When since has any old prideful family that finds absolute in their traditions been portrayed as positive?

no wonder oni-san sounds old he really is the mother's oni-san ..so how are they related to sasami's dad? man incest really messes up the family tree >.<
tsurugi is really not that helpless I guess she was just waiting there for events to unfold, she can call a CP from the depths of hell, and can still beat the hell out of susanoo eheheh so i guess it would be wrong to really discount tsurugi, thinking she gave up her powers.
liked how the three sisters literally worlds apart still fight together, and with sasami too, Kagami teleporting the sword, Tama breaking the ame no habakiri by teleporting ame no murakamo and doing main fight, sasami doing the imprisonment spell, while tsurugi dragging her mother back to hell. Also liked that explanation of teleportation as gaps in recognition ^^
anyway nice episode

A few things after watching the subs:

1. Sasami's mum died young so Sasami was an only child. Hence Sasami's brother is actually her uncle.

2. The Tsurugi sword is blunt. It is not a weapon of offence, but of defence. This is why it was not able to beat Sasami's mum when used as an attack weapon, when Susanoo's sword was much stronger and sharper.

3. But Tsurugi is physically stronger. It is designed to defend, compared the fragile Susanoo counterpart. So when the swords clashed defensively, Tsurugi sword won.

4. Gods aren't as carefree as we like to think they are. Tsurugi and Kagami were both emotionally troubled. But their lives actually gained new meaning once they took up the task of being Sasami's guardians. Guess even gods need meaning to life.

5. Sasami confirmed that she wil be the last miko of her family. The novels sort of mentioned that earlier in the books, but it seems Shaft delayed it until this episode for more emotional punch. It is a tough call; but it is a call she had the right to make. As the current holder of the sun Goddess power in a matriarchal shrine, Sasami had the right to make that decision.

Wow Tama she really gets lost easily well good thing she was on top of that train :heh:

/facepalm

Pardon the Expressive Aphasia Moment. :eyespin:

Every so often I remember the fact that in Japanese mythology the gods who gave birth to the Japanese islands, and to many other gods, were the brother and sister Izanagi and Izanami. No wonder incest keeps appearing in anime.

I'm guessing the following story about them has been mentioned before in this thread, but here it is again, based on Wikipedia. It echoes things in the show, particularly Mother's appearance in that one scene, but also the fairly vicious attitude she has after spending time in the underworld.

Izanami died giving birth to their last child. Izanagi lamented her loss and travelled to the underworld to get her back. He found her, but at first could not see her in the dim shadows. He asked her to return with him. Izanami's voice spat out at him that he was too late: she had already eaten the food of the underworld and was now one with the land of the dead. She could no longer return to the living.

This shocked Izanagi, but he refused to leave her there. While she was sleeping, he took the comb that bound his long hair and set it alight as a torch. Under the sudden burst of light, he saw the horrid form of the once beautiful and graceful Izanami. She was now rotting flesh with maggots and foul creatures running over her body.

He could not control his fear and started to run, intending to abandon her and return to the land of the living. Izanami woke up, shrieking and indignant, and chased after him.

Izanagi burst out of the entrance and pushed a boulder in the mouth of the cavern that was the entrance of the underworld. Izanami screamed from behind this impenetrable barricade that if he left her she would destroy 1,000 living humans every day. He furiously replied he would give life to 1,500.

After Izanagi escaped from the underworld, he (by himself) gave birth to the siblings Amaterasu (goddess of the sun), Tsukuyomi (god of the moon), and Susanoo (god of storms).

I don't really think this show is meant to fit precisely into Japanese mythology, but it does use it and relate to it in various ways.

Speaking of incest... Based on mitochondrial DNA, we're all the descendants of 1 woman. A Darwinian Eve.

Scary thought. Because incest is bad for its ability to cause defective recessive traits to accumulate within a gene pool (hence the issue with descendants of nobels in Europe) as well as the loss of a phenomenon called 'hybrid vigor'.

But it is interesting that some societies actually manage to get the Darwinian genesis of Homo sapiens relatively correct at all.

That's hardly news. Every species can be traced back to their own single ancestor at one point or another. Though the only useful bit is to trace migration patterns via mutation rates. We trace the female only because we can't trace the male line.

The Sasami bloodline is practically held together with nothing but magic at this point. There is only three people left alive, and only one is female. The lower fertility and shorter lives had taken its toll, even though their enchantments etc kept it going this far way past the point when the offspring should have been a mutated mess as well as being sterile.

I recall something about a species having a limited 'lifespan' once, though can't exactly think of the details.

This sounds more like dysplastic changes in a cell line after many many many generations of replication.

Nah, what you think of is different from what happened to the Sasami genes. After 80+ generations their chromosome pairs would almost be homogeneous. Whatever potential genetic diseases they had are now full on exposed. And as I say, I suspect the males and females are pretty close to clones now.

In real life you won't get that far. Something crippling would happen that stops the breeding.

One can only assume that the Sun Goddess's power is involved in helping the Tsukoyomi clan in not having a third eye or webbed feet.

My speculation is that the clan was given this power so that down the line, Sasami would be born to inherit it. I find it hard to believe that there were never any people like Sasami who tried to break away, so why would Tsurugi suddenly take an interest in the wishes of this one girl centuries later?

In this regard, what her mother and father were doing makes perfect sense. If she doesn't want the power, give it to a relative who will take the job instead. It was the role of the clan to hold it, right? But she can't give it away, and she is choosing not to have children. Why would Tsurugi be okay with this, unless she had planned for Sasami to have this power all along?

Tsurugi is not omnipotent. She doesn't plan like that, that's too much work for a lazy goddess.
The fact is it is easy to believe no family members had broken away until now. There is a first time for everything, and Sasami was the first.

Tama was created as a future successor, but she was made way before Sasami left her family. She is 9 years old, created back when Sasami was a happy kid.

It is vital to realise that Tsurugi is not all-knowing. In fact no one in the show is.

I think you're mixing "Omniscient" with "Omnipotent" Vallen; the former means all-knowing, the latter is all-powerful. While Tsurugi may not be the former (yeah, long term plans doesn't seem to be her thing), she's very likely still close to the latter despite Kagami saying how she's just a powerless shell. She's been shown to be PERFECTLY capable of taking back her powers, but it's just that she doesn't want to.

Sasami-san@Ganabaranai 07 - Tama(c)

That was a pretty intense episode. The flashbacks with Sasami and Tama at the beginning both did a good job establishing how they would intersect later in the episode, and the whole thing with Sasami's mom... when Shaft wants to do unsettling, they can do unsettling. Still some comedy to break it up, but everything about it was really well done. Tama may be younger than Sasami, but if she's looking for another friend, I think Tama can be both a friend and a big sister to her. That kind of comeback moment is proof enough. The ending was really nice, too. It's clear Sasami still loves her mom, and that rabbit will always be proof of it. There's a lot to think about when it comes to this series.

The only thing that would make this picture better (and complete the SHAFT reference): if the girls were dressed as the respective Negima characters their seiyuus voiced (or in some cases, served as the second seiyuu of):

About Kamiomi - this episode revealed he is the brother of Sasami's mother, but that doesn't mean he can't be Sasami's brother as well. He could be the child of Sasami's father and her grandmother, making him the half-brother of both Sasami and her mother. With all the incest going on in that family, this wouldn't surprise me.

Love it!

Ah, there we go. It seemed strange that Ame-no-Habakiri was winning against Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi (well, I think Sasami is still calling it Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi) last episode, as the legends say Susanoo's sword broke when it first hit the other blade.

So... Tama was actually created to supplant the old gods? Wow. Way to upset the balance there, Amaterasu. I guess she decided it's time for a change. Tama was born within Sasami's lifetime... I wonder if the beginnings of Sasami's discontent, which eventually led to her decision to free herself, are what made Tsurugi decide to create Tama.