天下制覇

 Seriously, Itsuki… that was just embarassing.

Impressions:

Aside from the minute and half of recap, this episode starts with a bang. A huge oni grabs Kaori and disappears, despite Tatsuma et all attempting to save her. Tatsumi explains the feud as they go to rescue the sisters. Kaori accidently interfered with her mother’s ritual to bind the beasty the Matsuri used and it ended up rampaging and killing her mother and assumably others.  The Matsuri summon the demon thing, but it ‘s already got Kaori and fuses itself to her. They try to bind/kill the demon, but doing so would kill Kaori too, so they’re forced to stop.

The oni eventually spits out Kaori and goes after Mikan, but then gets distracted. Meanwhile, the ghosts from before start attacking the Matsuri. The beast reappears and starts devouring the ghosts. Mikan comes out with Kaori around the same time that Itsuki’s group arrives. Mikan offers to take her sister’s place in sealing the demon and Itsuki throws Astral’s support behind her.

Itsuki et all run interference while the priestess sisters start dispelling stuff. Itsuki pulls off his eyepatch and goes nuts against the oni. His instructions let Honami bind it so that the sisters can dispel it, but it explodes its remaining horn and knocks them out. It attacks Honami and is about to crush Itsuki, but Addie appears and cuts off its horn. With the oni stunned, the sisters manage to start dispelling it, but Kaori falters. Mikan supports her and the two manage to completely destroy it. Exposition follows. Yawn.

Well, I was psyched when Itsuki tore his eyepatch off because the next 5 seconds were really well animated, but apparently that’s where the budget ran out. It wasn’t that bad of an episode, though it did feel quite a bit needlessly stretched out, especially at the end. After Addie popped in, we had to hear from her and Kuroha about why she was there before they remembered "oh right, there’s this giant man-eating oni behind us." I also expected a whole lot more from the newly trained Itsuki with his eyepatch off than just standing around shouting orders… and not even to multiple people, just Honami. Not to mention that you’d think he’d be able to figure out that their plan would fail what with the magical eye and all. It has been quite awhile since he took the patch off too. He should have at least done something about the giant demon about to crush him. Shoot an energy blast or something, dude. Don’t stand there like an idiot with your magical future-seeing eye.