And it’s quite the ending.
The main thread of these two episodes is, well, the plot. Kaya, Chie, Nana, Mobu, and Namu all go visit the Ebisumori home, where Nana airs out the family’s dirty laundry. Turns out that in addition to shrine maidens, their pregnancy-hijacking magic can also just plain create curses. It does so at the cost of the mother’s life, so traditionally younger sisters have been brainwashed to serve the clan.
This didn’t happen with Kaya’s mother, Mirai, since it seems that her and Nana’s mother was planning to break the cycle, but it did happen to their aunt who was a lot closer with Mirai than her own mother was. Eventually, Mirai happened to find out about this and having not been raised as a brainwashed human sacrifice, was utterly horrified and driven insane to come up with a scheme to destroy the entire family that, from her perspective, scorned her and was planning to use her as nothing more than the vessel of a curse.
Kaya was an attempt at this, but to kill the mother and become a ruinous curse of destruction, the method needs to go to full term, and Kaya was induced because Mirai got injured late in the pregnancy. Thus, the plan of Nana and friends is to force the doctors to induce her current pregnancy, resulting in the child being born human. However, something similar is already happening: Mirai is bleeding profusely, and flees the hospital because she wants to bring ruin upon the Ebisumori family more than anything. She even manages to shamble (they say thanks to the curse dragging her along) to meet up with everybody at the family mansion.
This kicks off the final episode. Mirai is freaking out, Chie is instructed to take Kaya and flee, and Nana and Namu confront Mirai with the truth, that her mother was honestly trying to do what was best for her. It takes a lot of evidence, but finally she loses it big time and starts looking for Kaya, angsting over the fact that she’s mistreated her own daughter and fearing that Kaya, the innocent in all this who would be dragged down if the curse came due, doesn’t see her as a mother.
Chie has the evidence to prove otherwise, which stops Mirai’s rampage long enough for Kaya to purify the overflowing curse manifestation and an ambulance (called by Mobu) to arrive and spirit Mirai away for a healthy C-section or induction. Either way she’s going to need a few blood bags.
Some time later, Mirai is out of the hospital with the new baby, Kaya is moving up to the next year of Kindergarten, and all is right (if still a little spooky) with the world.
I looked it up, and the source material is ongoing, but honestly this is a great place to just end it. It feels complete – the closest thing we had to a main plot is resolved and it seems like Kaya is well on her way to managing being a little special better than her mom or aunt did. I’m sure the new baby isn’t exactly ordinary, but we don’t really need to know how that plays out to get the idea that everything is going to be fine. Just playing us out after resolving Mirai’s issues is more than enough.
All in all, this was a pretty good show. If I was only going to watch one I guess I’d still prefer Dark Gathering, but nothing restricts you to watching only one spooky purple haired girl who sees ghosts show, so that’s kind of immaterial. If you haven’t followed along so far, I’d say check it out.