Daemons of the Shadow Realm

Episode 9

This is what I like to call a “necessary episode” rather than a particularly entertaining one. It's basically just tying up loose ends. On one hand, we have the Kagemoris further delving into who the mastermind was for the previous night's attacks. The only really interesting bits to come out of this are the reveal that the Kagemoris have a fool-proof lie detector (and thus don't need to resort to torture) and that the attack was likely an inside job—as someone needed to let the attackers inside.

On the other side of the story, we have some more fish-out-of-water comedy as Dera takes Yuru to a hobby megastore to buy everything he needs to make arrows—alongside doing some other shopping and general sightseeing. (Though, I am unsure as to why he didn't just take Yuru to a sporting goods store for the arrows. It's not like archery—especially traditional Japanese archery—isn't a normal thing in Japan.)

The whole bit is largely just for humor but the topic does eventually come up that the “bandits” that had been attacking Yuru on the mountain for years were almost certainly people from outside the village who were allowed in (or else they'd have never been able to bypass the barrier). This, once again, makes Higashi Village the obvious culprit—though which faction remains unclear. The good news is that Yuru now realizes this, even if he doesn't fully accept things at face value.

The end bit of the episode is mainly just setup for the next one. Dera and Yuru lead those tailing them into a trap—use a Daemon house to spirit them away to a place where they are unable to escape. While Dera and Yuru seem to think their pursuers are from the Kagemori clan, this might not be the case. Unfortunately, since two of the three are killed by Tenaga-Ashinaga upon their sudden appearance, we may never know the truth.

All in all, we're left ready our next big fight scene: Left and Right against Tenaga-Ashinaga. Next week, expect action and lots of it. And who knows, we might even get some answers as well.

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Daemons of the Shadow Realm is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.