Yomi no Tsugai Episode 6 "The Kagemori Estate and the Mysterious Attacker" - Japanese Fans Geek Out Over Yuru's Lattice-Threading Arrows and the One Actor Voicing Every Tsugai, Even as the "Is This Just a Yakuza War?" Doubts Grow
Yomi no Tsugai is the latest series from Hiromu Arakawa, the creator of Fullmetal Alchemist and Silver Spoon, and that lineage colors nearly every reaction Japanese viewers post. They reach for Fullmetal Alchemist constantly - measuring Yuru and Asa against the Elric brothers, and recognizing the author's fingerprints in the way the hero solves a problem a beat before the audience can.
A quick note for English viewers: the official subtitles render Tsugai - the paired spirit-familiars at the heart of the story - as "Daemons." Throughout this piece we keep the original term, Tsugai.
Episode 6, "The Kagemori Estate and the Mysterious Attacker," turns the lavish Kagemori mansion into a battlefield. A new enemy appears - a smooth, clearly-up-to-no-good figure whose voice fans instantly clocked - and a wave of new Tsugai debuts alongside him: a bobbing rabbit and tortoise, an adorable fox and tanuki, and the body-snatching Onmyo-chan. The episode leans hard into the twins' paired powers - Asa's "Release" (Kai), which can undo barriers and even strip an enemy of their own Tsugai, and Yuru's still-dormant "Seal" (Fu) - while Yuru's purely human skill as a hunter keeps him a step ahead of everyone.
One running fascination in the threads deserves its own note. Viewers kept tallying the cast credits and realizing that a single voice actor, Ayumu Murase, appears to be voicing almost every Tsugai in the show - Gabriel, the anglerfish pair, Onmyo, and on and on. Part of the amusement is industry-flavored: under standard Japanese voice-acting practice an actor is typically paid a single per-episode fee no matter how many roles they cover in that episode, which turned Murase's one-man Tsugai army into a recurring punchline about a hard day's work. It dovetails with another thing fans love about Arakawa: like several veteran manga artists, she tends not to write pure, cackling villains - her antagonists read as "rivals," which is exactly why this episode's "is everyone here just a criminal?" unease lands the way it does.
Here is what Japanese fans were saying.
Japanese Fan Reactions (26)
Yuru's superhuman technique is wild. Shooting from a brightly-lit room out into the pitch dark is one thing - but the arrow threads right through the gap in the window lattice, too. And even then he deliberately misses the vital points, already thinking ahead to the interrogation. Masterful.
So the wobble in the arrow Yuru fired was the 'deliberate miss' being animated. That's some serious attention to detail.
The way the archery is drawn is insanely meticulous. I'm obsessed.
Isn't it amazing the art has stayed this good all the way to Episode 6? You can feel Bones' determination to make this a hit no matter what.
The art's always been good, but today the animation was even more fluid. It looked like a movie.
The art was great, but the direction was weak. They've recreated the manga's panel layouts perfectly in animation - the work is superb and original-manga fans must be overjoyed. I've never read the comic, but it was good enough that I could practically see the manga pages in front of me. That part is genuinely incredible. As an anime, though, the pacing is catastrophically slow.
Honestly, I never expected them to spend six whole episodes on just two volumes of the manga. I figured they'd race through at least to the point where Yuru declares how he's going to move forward, by around Episode 4.
Asa's new Tsugai suddenly got so KAWAII.
Asa's new Tsugai bobbing in the air is adorable. And the tanuki and fox that showed up this time are cute too. Look like they've got zero combat power, though.
There are so many Tsugai I want made into plushies and sold as merch.
The cast credits are packed with Murase. It's hilarious that Ayumu Murase voices almost all the Tsugai.
It's funny how brutally they overwork Murase across all the Tsugai roles.
Cast: / Kotetsu ... Ayumu Murase / Gabriel ... Ayumu Murase / Ai & Makoto ... Ayumu Murase / Onmyo ... Ayumu Murase / Akai-san ... Ayumu Murase / Midori-san ... Ayumu Murase / Tankaku & Soukaku ... Ayumu Murase / Gozu & Mezu ... Ayumu Murase / Okina & Ouna ... Ayumu Murase. ...What IS this?
Asa being able to straight-up steal someone else's Tsugai is way too strong. This episode gave us a glimpse into the relationships between humans and their Tsugai - some people build a close bond with theirs like Gabu-chan does, while others treat them as nothing but tools.
When they're pulled into Onmyo-chan's barrier, Yuru's and Asa's outlines turn warm-toned and cool-toned respectively - I love that so much! Mixing the serious and the comical, the scene depicts the 'Seal and Release' traits inside each of their barriers, alongside the twins' own pasts, drawn as a matched pair. I really love this sequence.
As always, Asa's brother-complex is so far past normal it's a thing of beauty (and I mean that as praise).
'If it's a barrier, then Asa can undo it.' Once it's said it's obvious, but it's something the viewer doesn't immediately think of - and I love how the hero figures it out instantly and points it out like it's nothing. There was stuff like this in Fullmetal Alchemist and Silver Spoon too, so maybe it's just the author's habit, or her style? Good, give me more of it.
I love how she leaves the reader and the viewer behind, in the best possible way.
Thinking about why Gabu-chan shares the exact same name as her Tsugai, it feels like there's a heavy backstory buried there. I'm curious.
Gabu-chan's 'I'm probably older than you' line has a deep darkness to it. Yuru has confirmed he's 16, so it means she doesn't even know her own age.
Watched it, but... somehow I can't bring myself to empathize with anyone in this. The hero is the type who goes 'the people of my village were massacred! ...well... I don't really get it, but I'll just stay calm,' and the sister massacres villagers without a second thought and then goes 'big bro, big bro!' all clingy. It's like they start the deep character work before a single normal-feeling person even shows up.
I came in from the anime and I'm reading the manga now... I thought this was going to be some tag-team yokai war, but - this is yakuza, right? It's yakuza, isn't it?
It doesn't read as a good-versus-evil story; it looks like a fight between rival crime organizations. For now, at least.
Hiromu Arakawa is, like Nobuhiro Watsuki and Rumiko Takahashi, not great at drawing out-and-out villains, so her antagonists end up as 'rivals' rather than 'villains.'
I find Yuru and Asa more likeable than the Elric brothers.
Watched Episode 6. It keeps building this 'here we go!' momentum and then never actually gets there - it's maddening. And the fact that it's still seriously entertaining anyway is honestly impressive.
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