The Yōkai Hunter Amakusa Haruaki Appears!
~The Threat of a Hundred Demons!!~
Japanese Title:
妖怪ハンター・天草晴明登場！ 〜百鬼の脅威!!〜
Youkaihantaa Amakusa Haruaki Toujou! ~Hyakki no Kyoui!!~
Original Air Date:
12 October 2022
Mob's class will be contributing a haunted house to Salt Middle School's bunkasai note . The teenager gets teamed up with Inukawa and two other slackers from Class 2-1 for costume duty. His teammates elect to make lazy costumes out of bedsheets, but Mob suggests they put in some actual effort. He has no specific ideas, though.
The student council reviews the list of festival booth ideas from all classes. Ritsu has... some misgivings about this year's submissions. A concert space? His own class's crossdressing maid café? Student Council President Kamuro waves away the younger Kageyama's objections; everything on the docket is fine, provided everyone is careful. Vice President Tokugawa agrees.
Two weeks to bunkasai day. Mob is beginning to panic at his classmates' progress; he still hasn't come up with a costume design... Cut to Reigen bemoaning a decrease in traffic to Spirits and Such's gaudy website. Serizawa plans to attend night school, which would mean changing his availability. Just as Reigen gives his blessing, a strangely-dressed man named Haruaki Amakusa bursts into the office, talking nonsense about hunting yōkai. Reigen is not amused, and asks the strange man to wait outside: he's expecting clients.
Three hours later, Amakusa's back. Somehow he now makes even less sense. Reigen vents barely contained spleen all over him: he needs to get to the fucking point and soon. The hunter relates his story at last in a format Reigen can actually parse: Amakusa is on a mission to defeat a shadowy group of yōkai—the Hyakki—intent on draining city residents' life forces to resurrect their Great Yōkai King. The yōkai hunter sets down a hefty wad of bills in exchange for his help, prompting Reigen to swiftly change tack. Mob gets roped in too when he arrives in need of Reigen's counsel.
They eventually step inside an abandoned building—one Spirits and Such has already exorcised—that Amakusa identifies as a source of Hyakki aura. At the way out sealing behind them, Amakusa and Reigen panic, while Serizawa becomes calmer and Mob... Mob's attentions clearly lie elsewhere. Against a yōkai's attack, Amakusa's weak psychic ability crumbles, but Serizawa casually dispatches the spirit. The remaining Hyakki, then the Great Yōkai King's Four Generals, arise in retaliation; Serizawa's flashy acrobaticism and a preoccupied Mob's raw strength snuff these out too. In a blinding rage, the Great Yōkai King himself bears down on the young Kageyama...
...Who summarily reduces all that power to a pile of ash. Impressed, Amakusa offers employment to both psychics, but they flatly decline. Reigen's glee at his talent refusing to be poached and his disrespect for Amakusa both cost him dearly. But the experience gives Mob the perfect idea, and he leaves without asking for Reigen's help... to the man's eternal surprise. The next morning, Inukawa and the other two students join Mob and pitch in on a replica of the fallen Great Yōkai King.
Mob is rightfully proud of himself: he came up with a decent ghost concept for his class's haunted house just in time for the bunkasai and managed to convince three consummate slackers to help him build it. In the maid café, Ritsu, miserable in frills, serves two older women. Over the sound of his customers' cooing delight, he hears Shou Suzuki's voice raised in greeting...
Tropes appearing in this episode include:
- Adaptation Deviation: Reigen agrees to help Amakusa for free out of self-preservation in the manga. Seasoning City has been hemorrhaging residents ever since Claw's world domination attempt; any more weirdness going down might dry up business for good. Here, Amakusa pays him a million yen for his help, but Reigen shames him for throwing his weight around with money and is shamed himself into giving it back.
- Body Wipe: Mob's poker face... then his right eye... then its pupil fills the screen as the gigantic, powered-up Great Yōkai King moves to crush him to pulp. The very next cut is of the King's clapped-out skull resting atop a still-steaming pile of ash.
- Deteriorates Into Gibberish: Inverted; Reigen can only understand Amakusa's talk of yōkai conspiracy when he relates it in song.
- Dissonant Serenity:
- Aside from Mob—who is not only more powerful than everyone else here, but quietly panicking about the upcoming bunkasai and not even fully present—Serizawa is eerily calm in the abandoned office building when the way back seals behind them. Reigen lampshades it here and lampshaded it in the second season OVA as well.Reigen: You seem calm about this, Serizawa.
Serizawa: Oh, I tend to be more relaxed in dark, confined spaces. - Mob as the Great Yōkai King rushes him. The teenager doesn't flinch—or even blink—as he obliterates the ancient spirit.
- Aside from Mob—who is not only more powerful than everyone else here, but quietly panicking about the upcoming bunkasai and not even fully present—Serizawa is eerily calm in the abandoned office building when the way back seals behind them. Reigen lampshades it here and lampshaded it in the second season OVA as well.
- Dragged into Drag: Ritsu is outraged at the prospect of wearing a dress for his class's crossdressing maid café; he feels everyone should be dressed more conservatively for the school's bunkasai. At episode's end, his female customers' delight and his embarrassment in front of Shou are Played for Laughs. The other boys in his class, however, seem to be thoroughly enjoying themselves in drag.
- Improvised Weapon: Serizawa's business card, which he clones into a sword, then later spins into a sort of multifaceted lens for intensifying his attack on one of the Four Generals.
- Just a Kid: Amakusa's first impression of Mob. Reigen assures him that the unassuming teenager is quite capable of handling himself against whatever may come their way.
- Kabuki Theatre: Amakusa sings the tale of his quest to take down the Hyakki. The background art shifts to lushly animated sumi-e note paintings, and the accompanying music evokes Kabuki Sounds. Reigen remarks that he can actually understand Amakusa's speech now.
- Meaningless Meaningful Words: Amakusa speaks in a flood of obscure references, antiquated syntax and off-kilter pauses. Reigen, normally patient with potential clients, finds Amakusa mostly unintelligible and frustrating enough to set off his Rage Breaking Point. In the manga, Serizawa is able to pick up on the references due to his hikikomori past: they happen to be locations and events from recently popular MMORPGs.
- Mirthless Laughter: Ritsu laughs nervously when Shou compliments him in a dress at episode's end. The framing of the scene, which focuses on Shou's soda and the sound of Ritsu's joyless chuckling rather than the boys' faces, spares the younger Kageyama brother any more embarrassment.
- No Social Skills: Reigen's sarcastic disdain for Amakusa never seems to register with the yōkai hunter.
- Rummage Sale Reject: Amakusa's weird getup—a mix of martial-arts attire, an ancient Japanese hairstyle (mizura), arm bracers and a katana—screams either 'LARPing' or 'gibbering mad'. Or perhaps both.
- School Festival: Salt Middle School's bunkasai, the backdrop of this episode. Like many other examples of this trope, Mob's class's obakeyashiki and Ritsu's class's café are given special focus, but we do see Tsubomi's class's pancake booth and individual club offerings.
- Shrinking Violet: Despite Amakusa's robust personality, he has tremendous difficulty presenting himself in front of Reigen and Serizawa during their first meeting.
- Talkative Loon: The yōkai hunter starts talking about his mission without confirming whether Reigen can even accommodate him. He waits around for hours for Reigen to finish up with clients before showering him with... even more prattle.
- Downplayed, as Amakusa happens to be right.
- Thinking Out Loud: Far more concerned with finding a workable solution to his problem than exorcising ghosts, Mob spends much of the second half of the episode doing this and fighting ancient yōkai simultaneously. Reigen takes note of his preoccupation, but never comments on it.
- Upper-Class Twit: Amakusa comes from a wealthy family and his parents support his yōkai-hunting mission.
- Yōkai: The spirits Amakusa hunts. The Hyakki gathering in this episode is possibly a reference to the Hyakki Yagyō of Japanese folklore, which are said to occur wherever the boundary between the spirit world and the world of the living is especially tenuous.
