiko’s field of flowers: isolated, hidden from human and yōkai alike, a secret for Reiko alone, yet beautiful—and blue for Souko, the girl who came the closest to seeing her true self. The pond that’s so important for this story is also symbolic: it’s both the place where Natsume and Tanuma’s powers meet and the place where Misuzu and Sasame meet to be together.

But more directly relevant is the story of Gen and Sui: the gods who inhabited a “set of two” dog statues and protected a village from afar, until Sui’s statue was destroyed and she became a demon. The term 一対 implies either a perfectly matched set, or items that are nearly identical but with a twist (like male and female or silver and gold). So while the word “twin” wasn’t used in that story, it’s conceptually very similar to how the marshes were described. Misuzu is an explicitly genderless horse-person and Sasame is literally formless, but Gen and Sui were heavily anthropomorphized and explicitly gendered as male and female. And while the nature of their relationship is never explicit, Gen and Sui made much more sense as a romantic couple than as siblings. For one thing, their style of speech is consistent with an old-fashioned couple (similar to Touko-san and Shigeru-san’s). They also use similar romantic language as other couples, like wanting to “be able to be together forever” and being “happy because you were there.” So the reading that Sasame and Misuzu’s “twin” marshes are symbols of emotional compatibility—and their need to be together—is at least consistent with how Midorikawa-sensei has written in the past.

For a while I was troubled by the symbolism of Sasame’s fading marsh in this context. It’s a terrible fit for Misuzu and Sasame (and thus Natsume and Tanuma) being “like identical twins,” but didn’t seem to fit much better with the idea of their hearts being “like identical twins.” But eventually it occurred to me that the fading of Sasame’s marsh along with their powers did fit with a certain view of “heart”—just not the limited scope of love. In Japanese, “heart” has roughly the same set of metaphorical meanings as in English, but with an additional dash of “mind” depending on context. So think emotions, deep thoughts, sincere beliefs. Sort of an “inner self” thing. In this context it’s easier to understand how Sasame’s heart has been weakened. With their diminishing existence and the “widening gap” in power, Sasame is emotionally stretched thin. Fading hope, the strain of feeling left behind by someone they adore, the belief that the one thing they have no control over is the one thing that matters the most. This is Sasame’s fading heart—and this is what they have in common with Tanuma.

And in fact this fits Sasame’s dialog, as they wonder whether taking advantage of Tanuma, and focusing so much on Misuzu’s power, means their heart has grown “barren” along with their power.

This might be depressing but for the implication that it’s not actually Sasame’s or Tanuma’s power itself that has made them feel this way. It’s the fact that they have been following an old, inadequate rulebook with Misuzu (and Natsume), and need to communicate in order to adapt. Sasame frets about power, but when they comment on the “liveliness” around Misuzu, Sensei makes a point:

にぎやかから満たされているとも限るまい

“I suppose we can’t assume that lively surroundings always mean that one is fulfilled.”

This triggers Sasame’s memory of Misuzu’s “nostalgia” comments, and their realization that “It’s not as if [Misuzu] came hoping I would just be strong.” In other words, there is something about Sasame (Tanuma) that is important to Misuzu (Natsume) that cannot be replaced by all the other “lively” people and yōkai in the world. What exactly this means for them and their future is left unspoken, but it’s clearly emotional:

“I’m sorry [for what I did], child of Man. Surely, even without being able to keep up…[something they want will be possible]”

The way the story ends, as well, feels pointed. As I mentioned earlier, Taki’s story did not fit my conception of “setting a romantic arc in motion” because it felt too finished. The only thing arguably unfinished in the end is Taki’s new friendship with Girl-With-Crush. The end-cap is Natsume cheerfully affirming the importance of keeping promises to family-figures (in this case Sensei, to whom he promised an eclair for dealing with Taki). This is superimposed over an image of the gift from Taki’s brother and grandfather: a rock painted with floral designs (it's a fake yokai connection [the stonewashers], but authentic feelings). The overall feeling is that Natsume has solved all their issues. He convinced Taki she could talk to him, figured out why her brother was acting weird and helped the siblings uncover the gift that was meant to help tie them together, then finally observed Taki having positive social interaction with someone who wasn’t yōkai-adjacent. (Note that Natsume had nothing to do with Taki’s new friendship; it was the girl herself who worked up the courage to approach Taki. And she used sweets—the language Taki speaks—to do so, showing a higher level of mental compatibility than anyone else thus far.) There’s no sense that Natsume’s feelings about Taki have shifted, that he sees her any differently, or that he has any curiosity about her future romantic life.

On the other hand, the ending of Tanuma’s story does what Taki’s didn’t: it leaves a suggestive opening. Tanuma happily says goodbye “Again, tomorrow!” in much the same way as Misuzu has been, implying a return to regular close interaction—and perhaps a more deliberately “daily” interaction. Then Misuzu reappears, and smirkingly tells Natsume “Tanuma Kaname is a rather fun/interesting guy.” Choosing to use Tanuma’s full name for the first time is all but a wink, and using 中々 for “rather” suggests either they’ve begun to see Tanuma with new eyes—or they think Natsume has and they’re making a point of noticing— 中々 has a connotation of “unusually high” or “more than expected.” Natsume’s unimpressed reaction suggests he’s not pleased at the idea of Misuzu’s renewed interest or teasing, and he pointedly reminds Misuzu of Sasame, asking how their “contest” went. Misuzu’s counter that it is, essentially, private is overlaid on an image of the contest’s meeting place: the pond which, to Tanuma, symbolizes both the connection and the barrier between him and Natsume. The pond whose dripping water Natsume was distracted from when Misuzu arrived. This has a strong implication that there’s something about Natsume and Tanuma’s relationship that’s not meant to be shared outside the two of them.

This is all… more than a bit suggestive. But it’s not explicit.

It’s not clear how Misuzu and Sasame will move forward, considering they ended with the same “competition” as usual, but we know they have learned from the experience. Both Misuzu and Sasame found that they enjoyed a quieter way of being together, and Sasame began to realize that Misuzu sees them as more than just someone to play games of strength with.

Likewise it’s not clear how Natsume and Tanuma will move forward, though the fact that they spent time basically looking at scenery together is a neat counterpoint to Natsume’s lament that he “does nothing but talk about scenery we cannot share.” It’s also something they can do without Misuzu or Sasame—as they did with the fireworks so long ago. They do make explicit progress when Natsume, hurt by Tanuma’s reticence, reminds him that “it doesn’t matter whether it’s yōkai or not, if something is bothering you, you should tell me!” However, this is only a single facet of their problem. It’s the sort of thing they ought to have been taking for granted by now, but it doesn’t really answer the question of what they can actively do together to find contentment. There’s a sense that they’re making progress, but still have somewhere to go. Acknowledging that they want to talk about something other than yōkai is simply the first step in that direction.

In the end, there’s still quite a bit I haven’t gotten into: the use of suspiciously suggestive wording, and the way Misuzu is positioned as a subtextual rival. The way Tanuma’s insecurity about his powers mirrors his insecurity about his relationship with Natsume. The various connections to earlier stories. Tanuma’s romanticization of selflessness and the way this, with his insecurity, is an obstacle in their relationship. But this meta needed to end at some point, so this is as good as any.

I’m still uncertain as to the intent of this story. I still don’t know whether it meant to lay down romantic subtext or just sort of stumbled clumsily into it. But no matter what, it’s a deeply emotional story that solidifies Tanuma’s singularity and significance, and the importance of being closer to Natsume. So whatever may happen with Taki, or with Tanuma, there is some comfort to be had in that.

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Witches, Chapter 6: the end of this case, or is it.

Shoutout to @runningwolf62 for reading through this and 7 to assure me that they don’t tonally and thematically break everything. Because I’ve spent so long in the little details of this case that I have no idea what’s going on with the whole thing, anymore. 

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

“I have another question about witches,” Athena says. “About the mechanics of that.” 

Five minutes until the trial starts, and Apollo would like to be behind the bench right now, but Athena insisted on waiting around for Phoenix because she had something to ask him - and it doesn’t even relate to their case. “Can’t we talk about Blackquill later?” Apollo asks. “And worry about our case now?” He doesn’t need any more help psyching himself out to face Blackquill again, certainly doesn’t need more theorizing in advance. 

“Better make it snappy,” Phoenix says, glancing at his watch. When did he start wearing one? 

“You said the faery patron gives the magic powers,” Athena begins, “but if the faery dies, does the witch keep being able to use their witch magic? Even if the patron is long gone?”

“No,” Phoenix says. “Their powers fade out pretty soon after the patron dies.”

“Oh,” Athena says, chewing on the inside of her cheek, pondering something with intense concentration that would probably be better served directed at Mayor Tenma’s case. “That - okay.”

“Why do you ask?” Phoenix raises an eyebrow. “About Blackquill?”

She shrugs. “It’s not totally about Blackquill,” she says. “I was just thinking about the whole concept last night. Had some thoughts.”

“Better think about the case,” Phoenix says lightly. 

Athena nods vigorously. “Of course, Boss! I just—”

“We’d better go,” Apollo warns, holding open the doors to the courtroom, as Phoenix makes for the doors out of the lobby, up to the gallery. 

“—are there really that many hard-and-fast rules of magic that you can say for sure—”

“That one, I’m very sure,” Phoenix says. “Sure, it’s possible. Anything’s really possible. We can talk later about specifics if it’s that important.”

“Oh, it’s—” She shrugs, again, and grabs the door from Apollo. “Wondering. Thinking. But it’s trial-mode now!”

“Do you know something about Blackquill?” Apollo asks her. She casts a glance across the courtroom, where the prosecution’s bench has not yet been occupied, but as their eyes linger there, another set of doors opens and Fulbright enters, practically bursting with energy, and Blackquill the shadow slinking in behind him. “That’s why you’re asking?”

“I don’t know what his deal is,” Athena says. “But after what Mr Wright said after the trial yesterday, I just couldn’t stop wondering about it all.”

The real question is how much she does or doesn’t believe in magic and Apollo at this point isn’t sure that she knows, either. 

-

Filch, having escaped the courthouse yesterday, is back on the witness stand, first smug about his escape from five bailiffs, then wilting under the glaring eye of Blackquill - and Taka. The bird didn’t enter the courtroom with him - not that Apollo saw, anyway, and what kind of prison would let the inmates keep pets? - but it’s even more difficult to imagine a bird of prey being allowed to wander loose in the courthouse. Maybe they have a mice problem and made a deal with the devil for his hawk to handle it.

(No, not the devil. That moniker belongs to someone else already.)

Apollo waits for the lights show to begin again, Blackquill to put his brain through the woodchipper, because Filch fidgets through his entire testimony in a way that doesn’t take an expert in body language to figure out. He stammers through answering every follow-up question, like he had only prepared - with L’Belle’s help, surely - the first statements and is making the rest up on the spot. But Apollo’s vision remains clear, too clear, even once they’ve caught Filch in a contradiction and handed to Fulbright the lotion bottle found within the Forbidden Chamber, that surely, in a few minutes, will come back to them with L’Belle’s fingerprints, will finally mark him as the Tenma Taro impersonator, the man behind the mask and the murder.

They wait, the courtroom suspended on a knife’s edge, Filch filling the silence with more of his bragging that could probably get some charges of pickpocketing levied against him. Athena drums out random rhythms on the bench. Apollo mistakenly makes eye contact with Blackquill, whose dead-eyed face breaks open into a mocking smirk, inclining his head toward Apollo. Some kind of acknowledgement of the situation, of Apollo waiting for the next bout of confusion, and it occurs to him that this, seeing nothing at all, might just be another kind of interference. Not quite as taxing as the other kind, like Blackquill’s decided to go easy on him by giving him nothing instead of everything. Apollo glares at him and the smirk turns to a laugh. 

It would have psyched him out worse, when it came to his case, yesterday, to see nothing at all, but maybe Blackquill doesn’t really care about the case. Maybe he just thinks was the funnier order to make Apollo squirm. 

Fulbright scurries back into the courtroom, the tube in one hand and the compiled fingerprints listing in the other. He makes straight for the prosecution’s bench, whispering something to Blackquill; Athena leans forward to listen for it, only to flinch backwards when Blackquill flinches and snarls, not at Fulbright but to the courtroom at large, “What is this absurd devilry?” 

Oh, that sounds bad. “Prosecutor Blackquill?” Apollo ventures. He isn’t going to like the answer he gets. “Erm, what—”

“It isn’t the feather prints of Tenma Taro, is it?” the judge asks.

Blackquill blinks. “No,” he says, dragging the word out, dry and disdainful. “The analysis shows that the prints on this hand cream belong to Phineas Filch.”

Apollo objects, reflexively, with nothing solid to object to, just a desperate question of “What?” But Blackquill objects just as readily, drowning out Apollo’s confusion with a snarl. Filch, creeping away from the stand, freezes, his eyes darting back and forth to decide whether to try making a run for it or bending with the gale. 

“Explain yourself,” Blackquill hisses. He slams both fists down on the bench - doesn’t break the shackles like Apollo now knows to fear - and Filch staggers, stumbles back to the witness stand like he’s walking with a strong wind, in the same direction as it, but still struggling not to be flattened. “You damned tricksy tanuki!”

“You entered the Forbidden Chamber?” Apollo asks. If his theories have to go to hell again, at least the prosecution isn’t any more prepared for it than he is. 

“S-sure I did!” Filch’s eyes are still on the move, plotting out the trajectory necessary for another escape. Taka lifts off from Blackquill’s shoulder and lands silently on the witness stand, where it begins preening its wing feathers, feigning disinterest in its quarry. “And sure, I pilfered that cream from Mr L’Belle! ‘Course my prints are on it!” Taka launches itself into the air, swinging at Filch with its talons. Filch ducks and Taka’s wings buffet him about the head as the hawk arcs up and circles back to Blackquill. Apollo can’t bring himself to care. If it’s Filch, then it’s not himself or Athena dealing with the bird attack.

What does this mean? If Filch was in the Forbidden Chamber, not L’Belle - and they assumed that L’Belle was the Tenma Taro impersonator, and thus had come from the Forbidden Chamber - “Wait,” Apollo says. All eyes turn toward him. No pressure, then, none at all, as he takes another shot in the dark. “Then the Tenma Taro impersonator, with the staff - that wouldn’t be you, Mr Filch, would it?”

“Er,” Filch says.

“Wait,” Athena says. “The person in the Tenma Taro costume - we’ve been saying that they--”

Apollo gets it at the same time she does. “Does this mean Filch is the murderer?” 

“Hey!” Filch’s protest comes out a birdlike squawk that doesn’t dissuade from the Tenma Taro comparison. “Now just hold on! That costume - I was just doing what the alderman told me to! For the exorcism ritual, he needed someone the costume for it! Not like we’re actually releasing Tenma Taro every year!”

So Trucy’s explanation of it being a real aspect of the demon, a small strain of its power, was bunk, but it’s still surprisingly unclear whether or not there is a demon at all. “An’ after that,” Filch continues, “went to my office to watch wrestling, but that match was a great ol’ bust. So I still had the costume and got to thinking, no one’s gonna talk if they spot me in that costume. Village superstitions keep ‘em nice and quiet for fear of losing their souls.”

“So those yokai stories rendered you invisible,” the judge says.

Filch nods. “Yep! That one story, anyway; not like any other yokai can get around without being talked about. Tenma Taro’s the best one to turn into.”

“And you broke into the Forbidden Chamber then?” Apollo asks. “Why did you want to do that?”

“Grandpappy’s stories about the treasure in there, like I told you! Thought I’d go and nab it and retire nicely!”

“You’d think his grandfather also would’ve told him that he stole the treasure,” Athena mutters. “Real great familial communication.”

Wouldn’t the family have noticed if they suddenly came into money? Maybe he really did give it away. Or maybe there’s a lump of gold in a shoebox in a closet crawlspace in the Filch residence. It’s not really that important, all considered. “How did you even get into the Forbidden Chamber?” Apollo asks. 

“Air duct!” Filch says proudly. “Got in the foyer vent, next to the alderman’s portrait, and the whole way out to the chamber!”

“We didn’t check that vent,” Athena says, dismayed, and across the courtroom, Blackquill scowls with what might be a similar thought.

“Anyway, I ditched the costume and got back to my post after that,” Filch adds. “All was gettin’ to be a lil more trouble than it’s worth.”

“What happened to the costume?” Apollo asks. They’ve got this admission, which is good, but he has the suspicion that Blackquill won’t let them rule out Jinxie as an accomplice without some solid evidence. Filch just giving up and giving them the costume would be nice.

“Heck if I know,” he says. 

Go figure. There’s very little way that he shouldn’t know what happened to his own damn costume, but Apollo can’t confirm it as truth or lie with Blackquill around: Blackquill who does confirm, to Apollo’s chagrin, that the police did not find a costume in their thorough search of the manor. “What if he tossed it out the foyer window?” Apollo asks. “That would sort of be like Tenma Taro flying out the window, like we suggested yesterday?”

“The newspaper!” Athena says. She casts around for the physical paper and ends up instead projecting Widget’s scan of it, the distant airborne figure and the bold headline above it: TENMA TARO, REAL OR FLIGHT OF FANCY?

“The manor is on a cliff’s edge,” Apollo says. “The costume had a long way to fall, and someone saw and snapped a picture! It really was just a literal flight of fancy!”

Blackquill’s eyes narrow even further.

“Ah,” Filch says.

“And Jinxie had nothing to do with it!” Athena adds, jabbing a finger straight through her projection.

“My, how complicated,” the judge says. “But it seems there really was no yokai involved. And here I thought I might be able to say that I have also presided over the trial of a demon, after this. Any objections, Prosecutor Blackquill?”

“Uh,” Athena says. “Also?” She drops her voice to a whisper. “Apollo, what else has he presided over? Does he mean faeries? Does he believe in that too?”

“None whatsoever,” Blackquill says. From the tension in his jaw, he isn’t happy about saying so. “I will deal with the troublemaking tanuki after the rest of this case is concluded.”

Filch’s eyes stretch toward dinnerplate size. Blackquill’s expression stays frozen; he must be particularly frustrated with his case if he can’t even enjoy tormenting those involved.

He looks even less happy once Apollo argues for L’Belle to be put on the stand. 

-

The recess, during which Apollo wonders what L’Belle has to say, what Blackquill will further twist that testimony into before it’s presented from the witness stand, and how many times they each want to kill the other, lasts for half an hour. Two minutes after that, Blackquill breaks apart the chain on his shackles to tell both Athena and L’Belle to shut up and L’Belle to get on with it. He surely could have done that without punctuating his words with the clatter of metal links hitting the floor, but he has a flair for dramatics that makes Apollo miss when “flair for dramatics” was air guitar and a fake accent (that Apollo is slightly more charitable toward now that he knows Klavier does it so as to not sound identical to his brother, but only slightly). 

And without all that room to move his arms, he wouldn’t be able to cast invisible knives at Apollo, slice him with something as wide as the edge of the wind that stings when the cold gust that follows it hits Apollo’s skin, tries to force him backwards. And then it’s gone, the searing splinters pulled away and leaving him disoriented, without even the ghost of a sensation to remind him that he isn’t losing his mind. “Do you feel that?” he asks Athena, wishing once again that Blackquill’s sword metaphors weren’t such pointed threats as they are. It’s like if Klavier’s air-guitaring conjured up a real guitar that he then proceeded to beat Apollo over the head with.

Athena’s eyes are alight with fury, fixed on Blackquill. “I felt really cold that time, for a sec,” she says, one hand pressed to her sternum like the cold has worked its way down inside of her straight into her heart. “But the slice, no. Guess I’m not worth the acknowledgement.” She says it through gritted teeth, and Apollo remembers that Blackquill has only deigned to address her by name once, when telling her to give up entirely. He kind of wishes he were the one being ignored, but it’s Athena’s first case, and better that she doesn’t have to be afraid that a witch is going to cut her face open on her first case.

L’Belle claims to have heard the mayor confess to Jinxie that he had indeed murdered the alderman, and that he was hiding in the Fox Chamber behind the folding screen to hear it. His composure fractures as much as his story when Apollo presses on it, but the fact remains, no apparent way around it, that Jinxie didn’t see L’Belle when she unlocked the room. And L’Belle isn’t magic, so he couldn’t have been overlooked the way Klavier could. (Apollo doesn’t like to consider that, that Klavier, or someone else like him, few as they might be, could get away with murder because he’d be impossible to nail to the scene.) It doesn’t make sense.

And the trial would end right there, all their best efforts - and Phoenix’s assistance, even - to naught, if Mayor Tenma didn’t spring forward with something new he had remembered. If he hadn’t become a politician, Apollo thinks he should have been an actor; he’s adopted the Tenma Taro persona again, cackling and cawing his way through the testimony. (Or maybe politics is already something like acting. Maybe it’s something like the fae, lawyers, and lying.) 

Blackquill’s face darkens, a scowl twisting his mouth. He’s in no mood to humor this farce today, not when it has no benefit to him - but the judge lightly suggests that perhaps it was too soon to say that he isn’t presiding over the trial of a demon, and yes, Mr Justice, you may procede. Let us hear him out. 

Athena takes the reins with Widget to sort through the haze of the testimony. The mayor had been locked up in the Forbidden Chamber, when the Amazing Nine-Tails, not wearing his golden cape of tails, opened the doors to free him; and behind the Nine-Tails, the alderman was already dead on the table, his blood soaking into the carpet and Tenma’s memory both. Then the Amazing Nine-Tails couldn’t have been the alderman, and Jinxie never saw the wrestler or L’Belle on the scene, but if the mayor was in the Forbidden Chamber, then for two people to have been at the scene when Jinxie saw it, then—

“You know that logic puzzle with like, the boat and the bag of corn and the chicken and the fox?” Athena asks. “That’s what I’ve got.”

Blackquill threatens Apollo with decapitation. Having already shown himself capable of attacking across the courtroom, and already having been convicted of murder and thus having nothing else to lose, the odds of him going through with it are higher than they should be. The judge does not bat an eye. They have a self-proclaimed yokai on the witness stand. Apollo is supposed to have an answer to this inconsistency by now.

“Do you think Jinxie could have mistaken L’Belle for her father?” Athena asks, tapping her fingers nervously against her jaw and her earring and her opposite arm. She isn’t convinced of her own suggestion, and Apollo isn’t, either, but if Trucy was here she’d be telling him to take it and run with it as far as he can before the judge, prosecution, and gallery realize he’s making shit up as he’s going along and hoping that it can plug all the holes they have.

Sure is not the answer he should give, because even if Athena knows they’re making it up, he should try and have a little more confidence in the statement he presents to her or the court. “The person that Ms Tenma saw,” Apollo says, “was not her father, but was Florent L’Belle disguised as Mayor Tenma.”

Blackquill snarls “Silence!” in a tone implying that while he might be a convicted murderer who continues to threaten to murder both the defense team, the defendant, and the witnesses, he nevertheless is far too polite to yell at Apollo to shut the fuck up! But he wants to. Apollo knows he wants to, because Apollo also wants to yell at Apollo to shut the fuck up, but he can’t, because his client is Guilty as soon as he stops dragging this out by suggesting scenarios that are only vaguely probable. 

Scenarios like anyone in the world being able to mistake L’Belle’s face for Tenma.

“Maybe the disguise covered his face?” Apollo suggests. There goes his confidence. He runs his hand through his hair, pulling apart some of the gelled strands down the back. And he managed to sound like he believed his theory for an entire ten seconds in which he didn’t have to say anything else.

“Wouldn’t Jinxie say that she didn’t see her father’s face?” Athena asks.

“Hey, you suggested this!” Apollo hisses. A childish and entirely unbecoming response - she’s trying her best, just like he is, and it’s unfortunate that they have a killer with a complexity fetish, and that Athena is entirely new to this, and that Apollo has only been at it for a year. No one taught him that trials would be this much improvisation. 

(With Kristoph, they probably just wouldn’t be, overprepared paranoid bastard that he was, and Phoenix, equally paranoid and equally a bastard, has only taught him about one thing, and that thing is fae magic bullshit.)

“Would she not have removed the disguise?” Blackquill asks the question like he thinks Apollo is dumb enough to not have considered it, but his face doesn’t move a muscle, his eyes as piercing as Taka’s but so much darker, fixated on Apollo. Predator and prey, and Apollo doesn’t know what to do but wilt.

“Oh,” he says. “Right.”

“Your mind is as blank as your eyes.” The momentary sneer, all the warmth of a skeleton’s immobile smile, tells Apollo that no, this isn’t about his hollow stare of confusion now that his case has fallen apart again. This is Blackquill toying, again, with what Apollo can see, with what he has always been able to see, as long as he can remember. Twenty years, at least, and Blackquill stops him dead. “And the sword you swing, rusted, used as you are to someone else doing the cutting. Shall I show you what a truly sharp edge will do?” 

“Ah - please don’t.” A cold, heavy force - he can’t even compare it to wind anymore, those earlier sparse, spread-out gusts that carried razors  - hits his chest, forcing his nervous laugh out from his lungs too quick and turning it into a gasp. It doesn’t feel like a punch, either, too big and too broad, more like being struck by a two-by-four of ice, or a pile of snow shoved from a roof to land on him sprawled below. He staggers, still wheezing, smacks his head off the wall, and slides halfway down it. Should he give in to despair now or wait until the verdict lands? Screaming sounds good any time. Maybe crying, too.

“Apollo! Are you okay? Apollo!”

He opens his eyes, not having meant to close them in the first place, and Athena closes some of the distance between them, her hands hovering awkwardly in front of her, unsure of whether she should just help him or not. He raises an arm toward her and she grabs him by the elbow and hauls him back upright. “I’m - I’m not fine, am I?” he asks. She tips him forward to lean on the bench.

She balls her hands into fists, but her fight-ready pose implodes and she pulls her arms tight across her chest, shuddering. Cold again. “Can we look at this a different way?” she asks. “Like Mr Wright says, turn the case upside-down?”

Does he say that? Right now Athena could say he says anything and he’d believe it. Right now he can barely remember his own name, but he does remember that they’re out of options. “Jinxie didn’t remove the mask, and didn’t mention it,” he says. “That’s the problem. So what if…” How does he turn that upside-down? “If she couldn’t remove the mask, and couldn’t mention it. What could cause that?” 

Jinxie talked a lot about masks. She and Trucy both did, back before this turned into a murder case, back when it was just a yokai festival and the two of them gushing about wrestling. Wrestlers and their masks, their dramatic matches and unmaskings. And the Amazing Nine-Tails was at the crime scene. Jinxie would never dare reveal his or any wrestler’s identity. She couldn’t remove that mask, wouldn’t mention it, but then that means—

“Oh,” he says. “Oh no.”

Athena’s face falls. She was waiting for him to crack the case open - she expected him too - and here he is, too horrified to properly vocalize the issue. “I think we’ve been working with a big, big mistaken assumption all this time,” he says. Across the courtroom, Blackquill is saying something, smugly, to the judge’s consideration, and Apollo doesn’t wait to listen - he can guess - before he shouts, “Objection!”

Blackquill sighs, but the flash in his dark eyes shows he is far from weary, far from letting the defense get the last word. “And with what bloody absurdity do you intend to stall for time now?” 

“Mr Justice,” the judge says sternly. “I have seen you turn many a case on its head” - or maybe just three, but many does sound a lot better - “but with the evidence presented, you had better have something solid for us.”

“I do,” Apollo says. “We’ve all, since early in the trial yesterday, been working with an assumption that’s led us entirely in the wrong direction. The answer to all our questions lies in Mayor Tenma’s secret identity - the alderman wasn’t the Amazing Nine-Tails. The Amazing Nine-Tails is Mayor Tenma’s secret identity!”

The judge blinks. The words haven’t set in. But Blackquill recoils like he’s been struck. “Balderdash! What bloody drivel do you think you’re spewing? Best explain yourself quick, Justice-dono.”

“The mayor’s alleged motive was that he killed the alderman to facilitate the municipal merger,” Apollo says. “And that the alderman, to fight back, took up the guise of the Amazing Nine-Tails. That’s the basis of the prosecution’s case. But, if Mayor Tenma was the Amazing Nine-Tails instead - Jinxie, no doubt, knew his true identity and couldn’t tell anyone. She’s a huge fan of masked wrestling - she knows how important these disguises are to them! She’d never dare unmask any, especially not her father! So when she saw the Amazing Nine-Tails passed out in the armchair there in the chamber, she naturally assumed it was her father - and said as much!”

“Wh-what?” The judge has finally caught up to the rest of them. Blackquill doesn’t give him a chance to ask anything more.

“Even our little scamp with her yokai visions could have seen the difference in the builds of the accused and that duplicitous dandy,” he interrupts. “And, for that matter, their discrete tastes in clothing. Care you to explain that?”

Mayor Tenma is taller than L’Belle, and they only have equally broad shoulders because of L’Belle’s ridiculous padding that turns him into a triangle. And even if L’Belle figured out how to fake his build, where did he get spare clothing of the mayor’s? There wouldn’t be anything just around the manor of Nine-Tails Vale. What kind of illusion would it take to make the switch convincing?

An illusion, or transformation. Or possession. The story of this wrestling league - humans, regular humans, with magical masks that give them powers. If that’s true - if he takes the chance that’s true - then who’s to say with those powers doesn’t come a physical transformation? Who’s to say the Amazing Nine-Tails isn’t the same body for whoever wears the mask? “I might be able to,” Apollo says. “If we can have the mask for a moment, to have someone try it on.”

He braces himself to add on, because it might be magic, knowing how Blackquill is going to laugh, but Athena gets to it first. “Wait!” she says. “Do you agree that the mask might have magic powers after all? I told you I should’ve gotten to try it on the other day!” 

“Ah,” the judge says. “You believe the mask to have some sort of transformation effect, in a similar way to how the defendant is possessed by and transformed into Tenma Taro?”

“I thought we agreed that he isn’t possessed,” Apollo says. Is it time for this judge to take a permanent vacation, if he keeps forgetting things like this? They’ve put a lot of time into covering the dubious matter of his possession. “But, yes, basically.”

The judge nods. “Very well. Detective Fulbright, if you would provide the defense with the evidence in question.”

Fulbright makes it to the center of the courtroom, his arm outstretched with the mask in his hand, still another arm’s-length from where Apollo could grab it; Taka intercepts him, snatching the mask away and returning it to Blackquill. He frowns at it and pulls apart a knot in the longer white fur at the bottom. “A moment,” he says evenly, without looking at any of them. “Justice-dono, the rest of us are simply to trust that you do not have an illusion of your own prepared, entirely detached from this mask?”

“I’d think you’d be able to tell that neither of us are witches or magicians or anyone who could do that,” Apollo says. Could Trucy? She’s the only one who could do anything close; she’s said if she tries hard enough, she can make her will o’ the wisp appear, briefly, to be something else distant, something else distracting more than just a ball of light. She did at Apollo’s first trial and then she nearly passed out on the bench in the lobby and made him buy her a sports drink and four Swiss rolls during the recess to get some of her energy back. And she’s never done it since. She at least knows her limits. 

Blackquill lifts his head, eyes fixed on Apollo. Taka’s are too, beady yellow above a sharp beak, threat implicit, that at any time he could do more than buffet Apollo with his wings. “Could I, Justice-dono?” he asks quietly. “Is that what you think?”

Why is everyone who’s even approximately fae-adjacent, Phoenix and Klavier and now Blackquill, so damned opaque? “Well, if you think we’ve got some tricks up our sleeves,” Athena snaps, slamming her hands on the bench like she’s about to fling herself entirely over it, “then why don’t you try it on yourself! See for yourself if it’s got power!”

“Athena, no—” If Apollo’s right, and he wants to be right, for the sake of his case, for the sake of the mayor, then there’s some sort of magical power held in the mask, to be imbued in the wearer. And they’ve just handed it to a man who, in this basic form of whatever the hell he is, can already snap metal chains. They’ve handed him the key to a jailbreak if he’s up for it.

A slow smile parts Blackquill’s lips, showing a flash of teeth, a wolf’s bared grin, something that’s going to eat them alive. His smile might not be sharp but Apollo doesn’t trust it. “Well,” he says. “Seems the lass finally has a decent idea.”

“I’ve had plenty of decent ideas, thank you!” Athena shouts.

This is not one. If, if, Apollo is right about the mask, and if, if Blackquill doesn’t take the escape route - they don’t know how it is that he shuts down Apollo’s blessing and Phoenix’s Sight. He might just be able to shut down the transformation, and with it, Apollo’s last hopes for the case. He might just be able to bury the truth, and he’s shown enough lack of conviction that Apollo can believe he would.

Taka hops down onto the bench, turning his yellow eyes upon his handler, and Blackquill slips the mask on over his head. It wouldn’t do much to disguise his identity, as it stands - his long black hair spills out the back of it - but a moment later that is moot. Golden light beams out of him, down from the opening of the mask, and Blackquill simply no longer is Blackquill, tall but slender and shrouded in black. The Amazing Nine-Tails stands behind the prosecution’s bench, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, clad in a thick wrestling belt and fluffy golden tails flowing down his back like a cape. The only thing to differentiate the man in front of him from the one Apollo saw in the village before the murder is the cuffs still clamped around his wrists, visibly too tight, visibly crushing into his skin.

Apollo winces in sympathy; so does Athena. Blackquill reaches up and tears the mask off of his head. Golden light shines again, the bright tendrils retreating back up inside of the mask. He flings it aside carelessly, rattling the broken chain when he shakes his wrists like the cuffs are still too tight and lingering. Fulbright hurries over to pick the mask from the floor, holding it warily about a foot away from his body.

“It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen something such as that in my courtroom,” the judge says lightly. He seemed more fazed by the revelation of the mayor’s secret identity than witnessing the magic behind said identity. What else has he seen? How much does it take to grow numb to this? (Apollo is growing less and less surprised over only a year; in the judge’s career, the question might be what he hasn’t seen. A yokai, apparently, distinct from the fae.) 

“Is that explanation enough for you, Prosecutor Blackquill?” Apollo asks. He can’t help feeling smug, alongside the profound relief that his shot in the dark hit its mark without Blackquill interfering. 

Blackquill doesn’t answer. He stares, blankly, down at his hands, down at the bench, and his eyes when they finally turn up toward Apollo are hollow, the vacant gaze of a skull’s empty sockets. His shoulders heave with heavy breaths, but no words follow. Apollo seizes the silence to put together the next pieces, lay out the next steps of L’Belle’s locked room trick, and his faked confession as the mayor. And even when Blackquill lashes back, Apollo has now seen him cornered, at a loss, and it’s easier to shut him down, tell him to shut up and let Apollo finish speaking.

L’Belle does his best to stop the mayor from confirming his identity, claiming still he’ll tell the truth, unleash Tenma Taro, and ruin the village. Doom wrought by greed, and suddenly Apollo realizes why, of all the places to hide it, there was treasure in the Forbidden Chamber. Whether or not Tenma Taro is real, it kept people away, kept them out, kept them too afraid of a monster to go digging and tear each other apart for a lump of gold.

But Filch’s grandfather left a token in the chamber, his thief’s mark, and L’Belle left strands of hair within the Nine-Tails mask, the last evidence Apollo needs to close the tale. Because evidence is everything, no matter how well the rest fits. No matter how a jury would want L’Belle indicted ten minutes ago. They don’t have a jury; they have Blackquill, fighting to the end, and the judge, who isn’t allowed to give a verdict based on common sense.

They’re lucky, this time. They’re lucky, and Blackquill furious at his defeat. When he returns to the courtroom after L’Belle is escorted into custody, Apollo waits for the world to twist red in distorted ripples, waits for a last chilling slice to land its mark. But there’s nothing but Blackquill’s last monotone summary: L’Belle, unable to get into the manor and its Forbidden Chamber any other way, set the merger in motion, committed murder when that plan stalled, desperate for the gold to lift him out of debt. Desperate for a monster to save him. 

The judge’s gavel strikes once. Blackquill’s glare hasn’t left Apollo. Apollo stares back. He knows it isn’t wise to ask what someone is. It would be especially unwise to yell the question across a courtroom to someone already hostile. 

But he wants to know, so that he can avoid Blackquill and anyone ever like him in the future. 

“C’mon Apollo!” Athena says. “Let’s go see Mr Wright! We won!”

They won. Blackquill’s eyes narrow further, and, barking something at Fulbright, he turns away first. 

[mysticdragon3md3]

We Rent Tsukumogami ep1

In the middle of checking out a new series. I like yokai anime, I've been trying to decide which yokai is my favorite, and I've been considering tsukumogami. So this seemed like a nice fit.

Kind of weird how the tsukumogami won't talk directly with the main human characters. And while them tricking each other into exchanging information is kind of interesting, it leads to a lot of weird scenes where they're just listening to each other from different rooms and pretending not to hear each other. It's odd. Especially if this series is setting up to be a "mystery" like this first episode, where you need multiple scenes of characters sharing information, comparing accounts, and coming up with interpretations and ideas.

1:33 PM 5/26/2021

Well, that didn't go the way I was expecting. I thought that maybe Katsusaburo found out about his fiancé's sweetheart and didn't want to force her into the arranged marriage, so maybe he arranged the netsuke "theft" so that his father-in-law-to-be would be insulted that Katsusaburo couldn't hold onto that keepsake and then cancel the wedding. And maybe even Katsusaburo's big brother was actually Sanae's sweetheart! But turns out, the episode's "happy ending" includes going forward with the arranged marrage and Sana's sweetheart remains some unnamed guy. There's just an off-hand line about Sanae's sweetheart being married off to someone else too, and that's treated as an inevitability. Then the protagonist Seiji goes on to give Katsusaburo marriage advice, the story assuming that Katsusaburo's and Sanae's arranged marriage is also an inevitability. Turns out Katsusaburo just *didn't feel* like putting effort into holding onto the netsuke when his brother tried to take it, in the same way that he "didn't feel like" holding onto the marriage _because_ his marrying into a richer family made his older brother jealous and he didn't want to strain his sibling relationship anymore. Apparently, Katsusaburo has always been insecure about his older brother always looking down on him, and is motivated by not wanting their relationship to be strained anymore. (Which, actually seems like pretty blatant insecurity on his brother's part, feeling intimidated by any "rival" to his superiority and always looking down on his little brother his whole life.) Katsusaburo wasn't trying to make a big show of "losing" the netsuke to insult his father-in-law-to-be into cancelling the marriage. He was just covering up for his brother trying to "harass" him by stealing the netsuko. So Katsusaburo told his father-in-law-to-be that the netsuko marriage gift was simply lost, instead of stolen, to save his brother from repercussions. Wow, I guess I thought there would be more intrigue, and that all the presented elements would be more involved into the plot. But the fact that Sanae already had a sweetheart was just a red herring. I thought at the very least, that Katsusaburo noticed that his fiancé was reluctant about the arranged marriage, and out of _care for her_ he was trying to set up a reason to cancel the marriage. But no! It's not even that! It was totally just the brother thing! O_o

I dunno. Maybe it only seems like a weak plot because I'm a modern American. So my focus isn't on the strained sibling relationship (even though in real life, my sibling relationships are my most cherished), but instead on reading into the story, the usual romance genre tropes I'm accustomed to. That's why I was so focused on the arranged marriage and how the couple feels about each other, as their motivations. That's usually how things go in the romance genre. And with this episode presented as a story centered about this arranged marriage, I thought that was what this story was about. o_o? Still, the marriage turned out to also be the underlying inciting incident to the real conflict going on in this episode (that being the strained relationship between Katsusaburo and his brother). was it too much for me to presume that the marriage would be the focus? Or that the relationship between the couple at the center of the inciting incident would be the focus? Would this presumed focus on the sibling relationship have been a natural given to someone with an old Edo perspective?

Pretty animation. Though not too much animation, where there probably should have been more. Like, that whole scene with the bat netsuke finding the mouse netsuke in the red light district, totally skipped when they met and even explanatory dialogue between them. So, I was just left wondering what happened. But still, all the characters seemed on-model, the backgrounds were nice, the vibrant colors really carried the aesthetics without being obnoxious, no oddly animated movements, and everything just looked anime-level pretty. It wasn't like Persona 5 the Animation; that's my benchmark for whether animation quality is good or bad now. And now whenever I find an unknown series with satisfactory animation that's never P5A-ugly, I ask, "Why couldn't the Persona 5 anime have been like that!!!!?!!?????!!" Anyway, these tsukumogami are cute. ^_^

One thing that bothers me is the deuteragonists' relationship. They interact fine. But at one point, the whole scene becomes centered about the big sister wanting to be complimented by her littler brother. She gets angry when he doesn't think to compliment her hairpin. She wants him to notice her "feminine beauty". Then the episode later comes back to that, _several_ times. The tsukumogami in the shop make fun of Seiji for not having the "guts" to compliment her feminine charms. Seiji flinches, showing that he regrets that as a blunder. The advice Seiji gives to Katsusaburo at the end, is to compliment his fiancé's beauty (so to not repeat Seiji's mistake). And then the anime trope bomb: They're not "real" siblings by blood. That's often anime code for "this series is going to have an incest romance relationship". Ugh...I can't do this anymore. I was willing to give .Hack//Legend of the Twilight the benefit of the doubt. My brother told me he was uncomfortable with the siblings presented like a romantic pairing, and I told him he was reading-in things that weren't there. I told him, that's just normal people caring about each other as siblings. But then as the years passed, more and MORE series started giving hetero opposite-sex siblings all the tropes of romance genre couples. Not just characters caring about each other, but all the tropes, all the framing, all the direction, all the cliches that the _Romance_ genre uses to convey "this is the couple". And ugh...This is my cue to run away.

This series is nice enough. In fact, if it didn't so casually talk about prostitution and the red light district in the second half of the first episode, I would have even thought of this series as "family friendly". It keeps its presentation simple and even repeats plot points for easier comprehension, like a kid's show. And nothing traumatizingly dramatic happens, so it's a calm, soothing watch. Maybe it's even categorized as an iyashikei series. But the red herring, the completely misdirected plot in the mystery, the outdated values (I know it's the Edo era, but way to sideline Sanae's agency and reduce the female deteragonist to "one of my biggest concerns is what the man in my life thinks of me and whether he thinks I'm beautiful"), the possible warning flags of an incest romantic couple,... It's pretty and I like yokai, but next time, I'll follow my first instinct and watch Cells At Work instead.

2:25 PM 5/26/2021

https://youtu.be/jtce8c6PzGM

Oh! Turns out the official Japanese broadcasting network for this anime posted what looks like the entire series, English sub, onto YouTube for free. O.o I didn't have to deal with Crunchyroll's commercials. I mean, there YouTube posting has some commercials and banner ads, but YouTube doesn't crash on me, the way that Crunchyroll tends to, especially around commercial breaks.

[chibitantei]

jesterofinaba​:

“Hyperactive Okuninushi…? You must have had… a time.”

His persona turns from its spot inspecting the odd yokai family to gaze at Adachi in what felt like an indignant manner, and he raises his arms in surrender in response. “No hard feelings.”

The Hierophant got along with persona really well, despite the fact that Okuninushi chattered in his head more often than he would like and had a habit of possessing his body just to hug his daughter and cry about how proud he is. He could get on Adachi’s nerves (and he feels like Carl Jung would have something to say about that), but they were fine. Okuninushi could just be a little… much, so the fact that the Genie was apparently even more of a strong personality meant something.

“The kitsune was nice. Kind of reminded me of you, but if you leaned a little bit more into the theater kid angle.” He remembers the Kitsune Naoto mentioning that she opened up a lot more because of her dad. “I guess they rubbed off on each other.”

-

Naoto’s hug and the tight return to the embrace make Taiki even more overjoyed, which helps overcome a little bit of his nerves. The ex-genie had tried his hardest to not dwell on his time before the lamp, hoping that all the years alone and the new time with Naoto would help him forget it all for good. But Naoto’s encouragement help him a lot.

“Yeah, before the whole genie thing, I was in a place called the Velvet Room, where we worked on desires and bonds and personas and stuff. I was made to help fuse personas together and make ‘em stronger.” He tilts his head just like Okuninushi does.

“I dunno, I wasn’t good at it. My, uh… first master decided I wasn’t ever going to learn to do it right and decided I’d be better fit helping fulfill desires with the lamp, so that’s how I got stuck.

But it wasn’t all bad! I wouldn’t have met you otherwise, and I had siblings back then! I bet they’ve all forgotten about me now, though, it has been a few thousand years…”

“Hmm, that makes sense...” If she were a magic creature with the ability to shape shift, she’d take the opportunity to be as dramatic as she can. Who needs to be a lead in a play when you have real magic on your side? Though she’s not sure what to make of herself being a fox most of the time. Isn't it uncomfortable walking on all fours? Does the other her prefer her human form?

There’s too much to think about.

“Just like how we rubbed off on each other.” Dad’s hand on hip pose is commonly used at the station, but what a lot of them don’t know is that he adopted it from her. It certainly conveys confidence and makes him look bigger. Dad may be on the taller side, but he’s kind of like a stick. Not that she’s any better. They may not be biologically related, but they resemble each other in more ways than one, to the point where a lot of people assume she’s his biological kid.

“I guess we can rest easy knowing we’re a family in another universe, right?”

-

“Wow, that’s cool! Not the mean master part, but your job before you met me sounds cool! And the fact that you have siblings!” She assumed Dad was like her, an only kid, err genie that... came into the world all by himself. Learning that he has family sends a shiver of excitement down her spine. 

The part where he says they might have forgotten all about him doesn’t. Maybe it’s been a long, long, long time, but there’s no way his family would forget about him, right? He’s just too memorable, including his old genie outfit. It’s hard to miss someone like that in this Velvet Room.

“I don’t think they’d forget about you. There had to be someone you were super close to, right?” Even if they don’t want to talk to Dad anymore, he’ll still have her and she can turn into a fox when he’s sad, so he’ll have someone to hug. Any form works fine, but Dad prefers her fox form the most. “We can try to find them later because I want to meet them... if you’re okay with it.”

She wants to meet his siblings, but if he doesn’t want to, then it’s a choice she’ll have to respect.

Or she’ll find and bite them for treating her Dad badly.

[ziotsu]

Ok so I have had time to chill and think about the chapter some more. and I thought I would make a quick post talking about what we know and what my thoughts are on the Ashiya 'clan'. Oh god I realized I have been using Hara instead of Nara for Ashiya's mom's name. I made a mistake. I feel horrible. What happened? I hoped I changed all Hara's to Nara's on here, if I missed any, I am sorry.

So I'm gonna start off with Nara, probably one of my favorite characters to date. One thing I realized while I was thinking about the chapter today was that she compares people to flowers. It was so funny to realize and I wonder what she called Ashiya. I know she gives him bouquets, but I wonder if she did in the past but he told her to stop just like he is telling her to stop with the flowers. (Personally I say just let her have her fun) And with the Yokai attaching itself to her, I mentioned before that I was curious to why the family attracts Yokai, but something I didn't ask was 'Why has it been so long since an incident?'. I am talking specifically with Nara, though Ashiya as well now that I think about it. Given how Ashiya reacts to his mom going to the hospital, this isn't a common thing. At least it isn't anymore. So I wonder what caused the time gap. I can find no hints, but I can speculate it was because of Sakae. I wonder if he did something to protect Nara while they were married/did something to protect his children as well. Also, though probably obvious, Nara can't and has never been able to see yokai. While looking around I found out that Sakae is a female name xD while some places list it as unisex, I find it a lot more common for that name to be feminine. Is it tradition to give males predominantly female names?

Moving onto Ashiya's sister. She is interesting, and I am assuming that her looks are at least very similar to Sakae's. We already know (given the girl at the end of the last chapter is the sister) her hair is light colored and very similar to Abeno's (who we know has the same hair and eye color as Sakae). I wouldn't be surprised if she was the one who looks like him. What else do we know? Well she is at least 20 years old, given that she can drink, she at least sometimes out at night to go drinking, and she still lives with Ashiya and their mother (presumably), though not confirmed. Not much is known other then that. We haven't heard a lot about her, as far as I remember it only being mentioned once. Honestly we have heard less about his sister then Aoi, because at least we know both his name, occupation and his living state (that being presumably dead).

About Sakae: We actually get more info about him then I talked about last time. 1) It is highly unlikely that him and Nara got a divorce, if they did it was on relatively good terms. Nara doesn't think bad of him, and if the relationship ended badly, this probably wouldn't be possible. 2) If he died it has at least been a fair amount of time. I spent a while looking at Nara's left hand, or at least trying to to see if she still wore wedding rings. It is always obscured (did you know Nara is right handed btw? And Ashiya. And his sister possibly. Probably would make Sakae right handed as well.) No really, the few times we see her, she always has her left hand hidden, so I never get a good look. The first time I know we get a look is at the hospital, which it is unknown if she would have taken them off or not for the time being. But regardless, she doesn't wear her wedding ring at this point for whatever reason. Actually it is never mentioned if they ever got married. We know that he is Ashiya's and his sister's father but it is never mentioned that they got married. It is possible that it was out of wedlock or not a traditional 'marriage'. Moving back to Sakae, another thing we know at this point is that he is similar to Abeno. For a moment it was 'oh looks wise' but what I got from the translation after reading it again it sounded more on the 'they act similar too'. Which I don't know how much of the conversation she head before coming to the hallway, but just on how Abeno acts around Nara, Sakae was probably very polite. Another thing is that Sakae might have been able to use Influence as well, given that Nara can't see Yokai all of Ashiya's abilities must have come from him. So it is possible that he was strong enough to use Influence.

Ashiya: Finally the one we know the most about. though something made me pause for a moment. I wonder what color Ashiya's eyes become when he uses his influence? From what I can tell they get very light, and similarly drawn to Abeno's. I know before I was wondering if influence always made eyes got the same color, but what if Ashiya's eyes become gold? 1) like said they become a similar to how Abeno's eyes are normally drawn. 2) we know that Abeno's eyes are golden. 3) It would put a bit more of a connection between Ashiya and Sakae if Ashiya's eyes match Sakae's when using Influence.

I was going to talk about Aoi, but I am gonna just let that headcannon rest for the moment till we get information that might support it, while there are still ways it could happen, there would have to be very specific circumstances.

[drink-n-watch]

Guys I am being so unprofessional this week! You won’t believe how last minute I am at giving Karandi, my part of the review. I’m afraid to look. Does she seem mad? I bet she’s mad, she has every right to be… If it’s any consolation, I had a great Party last night and also this morning.

I’m feeling a bit like Hanae here. Let’s just get this started.

It’s fine Irina, if you hadn’t been late I probably would have been. I’m actually having to write posts the day before they come out at the moment because I’ve been a little busy and I’ve almost run down my draft collection and I’m just not getting to watch episodes in a timely manner. It hasn’t made me reschedule anything just yet but I suspect this week I may have one or two days where I do not get three posts ready to go out.

recently, it’s been brought to my attention that characters who never open their eyes are creepy 

After two very solid and plot advancing episode, we got something that was half overall plot and half random slice of life. More or less literally. The episode was split down the middle.

In the first half, we continue to deal with Hanae’s banishment from the Underworld as well as the power struggle that seems to be taking place therein. But first, we have a school trip to wrap up. Whenever Abeno is surrounded by classmates like that, he always seems so out of place yet people seem to like him. Why do you think that is Karandi? (I mean, I know why I like a beautiful blonde tsundere but it might not appeal to all).

I really do not get it myself. The boys turn up to have a pillow fight in Abeno’s room and he initially tries to slam the door in their face. Like seriously, why do they bother trying? That said, I kind of loved that after being forced into participating he decided to play by his own rules. Watching him pummel Hanae in the face repeatedly with a pillow was pretty hilarious, though why Hanae didn’t just take two steps in either direction to get away from him was more than a little confusing.

you may change you mind there

The wrap up of the trip was cute and basically just served to let us know that Hanae can now reliably use his power to sense Yokai. Good thing two, as that becomes immediately useful when the Legislator shows up for a surprise visit with a strange proposal.

It seems that hearing what had happened, the Legislator grew very angry that the Executor had attacked someone under his general supervision and had strong armed him into some odd compromise. Bringing two boxes to Hanae, the Legislator tells him that if he picks the right one, he will be conditionally unbanished. (look at that – unbanished is a real word…) At first, I figured this was a test to see if Hanae had any powers and he should fail on purpose to not give himself away. What were your thoughts on this oddness?

I’m not sure what this test was supposed to show from the point of the Underworld. I mean, Hanae having powers makes him more dangerous. This test doesn’t show his character or desire to help/hurt yokai or give them any particularly useful information.

this seems pointless…

But, despite not really getting why the Executive let this be the test (I get why he agreed to a deal at all but not why this test was acceptable), I really loved Hanae during this scene. I think it was great that we got to see that despite his claims that he is fine, that he seriously considered losing on purpose because he isn’t sure he wants to go back. He’s genuinely scared that he’ll be killed and that is a legitimate fear. However, it is perhaps the first time we’ve seen Hanae suffer from some kind of ongoing trauma from all the weird stuff that happens around him.

Turns out Abeno did want him to choose the right box and not only that but the Legislator had sort of cheated by putting a Yokai in there in the first place, allowing Hanae to get the right answer. Basically, it was rigged for the Executor to lose and it all seemed to be going to plan until Hanae asked what the condition was.

We find out that Hanae has to be accompanied by the Justice whenever he chooses to visit the Underworld. Am I the only one who thought it was a great deal? The Justice has proven to be rather friendly and pleasant company. As long as Hanae doesn’t knowingly cause harm to the Underworld he has a powerful Yokai to protect him and keep him out of trouble. If anything, I thought Abeno would have been happy about it.

silly me…Abeno is never happy

I think we still don’t quite know enough about the underworld politics to know what is really going on. Considering Abeno works for the Legislator, maybe he doesn’t want the Justice knowing everything he’s up to or overlooking his work as well as a second supervisor? Or maybe he’s just ticked off that his employee was attacked and then treated as a villain? It’s a murky situation and one that I assume will be expanded on in coming episodes but I’m really enjoying seeing how it is playing out so far.

There’s something I didn’t quite get in this part of the episode. For instance, why would the Executor care if Abeno no longer visits the Underworld? And what is Ripou hoping to accomplish. I find it hard to believe that he didn’t knowingly set all this in motion by sending Hanae to the Executor in the first place and now he’s scandalized the latter retaliated? It’s like he provoked him into action only so that he could strike back while claiming self defence.

Yeah, there’s more to this than we know. I love how innocent the Legislator is playing it putting the blame entirely on the Executive. However, we know he sent Hanae there in the first place when he literally could have sent anyone else, and I doubt he did that accidentally. Though whether the response was what he expected I’m not sure but it has definitely given him an excuse to act against the Executive. I feel bad for the Justice being stuck between those two.

He does seem over it

As for Abeno’s declaration that he isn’t coming to the Underworld anymore, I wonder how that will impact on his job. I know that mostly he sends yokai into the underworld, but on more than one occasion he’s had to go to the underworld to fetch something so it seems he might be making things harder on himself. More importantly, he used to go there before he had an assistant so it doesn’t make sense that he couldn’t go and leave Hanae behind. Unless this is some kind of protest. Or something Abeno and the Legislator decided on given it seems they’ve been talking a lot about the situation with Hanae (given the test the Legislator gave Hanae).

And this is random but have we ever seen the Legislator’s “true” form. The Executor is a Crow, the Justice is a Tiger but what is Ripou? I always imagine him as some type of Salamander because of his sister, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen him as anything else than human.

Nope, and I was wondering that too. The Justice seems to enjoy his tiger form, the the Executive clearly uses his crow form to terrify… I think that when we finally see the Legislator’s form it will be because something major just went down.

  I bet Hanae will make this exact face

Does Abeno stopping hanae from going means he chose some type of side?

So many question and I am looking forward to finding out all the answers but that will have to wait as we jump right into a little story about Zenko finding a doll like Yokai with a simple but difficult request. They want to be human for a day – or at least very human like – so they can go dance with everyone else at the Bon festival. I would like to think that this would be my ambition should I ever become a wraith.

I found this random addition to the end of this episode, lead in to next episode, a little bit of a let down. Sure it is what The Morose Mononokean used to focus on, but this season has given us so much more. Plus, as you said, we’re sitting here with all these questions and instead we’re watching some doll yokai ask to be human. Possibly if this had been its own episode and we knew early on we were in for a monster of the week story we’d just kind of go with it, but coming on the tail of some really solid world building it just felt like an unwelcome diversion even if it did bring Zenko back into the story and have Hanae using his yokai detection skills.

don’t worry, we’ll get back to it

We don’t really know how this turns out as the episode ends pretty much in the middle of this storyline. Hanae having brought the Yokai to the Mononokean so they can make their request directly to Abeno.

There was something particularly Natsume like about the plot of this specific story. Seems like exactly the sort of thing a Yuujinchou Yokai would ask for, don’t you think? Ok so maybe it’s just because I literally order volume 22 yesterday and now I can’t wait until I get it…

Really jealous of that (I’m waiting on the next couple of volumes to arrive but I’m not in the twenties yet). I don’t know, I try to avoid comparing this to Natsume because honestly, it doesn’t hold up as an anime if I do. I absolutely love and adore Natsume whereas this I find pleasant and entertaining enough. I will admit, I’ve liked this second season a lot more than season one, but it still pales in comparison with Natsume (so many things do).

Still, yokai wanting to be a human for a day does indeed seem like a Natsume plot and hopefully they can pull it off because comparisons are more or less inevitable at this point.

Obviously this doesn’t live up to Natsume but then again what does?

Even though we didn’t see the Underworld much, there was still some pretty images here and there!

  The Morose Mononokean 2 episode 7 w Karandi and Irina -Playing Games Guys I am being so unprofessional this week! You won’t believe how last minute I am at giving …

[olibensstuff]

hi

I want more people to talk about Usagi Yojimbo and Samurai Rabbit with.