Recap

Yuki adapts to his new undead state and his new life with Yato. Once again, the beleaguered god gets belittled by pretty much everyone.

Marlin’s Thoughts

Well, disappointingly this was another episode of Yato taking a whole bunch of abuse. As much as I enjoy his reactions, it’s kinda depressing to see such a nice dude get ragged on all day. That said I liked that we got to see how the other side lived. It gives us a greater focus to why he’s so driven to see just what a respected god gets. Tenjin also just has the perfect amount of smugness where it’s believable but still makes you wanna hate him. You can also tell he’s not a total asshole, though. While he is subcontracting through Yato, just doing so still shows he cares about the people who pray to him.

I also hope Hiyori actually gets to contribute anything to a fight eventually. Sure she was able to kick the crap out of that frog, but even then she didn’t seem to do any lasting damage. Having her dive headfirst into stuff she can’t handle just to get saved by Yato doesn’t really make for a strong viewpoint character to me. Why even have her around if she isn’t going to contribute anything? That said I don’t actually want her gone, but she is in dire need of a powerup. Considering this is a shounen show my problems could be answered as soon as next episode, and I’ll be looking forward to it.

Jel’s Thoughts

While I can understand how it might frustrate some people, I’m really digging the slower, deliberate pace of Noragami. Rather than sitting us down and infodumping everything that’s going on, I feel like each episode we are learning a little more about this cool urban re-imagining of the Japanese pantheon. Meeting Tenjin and contrasting him with Yato was a brilliant way to help us understand his motivation to be famous, particularly with his former regalia switching sides. I’m also a bit intrigued to see how dark the story may go, as the amount of death and suicide alluded to this week seemed to indicate we may be headed in that direction.

Of course the real highlight continues to be the relationships between the main characters. Adding Yukine has only made things more unique and interesting, particularly since he immediately takes a liking to Hiyori. As for Hiyori herself, I’ve been expecting her to eventually join the fray in fighting phantoms, so I’m a little disappointed to see her continue to be pulled away from it. To be fair, even Yato was unable to fight the phantoms barehanded, so at least they’re consistent. But it does seem like a waste to have such a strong, capable female lead and keep her on the sidelines. That still may change in the future, but even so I’m enjoying Noragami tremendously and can’t wait to see what direction we head next.