English Dub Review: Onmyo Kaiten Re:Birth Verse “Say It Ain’t So! The Truth about Denji Heian-kyo Is Revealed”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Seimei explains to Takeru the shocking truth regarding how things work in Denji Heian-kyo.

Our Take:  

This show’s world has gotten more topsy-turvy with each time reset Takeru encounters, and I’ve seen plenty of them with ridiculous world-building.  However, this scenario single-handedly trounced the previous encounters with a shikigami fist, as Takeru discovers the horrific revelation of the town he’s reincarnated in.  It was revealed in the last episode that the Centennial Pandemonium played a role in murdering the townspeople disguised as the oni, and the one seemingly pulling the strings is the onmyoji crew’s leader, Seimei.  I knew that something was up with Semei upon watching the fourth episode, but it left me wondering about his actual motive behind this senseless carnage of innocent lives.

That answer comes from Takeru’s latest “time jump“ into a time where Denji Heian-kyo looked a lot different.  However, as it turns out, we’re not dealing with an ordinary “time jump“ scenario.  Instead, Takeru is confronting a multiverse of Denji Heian-kyo crafted by Seimei, which explains the significant differences in the city, including Atsunaga’s death.  With his multitude of universes, Seimei employs the “Centennial Pandemonium“ scheme to make the parallel worlds battle one another to achieve his “perfect future”.  A fairly typical plan for a villainous scoundrel like Seimei.  You read that right, folks.  We have another project that centers on the multiverse, as if the ones from Marvel and DC weren’t enough to entice us.  Although some of us might grow tired of the “multiverse“ concept in Marvel’s current “Multiverse Saga”, I feel that Onmyo Kaiten may be an occasion where the idea works well for its plot.

With the revelation behind Seimei’s plan unfolding, the episode flipped the script on the show’s formulaic time-loop/isekai tropes we’ve seen in other projects, anime or otherwise.  More importantly, it emphasizes Takeru’s doubts about his duty to protect others, caused by his discovery that he’s actually killing the ones he’s supposed to safeguard.  I was expecting the series to be another ordinary isekai anime that happens to have a time-loop mechanic akin to “Edge of Tomorrow”.  However, that perspective changed once I reached the season’s second half, which now features a multiverse, and I couldn’t be more impressed that it did.  The question now is whether the second half can utilize this twist to deliver an enticing conclusion.