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「あいしょう」 (Aishou)
“Compatibility”
I really liked how this episode piggy-backed on the last one, introducing the guardian spirits’ wrath towards and extreme dislike of the Byobu Nozoki, to then show why they don’t like him, and get a little peek at the past while they were at it. The verdict? Yeah, their attitude is still not earned.
We jump into the past where we have sparks of friction flying all over the place. Sasuke and Nikichi are pissed off at having to work together- Nikichi at being paired with an oh so lowly inugami, and Sasuke at being thrown with a stuck up partner. Byobu Nozoki gets off on the wrong foot with the pair, making a disparaging remark, throwing them into a rage that ends up with Byobu Nozoki getting his lights punched out. When gramps reprimands them, they clarify their duty “we just have to watch over him?”, which the old man confirms. It was a small line, but I feel like it’s going to have, if not already is having repercussions. If you know anything about folk tales and supernatural creatures, you know the devil is in the details. Defining their duties as merely guard dogs leaves a pretttty big loophole there for other activities like, beating up on “lesser” yokai.
Much as the duo thinks of themselves as only taking the form of boys, their attitude is exactly like a teenagers sporting hubris colored shades. They immediately fly into a rage when their young charge is missing and the unfortunate Byobu Nozoki arrives late to the scene (frantically looking for the bakegitsune (fox spirit and apparently the yokai head honcho)), who they blame. Ichitarou was lured out by a bubble seller and panic arises that he was kidnapped for a ransom after hearing about a similar case for the thief-takers down the road. Eyewitnesses claim that the Nagasaki lad was accompanied by the missing child. Hilariously, Nikichi and Sasuke can’t even agree on a culprit- one points a finger at humans, the other at yokai (mind you, they haven’t even started looking for clues). On top of that, they insist they know better than the bakegitsune.
Karma has a funny way of coming back to you- human or yokai, and the boys get a taste of their own medicine when the bakegitsune has had enough, punching them clear out into the river. Lucky for them, the incident leads to getting rescued by a pair of kappa who agree to help them in exchange for medicine. As it turns out, they were tasked to watch over the missing kid “to protect him from flesh-hungry parents”, and promised a tantalizing watermelon and cucumber. But the person who tasked them was the kosamabo who was given a rice ball in return for watching the same child with the same story. To go incognito, the kappa disguise themselves as bubble sellers, but the mastermind behind this angrily confronts them that they didn’t kill the kid. Bocchan sees this and ventures out to protect the child, though he himself is but a kid, and a sickly one at that.
This speaks volumes about Ichitarou- he is a good-hearted lad, putting others before himself, and does not let his constitution get in the way of doing so, even if his body bears the hefty price later. He also has guts of steel, confronting a grown-up like that. Knowing what we know about his personality, I can only imagine how much more worse he feels about being bedridden and coddled by the family, basically the antithesis to these tenets of his character (and not to mention the thirst for independence every adolescent has).
In doing what he does, Bocchan ends up in a river and a bad illness afterwards, leading the kappa to ask for medicine. The kappas are also very pissed that they were cheated out of watermelon and cucumbers, readily switching their request from medicine to finding the scammer so they can get their fruits, upon finding that bocchan is no longer in place.
All’s well that ends well, and both boys are rescued and the kappas get their coveted produce in the end. The guardian pair muses over on their boss lady, Madam Odin and her reason for sending them here. I’m assuming Madam Odin is the mother. Interestingly, it seems that the yokais also were protectors for her when she was young, and that bocchan exhibits much the same characteristics that she did at that age. Which, if Madam Odin is the mother, that’s a twist, because a woman who throws her stepson out of the house, pretending he’s dead, does not sound like the kind of girl they are describing. But maybe she’s the grandmother, or things happened that distorted her.
I just love how the supernatural world of Edo Japan sprang to life in this episode, yokai popping out of every corner, each with their own idiosyncrasies. It tickled me pink how rather than cookie cutter human shapes, the yokai characteristics came through in their human form, in the distinct mouths, eyes, eyebrows, so you could still kind of tell what yokai it was. Yeah, we still had exposition mode, but the character writing for all of the spirits covered it like grade-A icing, bringing a charm to it. I also enjoyed seeing the rivalry between Nikichi and Sasuke, developing them as individuals, two parts of a whole. Moral of the story- don’t get between kappa and their cucumbers. Also- double check what spirits you’re enlisting so you choose the ones that’ll get it done (luckily, this baddie did not do that). I found it hilarious that the villain thought the spirits he was enlisting were dangerous, when what he really enlisted were gentle friendly ones who just cared about food.
