Ushio & Tora

[gunswordfist]

  I am sad. How magnificent this episode was made it hit home that this great series is ending. They managed to combine great battles with great dialogue. I love Hakumen and the heries' exchanges. I actually expecting this episode to be just an all out war and it managed to be deep and still have a huge battle.

Hakumen is my absolute favorite All Evil villain. Even despite him being pure evil, he manages to be nuanced. Not to mention him being so cunning makes him so interesting. I am happy that he gets to live until next week. I love watching him.

I also love the explanations for why the Azafuze (sp?) and Hakumen are similar. Good to finally see Bal again (the blue Hulk demon) and those girls fathers. I geeked out when the one from the painting showed up.

Thank you, MAPPA, Nishimura and Fujita.

I feel like I've just had the entire philosophy of this series summed up for me in a single episode. Not just through balatant exposition alone, of course, but also through the actions of the characters and how the mythology really all fits together to support these notions. Now that's how you do a finale the right way.

Tora's comment to Hakumen at the end of the episode was priceless.

He's easily my favorite character in the series.

Tora's my favorite too! My favorite anime character in years.

[gunswordfist]

I hope we get to see flashbacks of Ushio's ancestor that fought Tora and I can't wait to see the 9th tail.

[Spark Of Spirit]

And that's it!

What a wrap-up to a great series. The final battle with Hakumen was worth the wait and so were the closing of Ushio and Tora's character arcs. I have to give it to both Fujita and MAPPA for putting this together. They did a fantastic job.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I might've teared up a bit at the end there. That was beautiful.

After that conclusion, I can safely place this as my third favorite anime series. It's everything that I love about this genre and it stands on par with the other two best Shonen adaptations that I have ever seen, Ashita no Joe 2 and Yu Yu Hakusho.

As for the episode itself, in addition to it being the perfect thematic conclusion to the story and being incredibly heartfelt (I will miss these characters so much), I was just wondering if I was the only one who actually felt kind of sorry for Hakumen no Mono when he met his demise. Something about it hit me really hard, similar to something like Meruem's death in Hunter X Hunter, and to me that's very telling that despite all of the horrible things that he has done, there was still something more to this villain until the very end. For as much as he hated them, even Hakumen had his traces of humanity to his character, which was definitely a very clever and intentional writing decision by Fujita.

Speaking of Fujita, I definitely have to find a way to read his other works now. The guy is a master of his craft.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Hakumen was jealous of the light and let it poison him. Instead of joining with it, or accepting what he was, he let the darkness overwhelm him instead. His end was tragic, but it was well deserved for what he allowed himself to become. Also, I have to hand it to Megumi Hayashibara's top notch voice acting. She was perfect as Hakumen from day one until the end. Not to sell the others short, of course, they were all great. But her performance during Hakumen's last moments was intense and vicious.

But yes, the ending solidifed it as one of my favorites for sure, and remains the #1 manga I want to see licensed and #1 anime I want to see aired on North American television.

MAPPA and Nishimura did an excellent job adapting this series into 39 episodes, and I can only imagine what they have up their sleeve next. Here's hoping Karakuri Circus is a possibility.

[gunswordfist]

Spoiler

I kind of feel like crying. I knew there had to be another major death and Tora was the most obvious target. I love how quickly Tora figured out how to beat blind Hakumen and how they tied in Ushio's ancestor and why he didn't just kill Tora. I was hoping that Nagare would come back and he did, with Hyou and they took out some tails. I was hoping Juurou would return right when his siblings mentioned him and he did! We got to see Jie Mie's family and her and her brother will still stay with Ushio, even after the spear broke.

I suspected that the youkai would become stone to stop Japan's sinking and/or it would be like Genkai's dream at the end of Yu yu Hakusho for demons to get along with humans and it ended up being both. Well done.

Hakumen was clearly shown to be 3 dimensional now. He hated humans because he didn't become one. I kind of thought the 9th tail would be for rebirth when he was clearly dying and it didn't become a Doomsday weapon yet lol.

Happy that Sumako survived. Thought she was destined to die ever since she was bleeding after Hakumen was released.

Lastly, I love this show so much. My favorite of any kind since completing Batman TBATB. Tora and Hakumen No Mono will go very high on my hero and villain lists, respectively.

[close]

Hakumen was jealous of the light and let it poison him. Instead of joining with it, or accepting what he was, he let the darkness overwhelm him instead. His end was tragic, but it was well deserved for what he allowed himself to become. Also, I have to hand it to Megumi Hayashibara's top notch voice acting. She was perfect as Hakumen from day one until the end. Not to sell the others short, of course, they were all great. But her performance during Hakumen's last moments was intense and vicious.

But yes, the ending solidifed it as one of my favorites for sure, and remains the #1 manga I want to see licensed and #1 anime I want to see aired on North American television.

MAPPA and Nishimura did an excellent job adapting this series into 39 episodes, and I can only imagine what they have up their sleeve next. Here's hoping Karakuri Circus is a possibility.

Toonami better pick this up. No other series deserves to be big right now more than UT.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Toonami better pick this up. No other series deserves to be big right now more than UT.

I actually agree with this wholeheartedly. I remember going into this series expecting to just have some decent fun. What I got was that and MUCH, MUCH more.

[gunswordfist]

I thought this was going to be like a villain of the week series, that they'd both really hate each other for awhile and I think I expected pretty much senseless monster killing. Basically, I thought it was that OTHER kind of 90s anime. lol I did not expect it would be this deep, even if I had a better clue as to what it was like, nor did I expect it to smash my expectations so many times and become my 3rd favorite anime series.

[VLordGTZ]

Sentai has confirmed that they will be dubbing Ushio & Tora.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So we are getting it over here!

That's just one step closer to that slight possibility of seeing it on Toonami, but I only say slight because I don't think that Sentai has ever actually aired any of its shows on the current Toonami line-up. I could be wrong, though.

It looks like they also licensed Food Wars! and Amagi Brilliant Park. While my opinion on both anime is rather mixed, I do still enjoy each of them to an extent, so I'm still pretty happy to see them get licensed as well.

[VLordGTZ]

Akame ga Kill and Parasyte (which are licensed by Sentai) both did well on Toonami, so I think they would be more than interested in getting another Sentai show.  I could see U&T airing once the current Parasyte re-runs are done.

[gunswordfist]

OK, NOW there's hope.

[Spark Of Spirit]

We knew Sentai had licensed it, but that was a year ago. We had no idea what they were planning on doing with it. The fact that they waited for it to be done to even begin dubbing or talking about it has me hopeful for a Toonami run.

All part of the plan for Fujita to take over NA.

Step #1: MAPPA makes awesome Ushio & Tora anime
Step #2: Said anime is licensed and released it on most popular NA anime block
Step #3: It blows up
Step #4: Viz licenses the manga and releases the full series
Step #5: Rinse and repeat for Fujita's other series
Step #6: ??
Step #7: Anime is saved
Step #8: Togashi is inspired to pull it together to finish Hunter X Hunter within a year

So far, all according to keikaku.

[gunswordfist]

That has me smiling like an idiot in public.

[Avaitor]

Holy shit, episode 20!