REVIEW: ‘Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon’ Episode 7 – “Meeting through an Apple”

If a portion of Yashahime Episode 7 looks familiar, that is because you’ve already seen it. The series has finally come full circle and hit the events of the first episode (not counting the flashback). While the entire episode isn’t a rehash, it feels a bit like viewers are stuck on a treadmill this week. Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon is an anime sequel to the Inuyasha series from studio Sunrise. It follows the descendants of its predecessor’s main cast.

It is a bit difficult to summarize the plot of Yashahime Episode 7 because it was all over the place. Towa is settling into life in the feudal era. She works with the demon hunters, and in turn, is able to improve her ability to sense demons. The show also gives a glimpse at the main villain of the season: Kirinmaru. We don’t know much yet, as he is masked…although some hints seem to not-so-subtly foreshadow a possible identity. Also, he doesn’t seem to remember or recognize his underlings, The Four Perils, which is intriguing. There is also Kyuki, the next member of The Four Perils tasked with defeating our main trio. We don’t know much about her yet, except that she wants The Rainbow Pearls for herself. In some ways, her character feels like a nod to Inuyasha’s Kagura.

The rest of Yashahime Episode 7 feels like multiple mini-episodes smashed together. An emotional highlight was definitely Towa dreaming about having a normal life with Setsuna in the modern-day. Setsuna, meanwhile, is still giving the cold shoulder to her sister. When she doesn’t wake Towa up for a mission, Towa interprets this as Setsuna thinking she is in the way. She sets out to hunt down The Dream Butterfly by herself and promptly gets herself lost. In the episode’s next “section,” Towa encounters Riku, a lost pirate looking for his ship. They bond over a picnic. Avoiding spoilers as much as possible, Towa gets captured and we wind up at the scene from the pilot, only instead of a flashback, we are shown Setsuna and Moroha’s point of view. This mostly consists of the two of them fighting a demon. The episode itself just…ends, with the implication that next week is going to continue right where it left off.

If all of this sounds a bit muddled and chaotic, that’s because it is. It isn’t terrible but by far the weakest episode of the series so far. It is a strange feeling when new characters are introduced, and yet a decent portion of the episode feels like a repeat. What was likely intended to be a clever storytelling technique just ended up making everything prior seem like a prologue. There is word going around that the series is a two-cour run, meaning it is slated for 24 episodes. Hopefully, this is the case, because with the show entering the back half of the fall season there is clearly still a lot of plot to get through.

At the end of the day, Yashahime Episode 7 is the weakest of the bunch so far. It isn’t awful, but just “meh.” Between what felt like a collage of mini-episodes, and showing footage that was previously seen, nothing very compelling or exciting happened. The episode was a slow twenty minutes this week.

Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon is streaming now on Crunchyroll and Hulu.