Tayutama: Kiss on my Deity episode 5 review; A childhood promise broken?

 

        This episode begins with Yuuri having a dream about his past where he and Ameri promised each-other that they would always be together. Then in middle school it looks like Ameri started to distance herself from Yuuri, and he wonders what happened to their promise. Later, while Mashiro is giving Yuuri a massage, Nue tells them that they aren’t ready to battle the other monsters yet, they barely managed to beat her and she was the weakest of the bunch. Ameri gets pissed off at Mashiro for giving Yuuri the massage, and because she keeps saying she’s Yuuri’s wife.

 

       While Mashiro is out shopping with Yuuri she overhears some women talking about how women in a nearby town are being attacked by some monster. After school, Ameri invites Yuuri and Sankuro to hangout with her, and Yuuri agrees until Mashiro calls him and says she wants to investigate a nearby town. When Sankuro and Ameri are walking home he notices that she’s not happy, he tells her to just tell Yuuri how she really feels, but Ameri says it might be too late. When Mashiro and Yuuri meet outside the school, Yuuri comments that she looks tired so why don’t we forget about the Tayutai and go have some fun. We see that Ameri is watching and listening to their conversation from around a corner. Later, we see that Sankuro has come up with a plan to get Yuuri and Ameri together, he invited Yuuri to go shopping with him and he gives Ameri two tickets to a motorcycle movie and leaves.  When Yuuri shows up, Ameri works up her courage and asks Yuuri to see the movie with her, he turns her down saying that he promised Mashiro that he would take her to a museum. When Mashiro shows up, Yuuri asks her if she wants to go to a movie with him and Ameri? Yes. Ameri gets really upset, she says why does Mashiro have to come with them, and she runs off in tears.

        Later, Mashiro goes to Yuuri and asks him if Ameri might like him? He asks Mashiro if she means in a romantic way? Yes. Yuuri says there’s no way, they’ve know each other since they were kids, it’s not possible. Mashiro says that Yuuri’s wrong and she wants to have a serious talk with Ameri. When Yuuri tries to call Ameri he finds that she’s blocking his calls, and he gets pissed off at Ameri and jumps on his bike and says he’s going to find out what her problem is, Mashiro tries to stop him but he doesn’t listen and leaves anyway. While riding in the rain, Yuuri spots Ameri and he stops and asks her what is she thinking, they get into a big argument over Mashiro, Ameri calls her a monster and she asks Yuuri if it’s pity. He tells Ameri to take it back now, but she runs off in tears (Yuuri is a blockhead).

         Then we see the Tayutai that has been killing women on the prowl, he complains that people don’t have enough spiritual energy to fill him up. He senses some strong energy and goes to investigate, then he attacks a girl who turns out to be Ameri. As she being attacked by that guy another human looking Tayutai destroys the other one and saves Ameri, he tells her that she’s the one he’s been looking for.

 

       The next day, Yuuri has cold from searching for Ameri all night, and when Yuuri is talking with Sankuro, Ameri rushes up to him and apologises to him for last night. When Ameri notices that Yuuri has a cold, she again apologises and touches him, and some sort of energy transfer from her to him making him feel better. As dark clouds form above the school, Ameri tells Yuuri that it’ll all be over soon. Yuuri notices that all his friends are frozen so he makes his way outside where he finds Nue, Mashiro, and Kisaragi. Nue says that the dragon got lucky and found someone with high spiritual energy, so they better run away. Kisaragi gets pissed off at Nue for wanting to runaway, and Nue removes her protection from Kisaragi, freezing her in place, she tells them that since she made a friend she doesn’t want to lose her, she grabs Kisaragi and runs off.

 

       Mashiro and Yuuri face the dragon alone, Mashiro uses some of her power to attack the dragon and when she calls on Yuuri for his power she finds that he’s unable to do anything, something been done to him. The dragon attacks Mashiro while Yuuri looks on helplessly, finally Yuuri is able to break whatever is binding him and he is able to aid Mashiro. When Yuuri reaches the unconscious Mashiro he looks up and sees a dark winged Ameri hovering above them. Then the scene switches to the school’s nurse’s office where Yuuri wakes up to find that Kisaragi and Ameri are by his side, and a injured Mashiro is in a bed next to him. He asks Ameri about her wings and she tells him that he must have been seeing things because of the blow to his head. Well, that’s all for this episode.

         Well, here we are, it was quite apparent from the beginning of the series that Ameri going to play the role of the girl next door in this harem, but I didn’t figure that Ameri would also be the promise girl from Yuuri’s childhood. Or should I restate this to call Ameri the broken promise girl from Yuuri’s childhood? I know that this is an overused premise in anime, and some bloggers like omisyth  dislike the childhood promise trope, but I’m a sucker for it. Some of my favorite television shows, anime, and movies like Forest Gump, Love Hina, Little House on the Prairie  and many others use some form of the childhood promise/childhood pledge of love to drive the story forward.

        I think the reason why I like the whole premise of the childhood pledge being included in the story is that it raises the level of the storytelling to fairytale levels. I know that most childhood promises/pledges of love are soon forgotten, but when the do come true they become part of family lore that is passed down through the generations. I think that every family has some story about how some relative met their spouse at a very young age and they eventually married and stayed together for 40  or 50 years, but Ameri’s and Yuuri’s childhood story has a little twist to it.

      As we saw in this episode, Ameri and Yuuri made a childhood promise to always be together, and they seemed to keep that promise up until middle school. We saw from Yuuri’s memories that at some point he felt that Ameri slowly started pulling away from him, his memories are probably right but his conclusions were most likely wrong. It seems from his memories that he felt that Ameri was breaking her promise to him, but her pulling back was more likely caused by a difference in maturity levels between them. We all know that girls mature at a some what faster rate than boys, so I assume that Ameri’s pulling away was caused by her becoming romantically/sexually attracted to Yuuri while he still viewed Ameri as a girl friend and not a girlfriend, and because of Ameri’s youth and inexperience she didn’t know how to react to her new feelings so she pulled back. Now a couple of years later, Ameri is still in love with Yuuri and views him as her property, and Yuuri still views Ameri  as a close childhood friend. So, now along comes Mashiro, the new girl who’s not afraid to show some physical affection towards Yuuri, and he responds to her actions. Now, poor Ameri is all angry and flustered because Mashiro has managed to get romantically and emotionally closerto Yuuri in a couple of weeks than she’s managed in about ten years. Well, it’ll be interesting to see whether the magical girl or the promise girl gets the guy in the end.