So, for those who wanted a darker and more serious episode out of Shikizakura, we have this one And, compared to the bits earlier in the show that have tried to go for more serious material, it’s fairly effective.
We start out with Benio and company witnessing a horrific crime scene, which was clearly the work of a Shinja, a threatening message against Oka left behind. Oka is tough to get in contact with, though – not only is she not with Ryo (who was the first alternate for being called on, busy himself with recollecting at his father’s grave how his father died and the power suit was passed to him) and because her phone has had its battery die as she goes around investigating strange red crystals that have been sprouting up around town, along with Kakeru and Kippei. She starts to feel horribly faint, but when Ibara senses something coming, it turns out to just be Benio (and team, including Ryo and the pretty boy of her squad) ready to spill the beans that a powerful Shinja, strongly implied to be the one that killed Ryo’s father, is now hunting Oka.
The team assembles at a safehouse outside of town, choosing isolation because Oni could otherwise possess the people in the area in order to attack. The team should be safe, though, because they’ve been through that hell and can’t be possessed again. Ryo’s mother also shows up, and the pretty boy sticks around to help even as the rest of Benio’s team is on the trail.
Benio’s hunt brings her to a host of lesser Oni, but no sign of the Shinja. There is, however, one of those mysterious red crystals at the location. In the safehouse, though, things take a turn for the worse when enemies arrive. Most of the team goes outside to fight, but the enemy is really on the inside, a fact that brings Ryo face to face with the truth: his mother is already dead, consumed by the Shinja five years ago, the crafty (and uniquely designed!) creature using her identity to go incognito and manipulate him to have a pawn on the inside. What’s more, she’s kind of done with him as he’s started thinking for himself. She stabs right through his abdomen, but blows to the center of mass are clearly like stiff breezes in this show because it doesn’t really slow Ryo down much for the rest of the episode.
This leads to Kakeru busting in and, ultimately, having to fight with Ryo as Ryo becomes possessed – recall earlier, he got his suit from a dying father, not by fighting off possession, so he’s apparently fair game. Kaede and Haruka see this, but are quickly occupied by the Shinja itself, in monster form. After enough blows are exchanged, Kakeru manages to get through to Ryo and convince him to fight back, causing Ryo to have a mindspace talk with his inner demons and ‘kill’ his weak and unacceptable former self.
After that, Ryo emerges to fight the Shinja that took his mother, and does a pretty good job at rallying and putting it down, ultimately cutting the monster in half so that it dissolves and leaves only a small red gem (much like the growing ones, but smaller) behind. He then resolves, essentially, to live up to Kakeru’s hero aspirations for his own reasons, declaring that the chain of suffering will stop with him and that his new resolve is for no one else to ever have to suffer as he’s suffered.
All in all, there were some good acknowledgments this episode, especially about how Kakeru, despite his innocent-seeming demeanor, has been through more than his fair share of loss and pain, what with being the lone survivor of an oni-derived disaster and all that. This episode is largely what I hoped to see out of Shikizakura from the setup – a relatable emotional struggle for a character against the Oni, some good and unique action, and still the optimism to come out hoping for better rather than wallowing in worse. It’s a shame it took until Episode 8 to get something that really brought all that together, but it’s here now and it remains effective in a very basic way. If the show was all this… it would probably get old, but we could have more of this and it would be extremely watchable. Not great, but good enough.
Post-credits, though, we have a stinger – Oka tries to close the Nether realm , but the presence of another Oni stops her, leading to its arrival as a fairly intimidating-looking creature that, by all the various blocking this episode, is implied to be the pretty boy from Benio’s team who was violently ejected from the area. I’m not 100% sure that’s what they were going for, but he seemed pretty shady and was out of the way for the arrival of the new enemy. Whatever the case, we’re sure to get some answers next time.