This journey is one Yajirou clearly must make – even under normal circumstances the second son is a difficult role to play in traditional Japanese culture, and Yajirou’s circumstances are hardly normal (or ideal). Tousen is too broken up about it to attend (just as well, as Yajirou turning into a furball on the platform would have been awkward) but Gyokuran steps in as a sort of de facto matriarch (what’s with the clacking stones? That’s a tradition I’m not familiar with).

There is some time taken for unfinished business at the start of the episode – no, not Kaisei and Yasaburou, but Yajirou’s departure from Kyoto. And let’s be clear – in the context of this mythology, tanuki are people too. Her delight in consuming tanuki hotpots is part of that, but I’m always highly suspicious of people who get turned on by their ability to frighten other people. But I don’t see her as especially morally ambiguous – I think she’s flat-out nasty. As a character she’s great, one of anime’s best femme fatales. If you’ve been reading my Eccentric Family posts since those beginnings, it’s safe to say you know I’m not especially fond of Benten – as a person. But she’s also imperious, arrogant, and a bunch of even worse things I won’t list here because at least a few of them could still be called a matter of opinion (though I think the jury has returned its verdict). She’s beautiful, charismatic, a powerful female character who takes shit from no man. Benten has always been a character that divides the audience, and it’s not hard to see why. I think it could pretty reasonably be argued that Uchouten Kazoku has been building up to this moment of crisis since its very beginnings.

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