What I understood in episode three was that Makina got afflicted with a curse to which takes advantage of her depression over Keisei's loss.

It's starting to get on my nerves Makina's inability to carry on and just continue sobbing for Keisei, just as Ouri's ineptitude to reap a decent growth as a monk trainee.

Anyways, Makina faces-off her alterego, which tempts her to cast away her memories for Keisei and sever all her ties in the living world if wants to carry out her vengeance.

The curse takes full possession of Makina, and she becomes a soulless bitch, and there she goes with berserk power and monstruous stamina towards her primary target....

....which, of course, is Ouri, demanding a favor from the lad to step down on the contract, because, as she puts it, he's a nuisance and doesn't have any speck of power to contribute in her fight, all while she stands on top of him, who is naked, with tattered and torn clothes which barely cover her whole body but no panties.:heh:

Naturally, Ouri refuses which leaves Makina with no choice but attempting to deliver a killer chop down his face at point-blank range.

Mostly for the disgrace of the Ouri-haters audience, Rika makes it in time to wrap and confine Makina's killing arm with her strings, thus, saving Ouri's life for the time being.
Then in a shameless and blatantly obvious pun to Yu-Gi-Oh! references at least to me looked like:heh:, Rika goes to explain in speech speed the spell she casted on Makina along with the effects. This buys enough time for chibi-Saki to burst out in a surprise attack and pin down unconscious a distracted Makina with her hammer.

To me it was just plainly ridiculous that not only they toned up the fanservice in the onsen scenes but added even bolder/riskier, fanserivce shots (ripped clothes and slightly bared butts) of the Shikabane Hime cast in the new ED visuals.:eyebrow:

It's a blatant sign that the producers want to lure and reel otaku viewers in anyway possible.

Anyways, I did see some potential of interest with Takamasa's subplot.

Takasama, a.k.a. Glasses guy, shared his background tale to Ouji back to the days she met and contracted Itsuki.

Itsuki felt she acted stupid upon revealing to Takamasa about she being a Shikabane Hime and the contract both made, when the latter had no idea back then what she talked about.:heh:

A thing to notice is that Takamasa had a buddy who used to hang out with Itsuki and him. Due to the language barrier, I don't know if Takamasa's friend knew or not about Itsuki being a Shikabane Hime and the lot that there's with Kougon Sect.

However, one thing I manage to conclude successfully by sheer intuition when Takamasa picked up the phone was that the call related somehow to Takamasa's friend, and, indeed, it was due that the current Shikabane, which the other monks engaged, happened to be none other than Takamasa's friend.

Now, we have another problem. Probably, it looks like that Takamasa's death flag has been raised or not. Why I say this?

Because the preview for the next episode displays a bunch of screens, many which showcase Takamasa hanging around with Itsuki and his friend.

Since the advent of Keisei's death, does the animation staff would be engaging on a trend in which they're going to kill off monk characters repeateadly in the episode that reveals their pasts?

Fmm, an excellent episode on the development of Takamasa (was it...?) and the super bou-hime, who's voice does good to drag down the episode's tension, not a new thing though.

Though I sympathized more with Takamasa's friend than his situation with Itsuki and the whole love business, etc.

Cars really can be evil... Causing so many deaths... Yet humans have evolved to the point that they can't live without cars... Grimly amusing.

ED... The guys now wear clothes... (-_-)

Preview: Continuation of their story...?

To be honest, the overall drama in the episode was rather dull... Takamasa's story wasn't bad, but I had on a "So?" face through the whole drama over the fake Kensei... I guess it doesn't help that I have no interest in the protagonists and the fact their voices can't create tension (I could have sweared that Ouri's voice actor's "ku" pronunciation became practically "gu"...).

But it was quite entertaining to see Dark Kensei and his army of clones. :heh:

And the car Shikabane friend of Takamasu's really has such a wonderful point on the setting... Only females can become revived to fight. Really unfair, isn't it :heh:

As always, the foreigner shikabane provides comedy colder than my freezer and doesn't nothing besides that. (-_-)

Preview: Mune-sama?

Overall, Takamasa and Itsuki's background story was pretty informative.

She died ran over by a bus. The contract was established, Takamasa had no idea about what were shikabane and shikabane hime, until he was brought to the Kougon sect to be briefed in the thorough details.

The point that Takamasa made to Ouri is like the latter he (Takamasa) too was also an idealist youth, treating and seeing Itsuki as pretty normal, average, high-schooler girl.

She at first was too scared as a Shikabane-Hime to fight seriously, and in a few occasions Takamasa gambled his life at protecting her.

However, the more they stayed together, the more they bonded, and even the flashbacks showed that Takamasa displayed some promise of skills with the bow and arrow.
As Takamasa grew seriously with his training, so Itsuki's power as Shikabane-Hime started to mature and both earned experience.

It was not until the incident with Takamasa's classamate, Takeharu, that he discovered the ugly truth about Shikabane Hime being an unnatural existence just like the Shikabane they hunt.

At their first encounter from four years prior, Takeharu seriously injured Itsuki to the point that she went berserk as the flames were consuming her.

Takamasa went out to help her but driven mad that he might her in the ugly Shikabane form, Itsuki lost her mind for a few moments. Those were enough for her to unintentionally lashed out on Takamasa, injuring him in the process, and later leaving his trademark, body scars.

After that incident, the message sank deep into Takamasa's mind that Shikabane-Hime are Shikabane, after all, and not human anymore. Of course, the crude truth has not made Takamasa to refrain from treating Itsuki fairly.

She attacked his friend not him , he just jumped into the way that`s different from her lashing out at him. And it wasn`t because he might see her in her ugly form. She didn`t want him to look at her but she only attacked after the second car hit her.

My two cents that the Keisei impostor is none other than Enna, the glasses girl of the Shichisei.

Do you remember how she was psycho-laughing at episode 4 when she made preparations for something?

She wants to mess with Makina's mind like hell knows how.