Nothing says the start of a big battle like a little bath scene. As
everything starts to come together and Rikuo's night form asks for
everyone to give over their lives to him so long as the moon shines down
that night so they can do battle and entrust themselves to him. The
stage has been well set so when it shifts to a bath scene, brief as it
is, I can't help but feel that it loses some of its energy. We know they
can do a fight scene really well after the Inugami episode, but getting
there is more than half the battle. The setup took pretty much the
entire previous episode and it takes another few minutes here before the
two sides truly meet on the field of battle, complete with local
buildings in view to give it that modern flavor, but it's so tempered
and restrained at first that you spend more time waiting for it to
actually cut loose.
The further into the episode we go, the more
the show slows down as it tries to build up the suspense. The standoff
has its moments as the two sides stare each other down at the leadership
level, and there's some nice little twists that eventually come into
play in terms of the powers, but before it can really start in on
anything it diverges to the human cast of school kids who are either
going through their normal night routines, like bath time and the such,
or they're sitting in some park as part of the paranormal research club
where they find that there are hundreds of yokai sightings pouring in on
the internet. While these could help to make the battle larger than it
seems, it instead disrupts the flow since it becomes such a slow scene.
Rather than add tension and drama, it takes us away from where the show
is already having a hard time building.
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