Recap

Hiyori fears for Yukine’s health from being forced into Yato’s vagrant lifestyle. After inviting him home and some cohabitation hijinks, Yukine finds a young girl who has died but not yet passed on.

Noragami really knows how to hit you in the heart just as easily as the funnybone. Hiyori’s offer to let Yukine stay over at her house is full of all the antics you’d expect, except played with in all the best ways. I love how every one of Yukine’s bath fantasies are ruined by Hiyori’s father. That girl is either way too innocent or an incredibly smooth operator, most of the Glorio Crew is leaning towards the latter.

This was also a good opportunity to explain the vague rules of the Regalia-god relationship. Once again, Yukine is shown to have powers well beyond his inexperience. I still think it must be tied to the way he died or the way he lived his life, since emotions seem to hold a lot of power in this show. It’s interesting take that humans decide morality, and that it is actually from humans to gods that they learn of it. It is a common theme in pantheistic mythologies that gods can do almost whatever they want. It seems that is true of Noragami’s world as well. From what Yato has previously said, it seems like this world is somewhat like Persona’s, where people’s subconscious desires are what manifest the supernatural. In this case it’s just phantoms, not shadows, and gods, not plucky teenagers. Well, okay maybe one plucky teenager.

The end of the episode is an absolute gut-puncher. First, Yukine happens upon a young ghost girl, and you think it might be that he just has to protect her. Maybe it would be like Mayoi, where she just needs to find her way home. Even when she was possessed you’d imagine that in most stories about a little girl, there would always be some way to save her. However, Noragami’s world offers no such conveniences. It’s an absolutely brutal but fantastic way of showing us how grim the world is beneath the trollfaces and gags. With a new threat in the Slutty Cowgirl, the action looks to be picking up. With the idea of “turf” I have to wonder if this will be like a Kyoko v. Sayaka kind of fight. Outside of obligation, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for the gods to exterminate phantoms, so I’d love for this fight to shed some light on why the gods fight them so often.