Ah filler, my old friend. It has certainly been a while since I saw you. And by a while I mean… very very recently. Regardless, it’s time once again for another Ushio and Tora episode. Or as I said in my title, Mayuko and Tora. Because in this episode, Ushio is absent. Why is he absent? He has diarrhea. And no, I didn’t not make that reason up. That’s actually the reason.
So with Ushio out of the picture, what could this episode possibly be about? Well, i’m going to tell you in this installment of filler theater.
So after Ushio gets sick, Tora heads out to go see Mayuko as she told him that she was going to have him try a crab burger.
However, he arrives to see her talking to bitch face. Bitch face wants to go to see Ushio but Mayuko backs off as she knows that Bitch face likes Ushio. (yes I will continue to call her bitch face until the day she dies because FUCK. HER.)
Mayuko then receives a letter which invites her to a dinner party which Tora can smell a monster’s essence from the letter.
Tora tells Mayuko not to go but she ignores him and heads off. Knowing there will be trouble he goes after her and transforms into her just in case. (Huh…didn’t know he HAD that power until now).
Eventually Mayuko makes her way to the building where two guys are asking her a very odd question.
The question is “What is a satisfying death?” As in the past, they’ve seen humans die with a smile on their face and they can’t understand why. When Mayuko gives them a non-finite answer, the mustache one decides to suck out her brain, however Tora shows up to save her. He punches them both and, thinking he finished them off, goes off with Mayuko who begins to go off on a tangent about wedding ceremonies.
Tora then decides to ask her why she’s okay with sitting on the sidelines when bitchface goes after Ushio and she tells him a story about how Ushio saved her hat and said “It’s only a little mud” and took that saying to heart and lets pretty much everything go.
However they are interrupted as the two monsters are indeed alive and come after the both of them. The two are too powerful when they work together so Mayuko has the idea to have Tora transform and they both separate to confuse them. Tora ends up with the young guy who he basically decimates and Mayuko gets stuck with the old guy. He nearly kills her but Tora jumps in. However the old guy tries to hold Mayuko hostage, but she jumps off a high platform taking him with her giving Tora the chance to take him out and save her as well.
After all that excitement they head back and Bitchface and Ushio are there having missed the whole adventure, and Tora finally learned Mayuko’s name. D’aw. The end.
This episode…was interesting. Mainly because it’s the first episode to not feature Ushio like…at all. The only other time we’ve come close to this is when he went nuts and they had to revive him, but they still showed him inside his mind having an internal conflict, and he was still the central focus of the story. This episode was nice because honestly, I was getting a little tired of Ushio. He’s a little too “Save everyone” gung ho kind of energy and it’s nice to chill out with a character like Tora to see what he does without the foil of Ushio. Mayuko is a different kind of foil entirely and it’s nice to see how they react around each other.
I’m with Tora here where it’s kind of annoying to see her be SUCH a doormat for other people’s happiness, but she’s still a far better person or character than Bitchface.
Look, I have no problem when people put other people’s needs ahead of themselves, but Mayuko takes this to a new level. It’s healthy to have SOME kind of selfishness. Tora’s view of the world, while, a tad crazier than preferable does have some valid points that you can’t ALWAYS live for somebody else and have to care about yourself sometimes too. They’re two opposites of each other and I see what they’re trying to do here.
From what I can gather they’re trying to show that bitch fuck will end up with Ushio and Mayuko will end up with Tora. Yeah I know. It’s weird. But it’s going to happen. There’s some beauty and the beast shit in here and it’s not going to end until he puts his monster dick in her. Yeah. I said it. These two? They’re gonna fuck eventually. Just saying. Don’t shoot the messenger.
I’m glad this episode focused on her though because she was a character I always wanted to learn more about and always seemed to get shoved to the side in lieu of Bitch face and this episode is a great showing of why she’s a better character in every way.
Yeah there are a few things wrong with this episode like Why did the bad guys happen to send HER the invitation? Did they use a random lottery system? How are people not reported missing after they’re killed by these two if this party was their last known place that they were going? Why did they ask random people instead of kidnapping people with philosophy degrees? All these questions are unanswered, but however, it’s still a good episode. It may be a filler, it may not even have one of the two titular characters in it, but it was still one of the most enjoyable episodes of this series that I’ve seen. So, yeah there’s that. Good Job Mayuko and Tora. If you were a spin-off series, I’d still watch you.
Episode 7.5/10
-Hideki