Ushio & Tora

Episode 36

"Hey, whatever happened to Guren and Hyou?" said probably somebody else. In the seven episodes since we last saw this pair of adversaries, the Hakumen no Mono has risen, Ushio met his mom, and a dozen other major plot points happened, barreling toward a final battle that totally eclipsed the show's earlier clashes. That's not to say that the conclusion to Guren and Hyou's battle is anything but rewarding. This episode tells a story in parallels, with Hyou's arc coming full circle at the same time as the central conflict with the Hakumen.

The most memorable color of this episode is red. Ushio & Tora is great at setting a scene with a single color, but this is the first time I can recall an entire episode following a color theme. It's there when Saya opens the flaming gates to the netherworld. It's the color of the spear being reborn in Tora's body and Ushio's trickling blood as he feeds it to his unconscious friend. It's in the shattered ruby of Hakumen's eyes and the barrier that binds it in agony. But most importantly, it's in the meaning of Guren's name and the color of the electricity that crackles around him. There is a lot going on in Ushio & Tora right now, but with this visual storytelling choice, it all feels cohesive. It's a fantastic way to tie together all these disparate elements.

Guren and Hyou have apparently been fighting for three days straight. So it's no surprise when Hyou wakes up in a daze, completely battered, on a stranger's lawn. It threw me for a loop when the stranger introduced herself as an Academy Award winning actress (am I supposed to know who she is?) but when her young daughter appears, the real parallel is devastatingly obvious—these are stand-ins for the wife and child Hyou lost to Guren long ago. If that's not overt enough for you, even the blockheaded Guren loudly makes the same observation. As Hyou struggles to defend this woman and child, Guren slashes his face, making blood trickle down the side opposite his scar in a visual parallel. It doesn't take a critical eye to see how everything's lining up.

And yet, for all the hit-you-over-the-head obviousness of it, there's an emotional intimacy to this fight. Perhaps due to fatigue and blood loss, all the tragedies of Hyou's life are blurring together. In his exhausted soliloquy, no time has passed at all. It takes storytelling might to portray a fight that ends in mutually assured destruction as a victory for Hyou, but this episode pulls it off. In his perception of time, it's a bittersweet do-over for the exorcist, a chance to erase the vengeful hate he's felt for most of his life.

One of Hyou's final thoughts is of Ushio, and how much better the victory would have been better fighting alongside him. This is where the plot comes full circle, tying Hyou's righteous triumph to Ushio's battle of good versus evil. Between these two leads and their struggles, this episode saw a lot of side characters take the stage, including several that were deceased and a few that were brand new, but it didn't feel overdone. The simplicity of our protagonists' motivations drove this story home.

Rating: A

Ushio & Tora is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Lauren writes about geek careers at Otaku Journalist