Kentaro Yabuki returns
2 and a half years after Hatena Illusion, a series illustrated by Kentaro Yabuki (and written by the man himself this time) takes center stage again. This time we have Ayakashi Triangle, a gender bend shonen centered around protagonist Matsuri and his osananajimi Suzu.
The cheerful heroine Suzu enjoys life in our opening scene, and has to this point lived (mostly) free of conflict and worry. This is soon to change however as Shirogane, the King of Ayakashi, has set their sights on her.
Shortly after Shirogane begins his observation, our protagonist Matsuri arrives and threatens to exorcise him. Suzu notices the commotion and chides Matsuri for threatening an ayakashi that appears so harmless.
Matsuri warns Suzu that although Shirogane seems harmless, he was eyeing her suspiciously while hiding, and asks her to stay away from ayakashi, because she sees only those that are harmless. Matsuri notices Suzu’s thighs and kneels to feel them up, asking Suzu if she’s already been cursed by an Ayakashi, earning him a knee to the skull. If this all seems too sudden, don’t worry, the background between these two and the nature of Matsuri’s power will be explained shortly.
As a child, Suzu was viewed by most other kids with suspicion and contempt, given her claims that she could see ghosts, and seemingly laughing and talking with herself. This changed when she met Matsuri, who could also see the ayakashi, and it was not long before she befriended him as they both played with the ayakashi. During middle school, Matsuri was set to take over his family’s role as an exorcist of dangerous ayakashi, and Suzu noted the change in his attitude towards them, threatening them to stay away from Suzu, and Matsuri himself warning Suzu to keep away from them.
Interspersed with Suzu’s monologue is an action scene featuring Matsuri fighting a spider ayakashi that was causing traffic accidents. Matsuri makes an interesting remark to himself in passing, saying that he needs to finish the spider before it notices Suzu, obviously implying there is something more to Suzu that we don’t quite know yet.
Suzu’s attraction to Matsuri is made quite clear in the first episode and chapter, with the mentioning that their transition into high school should bring them closer as a boy and girl.
Matsuri recounts to his grandfather his encounter with Suzu. When Matsuri mentions that the ayakashi he saw was a cat named Shirogane, his grandfather tells him that he must immediately return and help Suzu, because it is an exceptionally powerful ayakashi
I’d have loved to make a stitch of this strange image of Suzu standing naked in front of a candle, but the background shifts too much. Also, make a mental note of the differences you see here. More on this at the end.
A long conversation between Shirogane and Suzu reveals the nature of Suzu. She is known as an “ayakashi maiden,” a rare phenomenon that occasionally arises in humans that invigorates them with vitality that is irresistible . It is rare for an ayakashi to be powerful enough to consume this vitality, but as the maiden grows older and the vitality grows further, eventually an ayakashi will take notice, putting the maiden in danger. In a flashback, Matsuri’s grandfather reveals that these maidens were once sacrificed to the ayakashi because of the danger they posed to society. Fearing for his friend’s safety, Matsuri took up his grandfather’s place as an exorcist to protect Suzu, but for some reason did not tell Suzu why.
There is a fairly impressive but brief fight scene that takes place here, though I skipped over most of it. If that’s your kind of thing, I’d recommend watching the full episode. I am open to fully covering the battles that will come, but I am focused on the service. Let me know if you’d like to see the captures/webm’s of the actions scenes.
Shirogane makes several sexually charged remarks about Suzu throughout the episode, the exact reason nature of which I am unsure of. He seems well aware of Suzu’s attraction to Matsuri, and the above two captures are of him imagining what they’ll do if he’s successfully captured by Matsuri’s scroll. Why he’s bothered by this is what I’m not sure of – I didn’t get the impression that he desired Suzu for himself (sexually), at least not beyond devouring her for her power. It seems more likely that Suzu is capable of losing her vitality in some way, perhaps through losing her virginity, to which she’d obviously be interested in doing so with Matsuri. This may explain why Shirogane changes Matsuri into a girl.
Shirogane changes Matsuri into a girl before fleeing. I didn’t include the gif here, but there is a very brief 1 second animation of Matsuri’s hair changing from red to white, or maybe it’s a very, very light pink?
The censors here are interesting – if they didn’t plan on removing the censor cats, I feel that they’d simply not bother drawing the nipple bumps for the anime and not use the cat censors. For this reason, I think they’ll at least remove the cat censors for the BD release. This is of course just my speculation- we can only wait and see what they’ll actually do.
Strange thing to do, to censor the underwear, but we obviously see it in the mirror.
There wasn’t much to say towards the end of the episode. There’s some good service here, when all we’ve seen up to this point is some shots of Suzu’s thighs. Also, the last of these manga shots above are all out of place. I just did my best to put them where they seemed appropriate. It seems the last scene of episode 01 is somewhat anime original, appearing to be a weird mix of the end of Chapter 1 and the very beginning of Chapter 2. The bra scene with Suzu seems to be completely original, and the self fondling scene is exceptionally gratuitous and gives me hope that there will be more scenes that are expanded on.
The obvious elephant in the room is whether or not the BD will fully uncensor the TV broadcast. I’m a hopeful person, and I like to think optimistically, but even so, there is precedent for Kentaro Yabuki illustrated manga-turned-anime to air censored. Both Darling in the Franxx and Hatena Illusion have quite a bit of manga nudity, but the anime had none of it, and I believe Mayoi Neko Overrun was censored as well, but I’m not so sure about that one. This censorship could be at the discretion of the anime studios and/or writers of the manga, but the point is is that it’s happened. Not every series illustrated by Yabuki is going to end up like To Love Ru. On the flipside, this is to my knowledge, the first (or at least first in a very long time) Yabuki illustrated and written series to get an anime adaptation, and coming from the guy who is very well known for erotic art, you’d think a studio would know what they’re in for when they take up a Yabuki series. I’d like to think he’s got enough clout to convince even a studio that doesn’t do nudity to take up his series and do it anyway. This is one of those things that you can think of 1000 reasons why, and 1000 reasons why not, but all we can do is wait and see.
