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「蜘蛛の子」 (Kumo no ko)
“The Spider Child”
There were a whole lot of things going on and not all of it made sense, but more on that later. First, we meet Akira (Sakamoto Maaya), the first female fire hunter we’ve seen so far and who is possibly a foreshadowing of Touko’s future. The two share some things in common, namely receiving the tools of the trade from other fire hunters.
How does one become a fire hunter in the first place? Undergoing special training or a special initiation? An ability one can only be born with? Or merely having the tools and using them? If the latter, then Touko is already on her way to becoming a fire hunter. It was great to finally see Touko actually do something and be the one to rescue rather than be rescued, slaying the fiend that ripped Shouzou a new one.
The catalyst to Touko’s first showdown was the discovery that all creatures in the dock’s vicinity had been barbequed, by the spiders, apparently. The spiders gained inflammability as well as fire power from insect venom, which they then unleashed on the unsuspecting life forms. Poor Kun was immune to the venom and thusly abandoned, rather cruelly. Kun’s name notably differs from the other humans (though it’s unclear if he (and by extent, the spiders) is human or merely humanoid), his name written in katakana rather than kanji and with no fire-related meaning.
In earlier posts, I had wondered just how dreadful the spiders could be compared to the divine clans-the answer to that would be bad-very bad. Not only did they char everyone, they lured the fire hunters there with fiends. Eradicating the fire hunters is a logical move if the spiders are aiming for the capital. No fire-hunters means no human defenses to slog through.
This might be where Touko’s importance comes in. If she can use the fire hunter skills and be powerful to boot while still being too new on the scene to be overlooked as a threat, she could be the dark horse in this race, especially if fire hunters like Akari are useless against these ultra-vicious fiends. Kun is also going to be a gamechanger here with his enemy intel and ability to be at one with the dangerous insects (at least according to his mother).
Meanwhile back on the ranch (or should I say, mansion), there was that weird scene where Hinako was struck by lightning upon finding a test tube of (presumably) skyfire. I’d hazard the guess that this was a dream, seeing as how Hinako shows up in perfect health in the following scene. Whether it was merely a nightmare or a premonition of the future remains to be seen, but it certainly was confusing. If it is a premonition, it would suggest that someone (Yusoichi?) planted the skyfire where Hinako could easily pick it up (because you know, most people wouldn’t leave their dangerous research materials lying out like that unless there was a nefarious purpose). As to why someone would do such a thing-perhaps to use Hinako as a test subject, perhaps to drive Koushi to desperate action.
During Yusoichi’s big party, we meet a gate crasher, Roroku (Yoshimasa Hosoya), who invites Koushi on a hunt. We get a few disconcerting hints dropped here and there about the Yusoichi family. For one, Kira lets drop that her mother despises animals, which as we know, are pretty important to fire hunter work. Kira, for her part, adores them and gets on well with the dogs. For another, Yusoichi is keen on keeping out the skyfire hunter, which tells me there’s something about their skyfire research he doesn’t want Rokuro to sniff out. Otherwise, you’d think he’d be keen to get the help of an expert on catching their research material. As time goes on, I get a stronger and stronger sense that something unsavory is lurking beneath Yusoichi’s surface that the three innocent kids here (Kira, Hinako, Koushi) are being used as pawns for.
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