YMMV / Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan

aka: Nurarihyon No Mago

• Complete Monster: Sanmoto Gorozaemon is initially a member of Hagoromo Gitsune's entourage, but in truth pursues his own agenda. Formerly a human merchant in old Edo and suffering from boredom, he opted to dabble into the dark Hundred Tales' clan's power to unleash a swarm of Yokai (supernatural creatures) that terrorized the nation through indiscriminate killing while Sanmoto brainwashed high ranking officials into his own personal cult. When cornered by the past hero Rihan Nura, Sanmoto opted to become a Yokai himself, resulting in even more death and destruction. In the future, Sanmoto secretly worked with the true Big Bad Abe no Seimei, transforming Rihan's first wife into an assassin to murder him in a child form, gloating over how she murdered the man she had loved while looking like the child the two could never have. Unlike most of the villains who either brainwashed or had aspirations of creating a paradise for yokai, Sanmoto was merely a vulgar man with a god complex who terrorized Edo for his own greedy ambitions. Even a side story delves into how vile he is: when he is rejected by a lady who disliked him, he responded by killing off her family and friends and then picked her up when she was destitute and mentally scarred from the ordeal.
• Die for Our Ship: Kana gets a lot of this from Rikuo/Tsurara shippers, with an extra helping of Ron the Death Eater thrown her way too.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Hagu-chan for Hagoromo Gitsune (When using Yamabuki's body)
    • Abe-No-Kiddo for Ariyuki(Since when he first appeared the only thing that was known about him was tha Semei was his ancestor)
• Fan-Preferred Couple: People often prefer Tsurara as Rikuo's main love interest over Kana.
  • For Foe Yay Shipping, Hagoromo (in current) form and Rikuo, not helped by the Battle Couple feel of the 2nd to last chapter of the series' cover
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • It doesn't seem to make sense that a yokai group would be so fervent about defending humans. But then: a large number of the major Nura clan characters used to be human. Kurotabou was created from a collection of children's stories about a protector of children. and the All Your Powers Combined special ability of Rikuo and Rihan requires the user to be part human. When it comes down on it, the Nura family needs a good mix of yokai and human blood to have the sort of power it did under Rihan.
  • Kurotabou's ability to have a seemingly infinite arsenal of weapons makes sense when it's revealed that he's a Yokai created by scared children wishing for a hero. Children don't care that it's impossible to have an infinite arsenal of weapons under your clothes. It's awesome for a hero to be capable of using an infinite amount of weapons and that's all they care about.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The 1st ending of the second season focused on oranges, which seems cute at first until you realize oranges were once a product of Sanmoto, the worst villain in the series, who once was an orange selling businessman
• Ho Yay: Just chapter 113, that is all...
  Rikuo: Itaku... Be my sword.
  • Rikuo jumps him from behined, promoting Itaku to reply that he himself wants to rough him (rikuo) a bit, too.
  • Chapter 114: Itaku is riding alonside Rikuo's fear.
  • Tamazuki and Inugami, especially in the anime adaptation.
  • Hagoromo Gitsune eats hearts by kissing. She is partial to girls' hearts. Crosses a bit over into Squick and Psycho Lesbian.
  • And now in chapter 122 Kurotabou gives us this jewel.
  Rihan: Exchange sakazuki with me... and then, I will "wear" you.
  Kurotabou: Wear... me?
  • Rikuo and Zen
  • Also in Ch 114: shirtless Rikuo is getting real cozy with Itaku....and they're both panting. Oh my.
  • Jami and his Lord to the point that his Lord's wife was jealous.
  • Tall, dark, handsome, long-haired opponents Rihan and Kurotabou during the Edo period oh, ho so much.
• Moral Event Horizon: Tamazuki crossed it when he killed his most loyal servant, Inugami for no reason other than to power up his sword.
  • The Nue crosses it in two ways, firstly casting his mother, who had been trying to reincarnate him for years, to hell; made all the more jarring since his Freudian Excuse involved her death in the first place, and secondly using Otome with Sanmoto's assistance in an assassination ploy in order to kill Rihan, especially since his need to be reborn led to the curse by his mother onto the Nura Clan which caused Otome to be infertile and thus opt for death, which led to her becoming the host of Hagoromo Gitsune in the first place.
  • Sanmoto for the above reasons, but his enjoyment through Jizo on how he emotionally manipulated Otome into murdering her lover and then gloating about it makes him arguably worse than the former.
• Nightmare Fuel: Sanmoto and his various servants created from his body parts
  • Appearance of many youkai. Especially "XX Village"!
• Replacement Scrappy: The true villains, Sanmoto and Abe no Seimei, are often considered to be unoriginal, inferior replacements to the villain they usurped, the much-beloved Hagoromo Gitsune. Reasons being that the former is cartoonishly vile with himself and the majority of his group being very little fighting skills to back up their cruelty; the latter for despised for many reasons, being an Ungrateful Bastard to his mother in spite of his goals involved avenging her first death discarding her like a disposable pawn with no hints of wanting to do so in his initial characterization, coming across as a Generic Dooms Day Villain due to being underdeveloped as a character outside of a serious no-nonsense personality and on top of that, unlike the majority of the other Yokai of the series that utilize their abilities from Japanese folklore, his Nue aspect of his character isn't explored at all, not even in his appearance, in spite of being half-Yokai.
• Squick: Nurarihyon's head is like that because he's so old (one of those senior citizen things), of course, this also serves to make him better resemble the classic depiction of Nurarihyon. But Rikuo's own head will probably become the same when he ages.
  • EVERYTHING about Hagoromo Gitsune: an immortal fox demon which possess women bodies to survive and eats human kidneys in order to give birth to ancient evil monster that is already fully aware and intelligent while in her womb. Nightmare Fuel personified? Sure looks like it.
  • Abe no Seimei, as an infant not yet born
  • Sanmoto Gorōzaemon. Just, Sanmoto. Even Minagoroshi Jizou has nothing on him - oh wait...
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Portions of the background music seem directly ripped from the Harry Potter theme...
  • Averted with the next season, which provides a more original soundtrack
• Too Cool to Live: Nura Rihan, he's assassinated unceremoniously and underhandedly without a fight in the background because a great deal of the conflict would be finished quickly if he were still around.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: It's a bit of a shock when the Onmyouji Pato is referred to as male.