Recap

Bishamon assembles her team to clean up the Vent but can’t seem to put aside her grudge. Yato himself continues to feel the effects of the blight as Hiyori tries to help patch up his growing rift with Yukine.

Jel’s Thoughts

While I enjoyed this week’s episode I think it felt a bit rudderless. Rather than one solid, cohesive episode with a main plot line it was more a string of necessary scenes to lead us to our eventual destination. Considering that destination may still be several episodes away, I felt a little unsatisfied. We also started dipping our toes into info dump territory – something Noragami has done a terrifc job of avoiding – so the occasional standing around and talking felt like a step backwards.

Nevertheless, there was some cool things going on and the relationship between Yato, Hiyori, and Yukine continues to be the highlight of the series. Like Hiyori, I never even considered the possibility that Yukine might be some kind of delinquent. I’m sure he isn’t a bad kid in that he seems well intentioned, but it seems clear he has some kind of troubled past. We’ve seen hints of it when he stole the skateboard but initially you could chalk that up to an immature kid experiencing a new level of freedom. Now I’m wondering if that wasn’t something normal for him. I could just be reading into things too much here, but if he really isn’t the innocent boy you automatically assume he is then that would certainly make his character more interesting. It would also make him a much better match for Yato with his own past demons to deal with, so I hope we’re onto something there.

I’m also continuing to enjoy Kofuku and Daikoku’s support character role, adding just the right amount of comic and plot relief when necessary. Maybe I’m just partial to poverty gods. I’m kind of less interested in the continuing plot with Nora, as it seemed pretty obvious that Yato had no intention of using her in this battle. I guess there is the mysterious dude that shows up with her at the end that needs to be identified, but I kind of hope they save all of that until this business with Bishamon and the Vent are cleared up. Noragami keeps adding to its already lengthy list of characters and potential sub plots and while I’m cool with that for now I think it’s time to start cashing some of those in before we start picking up new ones.