Category: Nurarihyon no Mago

Recap. Dammit, this show is one huge tease. Every time it promises to get better, it finds some excuse to delay this to next week. Of course this is making me hungry to find out in what way this series is going to end up becoming awesome, but this is getting rather annoying…

Nurarihyon no Mago was the series that was looking forward to the most for the past summer season, and in that way it ended up disappointing me a bit. I’m a huge fan of its director, Junji Nishimura, but in order for him to really shine, he really needs to be working on an original series in which he really can let his creativity loose, and not being bound by some sort of source material.
Rating: – (Disappointing)

With the new villains, do hope that they’re going to be more than what we’ve seen so far, constantly smirking and trying to look evil. They don’t really seem like compelling villains at this point, and I mostly liked this episode because of the small charms of the rest of the characters.

Meanwhile, the rest of the cast is mostly plagued by that love triangle that is developing. I don’t like love triangles because they a) are annoying, b) get in the way of the more interesting stuff and c) never really go anywhere, and that really was the case here. I mean, Kana and Yuki-Onna alone have enough charms at this point, but those get completely wasted on that pointless love triangle.

I liked the parts around Nura and Yura. The art direction of Nura’s special powers was also especially interesting, but also the chemistry between the two of them really works, and it’s a bit of a shame that he seems to be leaving after this (great for the development of the rest of the characters, though). This show is still nothing special, but I have taking a strange liking to some of the characters in this show, most notably these two.

A bit of nit-picking time here… but… um… didn’t anybody notice those HOLES in a freaking building? I mean, no fire-alarms, there was nobody screaming… it just fell apart and didn’t seem to bother anyone who lived there.
Rating: * (Good)

So with this episode, apparently the real story of Nurarihyon no Mago should have started. And really, I’m impressed so far. Not with the potential, but the idea of the author to start things off with Nurarihyon and Yura, as they immediately get attacked by whatever evil youkai that have moved into town.

I liked the chemistry between them, and the creators made good use of the tension and the fact that Yura was actually really liking the one she wanted to kill in the first place. I really wonder what that attack would have looked like with Yura out of the picture, which would have allowed Nurarihyon to show some of his powers: I’m very interested to whether this guy still has his bite, or whether he has just turned into a regular old guy. I never really understood how youkai age, to be honest: they seem to be able to live forever, or at least for many centuries, and yet some of them age while others don’t. When a youkai is in an old man form, does that also mean that he’s weaker than his younger version?

I liked Yura a lot, especially now that this episode finally gave her the chance to actually summon her full force. Her weakness is still pretty big, though: she only has to hope that she can buy enough time to actually summon all of them. Especially since she works alone, she is very easy to surprise and take out at this rate, though I guess it’s worth the effort considering the great stuff she can pull off when she actually does manage to summon all of her Shikigamis.

The rest of this episode was quite light-hearted, but all of it was pretty enjoyable. The youkai together remain cute, and even Rikuou’s classmates are nice enough to watch when they don’t belong to the main focus of the episode.
Rating: * (Good)

A few episodes back, I complained that Kana had no character. This episode proceeded to give her one. Fair enough.

Seriously though, I really like it when a character I previously disliked or even hated redeems him or herself. And this episode had this for Kana. It’s a great sign of how a series is changing for the better. Out of all the episodes that centred around Rikuou’s classmates, this is the one I like best so far, even though the stakes of this episode are probably the lowest of the entire series with that random mirror youkai.

But yeah, we got to see Kana as she was young, she stepped out of her role as simple damsel in distress and actually started critically asking Rukuo and Nura questions. It’s not like she was a bad character anyway, I just disliked her because she was nothing more than a plot device that Rikuo needed to save. This episode had her again captured by a youkai, but she did step out of that role and became more than that. I especially liked how, since this episode was told from her perspective, it became a strange little horror episode, especially when Nura dragged her to that Youkai restaurant.

The end of this episode also introduced the new upcoming villains, and it’s here where this series is really going to have to deliver, especially as next month it’ll get some serious competition when Letter Bee starts airing again. While Letter Bee has way more flaws than Nurarihyon no Mago, it does have a better setting, atmosphere and soundtrack, plus at this point it also looks like its overarching story is a lot more interesting than Nurarihyon’s. It’ll have to put in some effort to not get overshadowed.
Rating: * (Good)

Well, it was a bit of a wait, but this episode definitely delivered. Gyuki’s climax definitely was worth the wait, and this episode really changed the course of this series now that Rikuo stopped running away from his demon side, while at the same time not abandoning his human side as Gyuki suggested. It’s great to already see character-development at this stage in the series.

I also see why the previous episode was so necessary, as it really explained the loyalty behind Gyuki’s actions, added to Gyuki’s pride as a youkai. In either case, it’s great to see that the people in this series are willing to grab their own responsibilities instead of running away. I guess that that was the entire point of these introduction arcs.

I do hope that either Rikuo’s classmates will develop like this, or that the story is indeed going to move away from them, as the youkai part of this series is looking to be a lot more interesting than the human part. I understand why they were necessary, though.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Interesting to have an entire episode dedicated to Gyuki. Unfortunately we’re going to have to wait for the conclusion, because it ended right after the end of Gyuki’s backstory, which really was quite long. The first five minutes or so were dedicated to a fight between him and Nura, in which he questions whether Nura has the ability to lead the youkai around, but after that it’s all about how he grew up, and how he met Nurarihyon (who looked really different from his current form, by the way).

I’m not exactly sure why Gyuki suddenly told his entire life story in front of Nura, but I’m surprised at how much time and effort was put into his story here, where we saw him grow up from young child into a full fledged youkai. Especially that point at which he faced the youkai that ate his mother was really well portrayed, and had some surprisingly good looking visuals.

Standalone this episode wasn’t the most exciting due to the lack of context (hey, Gyuki was about to explain why he attacked Nura when he suddenly starts talking about his life story, and at the end of the episode we still don’t know the reasons behind his actions), but I can very much see it work out in the long run. It perhaps could have been better paced, but the fact remains that this episode added quite a bit of depth to Gyuki and the series itself.
Rating: * (Good)

The first half of this episode was very good, though the second half was a bit lost on me. Let’s just start with that one. To start off with, it again was a bit of an anti-climax, but what mostly bothered me was the part in which Nura talked to Kana. We’re supposed to feel along with her and all, but really: who is she? It’s been seven episodes so far, but what exactly have we learned about her so far? That she likes Rikuo and gets jealous. I didn’t really notice this up till now because she has always rather remained in the background, but this girl is even blander than the rest of Rikuo’s classmates, who despite being annoying at least have gotten some characterization. Was she also this bland in the manga?

I liked that fight in the first half, though. There were a number of rather standard still frames used, but at the same time there also were quite a number of well drawn poses for Rikuo, in which you can really see that he’s using his entire body to support this sword. That’s not something I expected from a series like this.

Yura also didn’t really accomplish much, but I like the build up that has been put into her character. She’s obviously meant as a character for later arcs, and the current arc is bit by bit trying to get her close to Nura’s secret and I’m quite interested in how the creators are going to end up using her.
Rating: * (Good)

The first half of this episode was… annoying. Obviously that hot spring was the big blame for this. It’s a good thing that this arc was really trying to tell a story, so that it was just building up for the second half of this series, but it remains obnoxious to see creators grab every chance they can to put female characters in a bath and have some of the unimportant male side-characters talk about peeping.

Overall, I’ll be happy when the focus of this series shifts away from Rikuo’s classmates. At the moment, they’re just too one-sided. The second half of this episode on the contrary was pretty good. That trap felt pretty flimsy in the previous episode, but this episode showed that for whatever reason, Gyuuki made a hard decision here that could cost him his own life. Especially the atmosphere at the end of this episode was quite good, even though it was meant to be an obvious cliff-hanger.

Overall though, after six episodes, I do think that Nurarihyon no Mago lacks the charms of Junji Nishimura’s better works. While I like it much more than Kyou Kara Maou (or what I’ve seen of it anyway), it really lacks the refined characterization that made series as Simoun, Windy Tales and True Tears so memorable. He really seems to be a guy who can get the best out of his series when they’re original stories, instead of following an adaptation. But who knows, I still like Nurarihyon no Mago, and the manga seems solid enuogh in any case.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Interesting romantic build-up here, in which people start mistaking the brother-sister relationship between Rikuo and Yuki-onna as something more. Still, I liked those small details of holding hands, and how Yuki-onna’s loyalty was portrayed. This mostly was a build-up episode so this was the thing that stood out the most, but it definitely wasn’t a chore to watch the rest of this episode.

A lot of the build-up went into some followers of Nurarihon, who apparently don’t like Rikuo becoming the third heir (speaking of which, we haven’t seen Rikuo’s father, have we? Same for his grandmother: what happened to them? My guess is that the creators are saving those stories for somewhere in the future), and therefore try to kill him along with his friends. Now, with the overwhelming power that Nura has, they really must have come up with something that can actually kill him. After all, the rats were simply underestimating Rikuo’s power. The same can’t exactly be said from the people of the Nura clan, who pretty much saw the guy grow up.

I think that the evil youkai are a bit too stereotypically evil here (as in, they have no other sides than those evil ones), but apart from that I’m surprised how I didn’t really get annoyed by this episode even though not a lot of stuff happened and there were a lot of teenagers being typical teenagers. The fact that there was at least some plot here also probably helped, but as far as build-up goes I’ve certainly seen much worse.
Rating: * (Good)

I’m still not exactly sure why I like this series so much when it has just been building up. There’s also the amount of cliches and overused tropes here and having a kid as the lead character here also not the best for first impressions. Unlike Giant Killing, which started off immediately with a bang where it mixed often used tropes with very nice ideas, and immediately started to play with its characters, Nurarihyon no Mago has more shounen tropes against it and instead is clearly saving its trumps for later here.

The premise of this episode also was another kidnapping, which pretty much happens everywhere. I think it’s a combination of things that makes up for these cliches, which caused me to just mostly ignore them. The way in which the story is clearly promising to get more interesting is one thing, but on top of that I’m also really getting into the atmosphere here. The first half of this episode, for example was very good at that, and there definitely was this sense of urgency. The stories themselves are also well told and paced, and the characters are very good at conveying their emotions. I’m not sure whether this comes from the manga or the anime staff, but whoever is responsible is doing a very good job of putting everything into context.

My only real issue with this episode was that it devolved a bit into an “overkill fight”. You know, the part in which the good guys come with so much force at the bad guys that it works a bit as an an anti-climax. I know that it had its purpose in the story, but it also killed the tension that the rest of the episode had been building up to.

Now, something strange happened with the graphics in this episode. I’m not sure if it was there before (in that case I just didn’t notice), but there were some panels that were reduced to simple black and white lines. Now, I wonder whether the creators are going to use that more in the series. When they’re going to be consequent about it, it can lead to some neat effects. Speaking of the visuals here, that rat at the end of the episode looked really awesome. Kudos to the manga author for portraying such an interesting-looking transformation. If the rest of the manga has more of those scenes we’re in for some eye candy here.
Rating: * (Good)