Ah, of course, Ueki was doing all this in order to reach level 2. I almost forgot, between the awesomeness of seeing Rinko, Sano and Mori fight. This episode wasn’t really anything special. Ueki fights, Ueki gets beaten, tension rises, last possible moment, Ueki finds his level 2. It’s a pity that the show must obey certain rules when an important plot-part arrives. The creators managed to solve this extremely good with Marilyn, though this time, they failed. I was hoping for Ueki to use his tree powers in a very creative way, but I was wrong. I guess he still relied too much on the power of his sacred treasures in order to fully utilize his tree-powers… but that sounds weird, as you need to fully control your powers in order to reach level… in any case, the creators had a bad day.

Aaaah, I’ve been waiting for this to come out. Yotsuya Kaidan is finished, and now we continue with the second story of Ayakashi: Ten Shu Mono Gatari, and it suddenly looks like I’m watching a total different anime. The art style got a total retyle. The faces of the characters suddenly became to look much more like normal anime-style, and the clothes have changed from simple one-colored kimono’s into bright-colored, multi-layered cloths. This changed the overall style to be mush lighter. Overall, I have to say that I like this new art more than the previous. Especially the Forgotten Gods look beautiful (if you exclude the old lady, that is). Yotsuya Kaidan’s art wasn’t bad, or anything, but it just bothered me a bit too many times.

The story’s also so much different from Yotsuya Kaidan, which revolved around nothing but arrogant characters, only doing as they please and killing each other. Ten Shu Mono Gatari, however, seems to be a love-story, between a Forgotten God and a human. Yotsuya Kaidan had just one supernatural being involved (namely Oiwa). Ten Shu Mono Gatari has many, including different species. I have no idea whether this will be as succesful as Yotsuya Kaidan. I guess the only way to find out it to watch the next couple of episodes.

What the friggin’ heck!?!

Okay, the cliffhanger in this episode is officially the most annoying one yet. I mean, what happened to him to make that happen…? Okay, this was certainly the last thing I would ever have expected from a show of this nature… But then again, he’ll probably find even more power than he had before, but still, I had a serious wtf-feeling after this episode ended.

Anyway, this episode instantly covered three fights, focusing on Mori’s one. What happens when you let an 178-IQ-person meet up with Mori’s power? Some incredibly hilarious scenes. The fight was pretty short for shounen-series-standards, which made it even more enjoyable to see. It was just horribly funny to see a serious person like that guy being turned into a glasses lover, and trying all kinds of ways to outsmarten her. I just loved the way Mori countered all of these plans.

The other fights both featured Sano. That one surprised me, as I would’ve thought that every team member would get a chance to fight, but it seems that Hideyoshi is left out of the action in this arc, just like Rinko in the previous one. I’m wondering what will become of him in the last couple of episodes. I just know that there’ll still be a moment for him to stand in the spotlights, as he’s the only weak person remaining in the team.

Anyway, Sano’s a huge victim in this episode. It doesn’t seem like he’s been killed, but I bet he’s going to wake up with a nice headache. The fact that Ueki’s been chosen for the last and decisive match, has of course been predictable, but the cliffhanger totally made up for that. It’s also nice that Ueki ’s very silent in audience. This made this and the previous episode a rather main-character-less period, which is always good for a series, so it can focus on the side-characters a bit more.

These last two episode had a different way of opening the story than most Mushishi episodes do. Mostly, it Ginko meets up with person, person explains case, Ginko tries to solve. Or something in that direction. Last episode, however, Ginko was already aquainted with the main character, giving a nice twist. This episode, the creators carry this even further, by not letting Ginko and the main character meet until thee quarters of the episode have already been passed.

The first half of the episode tells the story of a man who moves from the countryside to the city in order to become a famous painter. He succeeds, but he becomes so engulfed in his work, that he starts to forget his old family, and finally ends up in stress. As ten years pass since he left his village, he becomes more and more nostalgic, however, wanting to meet his father and sister again. Finally, a combination of stress, doctors and homesickness manage to convince him to go back. The sighting of him returning, and seeing what happened to the place he grew up in, was just too sad to see, I loved it. And this was just the first half of the episode.

The second half features that man staying in the village. He’s lost all of his inspiration, as if all the life has been sucked out of him. When he gets to take care of his niece, he brightens up a bit. But still, he’s got no trace of liveliness inside of him. Then he has a rather “peculiar” meeting with Ginko and with the help of some mushi, he gets his energy back. It was very entertaining to see that this time, the mushi weren’t causing any problems, but were rather helpful to the cast. The effect of this is wonderful. I also loved Ginko in this episode, especially when he shows his “merchant”-side and his strange meeting with the mushi. That shows that even Mushishi work themselves into a lot of trouble.

I also love the way some of the episodes feature some variation of an epilogue. Like they show what happens after a few years passed. This way, the impact on what happened before becomes huge, with magnificent results. When normal anime does this, the main focus lies on the present, while a couple of flashbacks show what happens in the past. This is cute and nice and all, but it doesn’t really capture the impact created by these moments. When these anime do try to show aftermaths, they almost always show the direct aftermaths, in the range from a couple of hours to a couple of days at maximum. It really doesn’t give the characters the true opportunity to recover from it.