Heavier plot and darker warnings.
These two episodes really do work together. The first mostly explores Chie confronting Namu over Kaya. Namu drops some lore (which I’ll get into later because we get at least one more layer in then next episode), and also removes Kaya’s admittedly creepy soul from her body, intent on destroying her until Chie knocks him flat and puts Kaya back together again.
At least this seems to convince Namu to introspect a little about what Kaya actually is.
To be fair, he has a tragic backstory of his own – he’s a member of a branch family to the line of Kaya’s maternal side, who was basically kicked to the curb when he could see things, resulting in him being bullied for a long while more or less until Mob found him and tried naively to help him out, affording a little human connection.
The next episode has some regular vignettes, including one with Mob and Namu and one with Kaya’s friends on the playground, but the focus is Aunt Nana. Despite having initially seemed to be on a page like Namu’s, she now accepts Kaya as the next generation of the family’s Shrine Maiden. She gives Kaya a talisman that Chie finds would redirect curses to Nana, which lets Chie open up and get the full story of the family in return.
Evidently, Kaya’s earliest ancestor was some manner of divine being, whose powers allowed the family to flourish. Subsequent generations lacked the power naturally, but hit upon a ritual to call something up from the other side, conceiving daughters (one a generation) who would have spiritual powers seemingly from grafting something spectral onto their souls. Namu believed that Kaya had basically been hollowed out and devoured by this summoning, but Nana (who would seem to know first hand) suggests that while looks and abilities may be decided by the ritual, who you are as a person isn’t.
However, all is not well when Nana learns that her sister is pregnant again and, perhaps more importantly, that things are creepy again. We’re not let in on why this is bad, but it’s clearly bad. Nana goes to the hospital to face her sister, but recall she hadn’t seen the terrifying form shrouding her that was well beyond Kaya’s abilities. Just trying to open the door to her sister’s hospital room sees her struck with a terrible curse.
It’s so terrible, in fact, that she wonders why she’s still alive, merely bleeding from her eyes and such… only to find a sundered talisman like the one she gave Kaya, redirecting that fury to her mother, who a phone call announces as recently and suddenly deceased. (recall, she went mad after meeting Kaya. That only softens the blow a tiny bit)
So it seems that the cursed birth approaching may be our endgame. I’ll see you there.