天下制覇

It really speaks to the infamy of this series that it took over 2 weeks for a decent raw to get from Share to a torrent for episode 19.

I apologize for the somewhat terse summary. I was arguing with people online about Heroes as I tried to watch this. Blame Hiro Nakamura and his time travelling antics.

This episode is basically the attack on Karasumori to begin the first real serious arc of the series with real villains and everything. Animation was rather well done as usual, although the first half of the episode was pretty much “Welcome back” style recap.

We see in the first half that Yoshi-boy is still pouring over the ancient scrolls and trying to figure them out on their own, while Tokine is practicing and has pretty much mastered the multi-level barrier attack that they saw Masamori using a few episodes back. Things are pretty much as normal in school as well.

During the night, Mr MiB sets the Shirahago (I believe, don’t quote me on that) loose on Karasumori. Yoshimori and Tokine try to fight them off, but their ability to turn into feathers and disperse causes a ton of trouble for the two. Yoshi’s not fast or accurate enough with his barriers to catch more than a few feathers at a time, and Tokine’s barriers aren’t strong enough to contain them for more than a second or two. Both try their new tricks to some effect, Yoshi elongates and extends his barriers to free himself from attacks, while Tokine uses her multi-layered barriers. Yoshi manages to wound one, and Tokine finishes it off, but the other two combine into a demon owl. The owl then creates a tornado and begins throwing spikes around. The two protect themselves, but the spikes begin to pierce Tokine’s barriers. The smoke clears to show that Yoshi created a barrier around her as well as himself and the episode ends with them about to throw down with the owl for real.