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Ushio & Tora
Episode 31

by Lauren Orsini,

How would you rate episode 31 of
Ushio & Tora (TV 2) ?
Community score: 4.3

Good deeds can have unintended consequences. That's the lesson of this week's Ushio & Tora. Ushio's earnest, trusting face has won many an enemy over to his side, but this time it's the catalyst that turns Akiba Nagare over to the dark side. Today's story is Nagare's story and it's a doozy—one of lifelong unhealed wounds—but it always comes back to Ushio.

The first half of the episode is about Ushio's charm working as expected. Though the Hakumen Unit may not believe him, two submarine operators instantly do when “I saw that serious look in your eyes.” They pretend to be held hostage by Ushio (and Ushio's faux-threatening faces are adorable), a fairly risky move for this truly likable guy. Asako is also helpless against his charms. With the aid of the H.A.M.M.R. Institute, she arrives at Ushio's submarine still in her hospital bandages, just in time for a tearful goodbye. Without her memory, this tsundere is all dere, and it's brought out the same in Ushio. It's definitely jarring to see both Asako and Ushio with all their walls down after so many barbs and jabs. But as tearful as it is, Asako does not succeed in her mission to make Ushio stay—like the submarine guys, she's rendered helpless in the face of so much determination and pure goodness.

What's unusual about this episode is that, with Nagare, it's the other way around. Ushio's goodness is a major reason he's acting so weird right now. The sunshiney expression Ushio greets Nagare-niichan with is clouded over by disappointment, and the cinematography here is great—showing Nagare's cruel expression looming above the viewer and looking down on Ushio's crushed expression. Tora tells Ushio to move on without him, and that's perfectly fine with Nagare, who wanted to battle Tora from the start. As Nagare and Tora fight, Nagare reveals that his entire life has apparently led up to this fight. Being born a genius, he never had to try hard to be better than anyone else until Tora, an entity that truly was stronger than him, and the knowledge that Tora was holding back in their first fight plagued Nagare. It ate at him so much that the Hakumen, who senses negative thoughts, saw him as a potential ally (and her twisted smile in that flashback gave me chills). Now it seems that the Hakumen has given Nagare this Popeye-looking Dragon Ball Z transformation ability. It's everything Nagare wanted, but betraying Ushio to do it is still a huge sticking point.

Tora, bless his heart, responds to the entire thing with taunts and jokes between his deadly attacks. The faces during this fight are fantastic. Nagare wants to become the kind of villain who monologues when he thinks he's won, but Tora won't let him be serious. “Like I'll lose to a human so afraid of [Ushio's] eyes that he'll betray his friends,” he mocks. He also doesn't think much of Nagare's genius-level strength, where “you put yourself on a pedestal in this world of pathetic humans.” Tora is trolling him, and it's insult to injury. It's almost laugh-out-loud funny, but the glee is short-lived because Tora, true to his promise, doesn't hold back. This is one emotional ending, so sad that even Tora mourns, with his mane covering his eyes. There's finality here as we near the end of Ushio & Tora's story, and a promise in the air of more tragic conclusions to come. From a love confession to a conclusive battle, this episode will make you feel. And after this level of elevated emotional investment, it's impossible to stop watching.

Rating: A

Ushio & Tora is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Lauren writes about geek careers at Otaku Journalist.


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