English Dub Review: Kakuriyo -Bed and Breakfast for Spirits- “The Sealed Power and the Opening Heart”

What a twist!

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Aoi wakes up after having had her brainspace invaded by Raiju last episode. Though she seems well enough, she’s lost her voice and her ability to taste, due to a curse brought on by eating the candy Raiju offered her last episode. This poses a problem, since Aoi needs her sense of taste to cook for the festival that can save the southern lands of the Hidden Realm.

Aoi tries to rest and recover, while Ginji rushes to Raiju’s room to negotiate an antidote from him. He’s shocked to find that Raiju isn’t there, since he’s gone to find Aoi, who’s cooked herself an omelet rice. Raiju takes her food and eats it and proceeds to lie to Aoi, telling her that it tastes horrible. Raiju grabs Aoi and decides to eat her right then and there, but Ginji shows up in time to save her. He starts going on about how he loves Aoi’s innocence and her cooking, and this makes Aoi realize that Ginji must have been the Ayakashi that saved her when she was young.

All this is interrupted by Byakuya showing up, much to Raiju’s dismay. Turns out, Byakuya did some investigating and found out Raiju is the one who made an attempt on Aoi’s life back at Tenjin-ya. Byakuya isn’t alone, though. He’s brought along Nuinoin and Ritsuko, the noble spirits Aoi impressed with her cooking back at Tenjin-ya.

Turns out, as Byakuya explains, that Aoi’s kidnapping to Orio-Ya was an elaborate plan put on by the staff of Tenjin-Ya to expose Raiju, who has been manipulating Ayakashi from the start. Furthermore, to find the last item necessary for the ceremony, Aoi and friends need to go into a special realm inside a picture. To aid them, Byakuya presents Aoi with a special medicine that should break her curse. She immediately downs it and passes out, waking up the next day to find her taste and speech restored. Meeting up with Byakuya, Ginji, and Ranmaru, she enters the painted realm with her friends.

Our Take:

If there is one thing I can say about this episode that puts it above the usual fare that Kakuriyo pushes out each week, it’s that it’s interesting. A lot happens in this episode as if all the plot that we should’ve been getting from this show up to this point was condensed into a single point. That makes this week’s storyline the most entertaining we’ve had in the series so far. There’s intrigue, struggle, and an interesting, if not a bit hackneyed, a twist that puts the narrative so far into a new perspective.

It turns out Raiju is the big bad of the series; an unseen puppeteer who’s been pulling strings behind the scenes to craft “stories” for Ayakashi to suffer through. Why? For shits and giggles, I suppose. It’s explained that Raiju is a race of Ayakashi that just enjoys being horrible to people. This is acceptable, there have been legitimate villains who just love “to watch the world burn.” But Raiju isn’t exactly The Joker, here, and that’s because until a couple episodes ago, he didn’t even exist. A good mystery leading to a good twist has to lead a trail of breadcrumbs to the answer to the audience can look back on the story and say, “Oh, that makes sense.” We’re not getting that here. Raiju has gone unmentioned in the show until recently, so while having him be the one who tried to Kill Aoi is surprising, it doesn’t validate the mystery so far.

Even more groan-worthy is that apparently, Aoi’s entire time at Orio-ya has been nothing more than a complicated sting operation. Nothing invalidates the story you’ve made so far by saying that all the conflicts and plots within it (However tepid they may be) are just circumstances of something beyond our protagonist’s control. And again, breadcrumbs; you can’t have a big twist without clues leading up to it. If this wasn’t an anime that was based off a novel series, I would firmly believe that this was a twist pulled put out of the writer’s ass to add some zest for the last few episodes. As it stands, its just shoddy storytelling. More interesting than things usually are for this show, but absurd and contrived nonetheless.

Of course, keep in mind, all the same, animation issues, poor voice acting, and awkward pacing are still present here. Kakuriyo this week flirts with acceptable levels of quality but doesn’t come anywhere near what a “good” episode of anything looks like.