「朔の夜, 黒髪のとわ 」 (Saku no Yoru, Kurokami no Towa)
“Night of the New Moon and the Black-Haired Towa”

This week’s Yashahime introduces one of the more inconveniencing abilities that Towa gained in the feudal era by discovering that her powers are weakened on certain nights. Similar to Inuyasha’s human appearance, Towa ended up getting blessed with the ability to become 100% human on certain nights, complete with long jet black hair.

The main problem though is that it had to happen on a night when they are in the midst of confronting Nikosen, a sage who decided it’d be more exciting to become a demon, grow spider legs, and spew out poison mist. Although the girls do their best to adhere to mask ordinances, distancing is tricky when Towa is rendered weak by her lack of demon strength and Nikosen can create illusions on parts of his body.

Even if it wasn’t entirely story-dense, this was actually a good fight because there was some tension built with regards to how they have to avoid his toxins while also keeping Towa guarded and trying to go after two supposed separate parts of Nikosen. It does run out of momentum by the time Moroha and Towa end up finding a hideout spot until the sun goes up, but for the first half of the episode, it was impressive to see how engaging the fight was when Moroha and Setsuna had to take down parts of Nikosen on their own.

But while this episode wasn’t much to write home about, it’s the next episode’s preview that’s bound to create a ton of buzz. For starters, Miroku’s back! We see a little bit of Sango as well, but Miroku is gonna make a grand return and now he has long hair. It should also give us the incentive to learn about Hisui and how his upbringing has been with the unconventional childhood he must have shared with his parents. It might also be a good cut-off point for my coverage of the show as I’m preparing to start off 2021 with a clean slate. And seeing as Yashahime is currently the fourth most viewed anime on Japanese TV below Sazae-san, Chibi Maruko-chan, and Detective Conan, this anime might just be even longer than it seems.

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