English Dub Review: AYAKA: A Story of Bonds and Wounds “Those Two Have a Lot of Issues”

Overview:

Yukito meets another one of his father’s students. However, this one has a different mindset than the others.

Our Take:

Jingi and Yukito head to the first island, which is the main tourist area. While there, an ara-mitama attacks a crowded area. Aka Ibuki steps in to take it out. He introduces himself to Yukito and reveals that he’s another one of his father’s students.

The others prefer to pacify ara-mitamas and return them to their original state. Aka, on the other hand, thinks it’s much more effective to kill them. He claims it’s to protect the innocent people, but he also says at one point that he wants to keep getting stronger. He has some interesting magic and he does something after beating an ara-mitama that confuses me. I hope that will be explained later on.

I don’t know how to feel about Aka quite yet. He doesn’t seem like a bad guy, but his motives aren’t clear right now. It could be that he wants to become stronger for the purpose of protecting others. It’s just hard to tell at the moment.

Yukito showing sympathy for the ara-mitamas is interesting. He sees a bit of himself in them, or at least he thinks that’s the case. Either way, he doesn’t agree with Aka’s method of killing them. That looks like it could lead to a potential conflict later on.

I don’t know what it is exactly, but Jingi is starting to lose me a little bit. I thought he had a charm at first, but he’s quickly losing that charm. Last episode, he proved to be not much more than a screw-up. In this episode, he completely disappears several times and backs down after showing a little backbone. He’s becoming my least favorite character, which is a shame because I thought he had a bit to offer at first. he could still redeem himself though, so only time will tell.