© Hiromu Arakawa/SQUARE ENIX, Project TSUGAI
With this episode, while there is a bit of an impending plot hook with Yuru and Asa’s Okinawan grandmother, we largely move away from the personal story of Yuru and Asa and instead work on some more general world-building. Basically, this episode is designed to show us how the various sides of the demon-wielding power struggle respond to the various events of the season.
The main Kagemori faction is working on discovering how the attack happened—namely, how the kidnappers entered the compound through a non-existent western gate. While they do find lines that imply a gate was created and subsequently erased, what’s odd is how readily they brush off the most obvious suspect, Hikaru. He was alone during the attack, so he has no alibi, and the reason Jin crosses him off the suspect list is that his redrawing of reality leaves the redrawn object in monochrome for a while after creation. Of course, in a dark, unlit area of the compound in the middle of the night, it’s unlikely that anyone would even be able to tell if something was monochrome or not.
Meanwhile, Asuma meets with his uncle, who is obviously a member of a splinter faction, and we see that Asuma seems to be in disagreement with him about the group’s plans for how to handle the twins—showing that none of these factions is a unified monolith by any stretch of the imagination.
This, in turn, leads to the introduction of Ivan and his infiltration of Higashi Village. Up until this point, everything we’ve heard about the fallout in Higashi Village has been second-hand. Now we get to see what’s happening ourselves. There are some interesting lore tidbits—like that the children of the village are vaccinated in secret—but the big reveal is that at least some of the villagers were aware of Yuru needing to die to attain Seal and that the “bandits” Yuru killed were indeed part of an inside job to kill him.
Of course, this info dump is interrupted by the plot-progressing surprise that Ivan has gotten into Higashi Village by hiding inside Yama’s body. While we’ll have to wait till next week to see what his goals are, the fact that he so easily got past the barrier threatens to redefine the established world-building we’ve gotten so far.
Back in the first episode, Asa’s attack appeared to have only been possible due to complete surprise mixed with overwhelming strength. Higashi Village didn’t even know she had obtained Break, much less that she would personally lead a modern paramilitary unit to slaughter the villagers and rescue her brother. They were caught completely flat-footed.
However, now that an attack has happened, you’d figure that security would have been improved—that they’d have at least a few Daemon users stationed in the weakened village to protect the leaders and prevent exactly what we see happen in this episode. However, since Daemons can sense each other, and Ivan gets inside unmolested, this implies that things have been left as normal with the barrier as the sole line of defense. This seems insane—especially when Asa could easily take it down again whenever she wanted.
Moreover, we also see with Ivan (and with Asuma’s moths previously) that it’s not exactly difficult for an outsider to bypass this type of barrier—to the point that it’s shocking that no one had before. It makes you wonder if the only reason the village was never attacked previously is that the Kagemoris simply didn’t feel the need to. Add to this that, outside of Hana, we’ve not encountered a single Higashi Village Daemon user (much less a combat-oriented one), and it makes you wonder if the Higashi Village is even a viable player in the ongoing power struggle at all.
Perhaps this episode is the anime’s way of showing us that the Kagemori have so much control over the outside world that their only real opponents are themselves—that the only reason that those like Dera and Hana have survived has been their anonymity and the Kagemori’s half-hearted indifference. However, if that’s not the case—if we’re still supposed to see the Higashi Village as a major player—this episode has completely undercut this viewpoint. And something tells me that next week’s episode is going to make the village look even more inept.
Rating:
Daemons of the Shadow Realm is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.
