MAO

Episode 9

This week's episode was a bit of a weird one, with the first half capping off what we saw last week concerning another one of these immortal apprentices from a millennium ago, and then a second half starting up something else entirely, which gave the episode a bit of a weird flow. Well, actually, I shouldn't lay the blame for the wonky pacing of this episode entirely on the structure. I think maybe more than any other previous episode we've yet had, this one spent a noticeable amount of time in flashback, or with Nanoka recapping things that happened pretty recently. “Just as I started complimenting this show on its pacing,” I remember thinking to myself at one mid-recap point, “It starts doing this.”

Being nine episodes in is a weird point for this series to start doing this kind of thing, too—at least for things that aren't niche, easy-to-miss details (which these weren't). While we're pretty far into a one-cour anime series' standard 12-episode-count, we know the story of MAO could potentially have it spanning well beyond that. Relative to the story as a whole—which currently has well over 300 chapters—we're still in the early stages. So I wouldn't expect this kind of recapping until several episodes later, or at least maybe a season later to account for people who might have forgotten between the airings of season one and two (although to be clear: no second season for this show has been announced yet). I don't want to stay on this tangent for too long though, so suffice to say: I hope the series doesn't stay in the habit of padding out its runtime like this. Inu Yasha, of course, did this a ton, and in many ways this series has started to feel like Takahashi showing us everything she learned from making Inu Yasha—unfortunately, the anime adaptation undermines that a bit by rehashing one of the most frequent criticisms of Inu Yasha.

As for the content of the episode itself, the first half was definitely the better of the two. The conclusion of the whole thing felt a bit rushed (“Oh by the way, your daddy told me to dispose of you—cool guess we're done now,” I mean come on) but we learned that the waitress is an ayakashi (very cool), we saw a guy who targets women get his comeuppance in a deliciously gory way (also very cool). So, nitpicks aside, I'll take it. It really solidified that this series is one of Takahashi's darker ones, too—something we've gotten a sense of up until now, but I think once we see a man's heart get forcefully ripped out of his chest, it's about as safe an assumption as you can make.

Then, there was the second half, which gave us dragonflies, frogs, and the promise of Mao and Hyakka working together to solve a mystery, as well as Nanoka taking on a more direct role in the combat because of the way elements work. So, the series has my attention—especially with the idea of Hyakka getting more screentime. There's obviously still a lot we don't know about him and the other group of apprentices who were once out to curse Mao, and this might finally give us an opportunity to hear something more substantial. At the very least, it might give us a fun side character—I really like the idea that he's just been in a traveling circus for a while with his floating heads.

Not the best episode this week, certainly, but I've seen far worse. I'm still very much interested in seeing where the story goes, all the more now that we've got all these fellow apprentices from a millennium ago in the mix. I'm especially still interested in hearing more about this situation with the Byoki and Mao having been “framed.” Still, I just hope it doesn't get bogged down by excessive recaps for things that happened recently. This was the first episode where I felt like it was a problem in this show, so I'm trying not to sound too doomer-y about it yet, but remembering how prevalent that was throughout Inu Yasha, it's hard for me to not feel concerned. Doubly so since the pacing has been much better throughout this series, and it'd be such a shame to put that to waste.

Rating:

MAO is currently streaming on Hulu.