Turns out, being a human assistant for Hanako means cleaning the bathroom. I should have seen that coming. But no, that’s not the only job Yashiro is going to have, though bathroom duty seems to be a given. It looks like there’s going to be way more apparitions in this school, and it’ll be the job of both Hanako and maybe mostly Yashiro to take care of them.
The mysterious being this time is Yousei-san, a monster said to steal your things and upon looking at it, it’ll eat you. Lot of students around the school and even Yashiro herself finds some of her stuff to be missing, and rumors about Yousei keep spreading. It’s hard to ignore them when lunches, books, and even multiple locker doors disappear out of nowhere. After Yashiro’s friend Aoi spills water on her, Yashiro’s scales appear and she runs off somewhere. In the hallway where she is, she finds all the missing stuff and then accidentally stumbles upon Yousei. And if it weren’t for Hanako coming in to save her, she would have been a goner. And interestingly, Yousei turned out to be a fusion of squishy pink rabbits called Mokke. And they’re really cute and have cute voices!
The anime is taking a cool direction when it comes to youkai/apparitions. Mokke are usually calm little guys that don’t attack humans, but because their story has changed, it also changed them. Apparently most apparitions can’t go against the rumors about them, and they have to change accordingly or else they face themselves vanishing. Humans spread rumors and they get exaggerated or change so drastically over time, and in order to satisfy those rumors, the apparitions follow suit. That’s actually kind of sad. Maybe most apparitions aren’t evil at all, or maybe none of them are but it’s because of rumors from humans that make them evil and dangerous when maybe they never were. The Mokke are tiny squishy cute things, but the rumors from the students transformed them into such a terrifying creature. And what’s even more sad is that innocent creatures like them get cut down by Hanako.
Hanako is part of the wonders of the school and he’s in charge of keeping the apparitions in check, and if he comes across a hostile one, he has no choice but to cut it down. But this is when Yashiro finds out another thing that only she can do. Hanako can’t interact with humans so he can’t do anything to change the rumors to help the Mokke out, but Yashiro can. And she happily takes on the challenge as thanks for Hanako saving her life twice. Also they had a cute moment on the roof where they officially became friends and all that and that was just adorable. Yashiro’s rumor about the Yousei was telling people to carry candy around with them so the Yousei won’t bother them, since the Mokke love candy. And it worked and they’re all happy, yay.
The other half of the episode, we meet Kou Minamoto. He’s an up and coming exorcist who wants to exorcise Hanako because he views him as a threat, and we get treated to a short fight between them. I see a lot of people complaining about the lack of animation, and I can see why they point it out. For the most part, I don’t care about the lack of animation because the show already has so much style and looks so gorgeous, buuut…the lack of animation really was evident with the short fight between Hanako and Kou. It could have looked pretty cool but it had the usual cuts and manga panel style, which I do like but makes it less exciting for a fight. Oh well.
I liked this part because Kou seems like a pretty fun character, and we learn some interesting things about Hanako. I don’t know if there’s more to the Hanako story or the anime is just taking liberty with it, but it seems that Hanako indeed was a murderer. He plays it off as a joke, but it seems pretty obvious especially when he’s carrying around a kitchen knife for some reason. Kou’s grandmother told him that Hanako is an evil and dangerous spirit that she tried to exorcise once but wasn’t able to, so Hanako must be stronger than we think. We don’t know any details about this murder, whether it was self defense or it was totally intentional but it’s something we can look forward to learning about later. And the thought kind of haunts Yashiro, where even though she calls him her friend, she doesn’t really know much about him.
I liked this episode more than the first one. I really enjoy Hanako and Yashiro’s interactions, and learning about the twist on apparitions was great too. Kou only had a short appearance this episode, but he already looks like he’ll be fun to have around. And judging by the OP it looks like we’ll be meeting more characters and I can’t wait.
