Black Torch Ep.07 - Spontaneous power up! Predictable development, but...

Episode 7 of Black Torch starts the new arc, showing how the mononoke are accumulating energy for their war by doing things right in the open. Usually you would get random disappearances, but this time they sealed an entire city block and started gathering humans to be consumed in one place.

Clearly this is something that Amagi is planning, but I'm a bit unsure what he would gain from openly antagonizing the humans before he gained control of Ragou. If there's something that makes humans come together, it is a strong common enemy, and he's really delivering on that side.

Ichika's mix of embarrassment and rage is just perfect to show her character and break the tense battle. I know the enemy wasn't a strong one anyway.

What does Hana even does? Like she's done nothing useful for the entire of the series aside from being 'the second cute girl'.

Our three main characters entered the seal and are currently in the process of fighting the demons in there, even if they are really just some low-level enemies put there as some sort of stepping stone to allow the characters to justify their power increase. That worked out for Ichika, who, aside from a cute sailor uniform moment, managed to show her battle prowess.

For Jirou, though, they took a lazier way and just delivered a "spontaneous power-up" by making Ragou kill the demon without even noticing because "his power is returning," probably due to sucking Jirou's energy. I understand wanting to create a risk for Jirou and Ragou's merging, but the way it was delivered felt a lot like an excuse.

It doesn't really give me a sense of "how cool Jirou was" if it was the pure result of chance, and it fails at the main thing that an action series like this should deliver for a protagonist. Hopefully this is a one-off and we don't continue to power him up whenever a new challenge appears, as it would really feel uncool.

The episode ends with a cliffhanger with Reiji meeting the third mononoke on the premises, who turns out to be his brother still possessed by the cursed sword. Turns out my prediction last week was true, and all the mononoke involved in the substories (probably Ichika too) are Amagi's subordinates.

Touko aura farms a lot, but we haven't seen her doing aside from that so far. Hopefully it changes soon as it could put some spice to the battles.

Ichika in a sailor uniform was the highlight of the episode. Even if the demon dies, I hope someone else take the reins of playing doll with Ichika!

Considering the pace, I feel the series will try to adapt all volumes of the series and give it a conclusion, but I'm curious to see if the original manga was this quick with its developments, too. I feel that sometimes we might have lost some more relatively calm moments that happen in between the missions...