Ga-rei Zero 08: Yomi vs. Mei

With Isayama's death, Yomi's position in her adoptive family is heavily compromised. Amid the family politics, the white-haired boy continues to sow discord in the city.
EPISODE 08: The Path of Vengeance
More Screencaps from Ga-rei Zero 08
Yomi mourns her father's death while Kagura watches her, helpless. Somewhere, in another part of the city, Tsuchimiya-dono senses the presence of another sesshouseki. Noriyuki and Kazuka are on the trail of the demon that was allegedly responsible for Isayama's death but could not find the source signal. Back in the Isayama household, Mei interrupts Yomi's crying to tell her to appear before the branch family meeting.
In front of the entire branch family, Yuu announces that his brother has appointed him as successor. Yomi protests, only to get scolded and shamed as Yuu points out how it was her responsibility in the first place to protect him. After the meeting, Kagura overhears the conversation between Izuna, Noriyuki's father, and Yuu. Izuna insists that Yomi should be the successor as he agreed to the betrothal based on that assumption. But Yuu only says that it was Isayama's will to make him (Yuu) the successor. The conversation ends with Izuna thinking about reconsidering the betrothal.
At that moment, Yomi is alone in her room, trying to decide whether to answer Noriyuki's call. Finally, she presses the "end call" button just as Kagura appears in the doorway. But their quiet moment together is interrupted with the arrival of Mei, who announces first that she and her father are moving into the house, that she is taking Yomi's room, forcing her to stay in Kagura's room while the other girl moves back to her own house, and finally, that she is taking back the Shishi-ou. Yomi can do nothing but accede to her demands. Later, she says that, after having everything taken away from her, the only treasure she has left is Kagura. In some other part of the house, Mei tries out the Shishi-ou. However, instead of summoning Nue, what comes to her are her memories of what occurred following her encounter with the white-haired boy. Driven by fear, Mei runs out of the house, ending up in an alley somewhere. The white-haired boy then appears before her, revealing that he planted a piece of the sesshouseki in her body. He tells her to stop fighting it so she can use its power.
Meanwhile, Ayame and Kiri, after pouring over their records, realize that the unusual signal they detected before is drawing other supernatural disaster sources towards it. Back in the Isayama household, Yomi is fondly watching over a sleeping Kagura when she catches sight of a blue butterfly wing. The sight of it causes her to remember what happened the night Kagura's mother died. Apparently, it involved the same blue butterfly and a white-haired boy. Moments later, she gets a call from someone and, leaving Kagura by herself, she takes her "Michael" sword and gets on her motorbike.
Meanwhile, the SDCD are on a mission to take care of a new supernatural disaster source. Kazuka muses that it would be difficult without Yomi and her Shishi-ou but adds that it would be the perfect time to try out his new weapon. However, when the SDCD arrive at the scene, they are surprised to find that the Ministry of Defense's First Special Combat Squadron already have a handle on the situation. In another part of the city, Yomi finally faces off with Mei.
During their fight, Mei reveals the extent of her hatred and jealousy of Yomi. Apparently, she blames Yomi for taking everything from her: her position as successor to the head of the branch family and her duty as wielder of the Shishi-ou. But when she reveals that she killed Isayama because of these perceived wrongs, that is when Yomi breaks into anger. However, no matter how many times Yomi wounds Mei, the sesshouseki immediately heals her. Finally, as Mei's memories once more returns, resulting in her body rejecting the sesshouseki and her wounds to open up, Yomi plants her foot on her face and points Mei's own weapon at her.
Mei begs for her life, saying that it was not her. But Yomi is too far gone. Without listening to her pleas, Yomi ends her life. Afterwards, the white-haired boy appears before her and Yomi realizes that he was responsible for everything. But the boy only says that he did not tell Mei what to do as all he did was to give her the power to do what her heart has been telling her all this time. Then, seemingly from out of nowhere, various lethal darts fly towards Yomi, pinning her broken body to the ground.

COMMENTS:

And it happens. Such an awesome episode. Yomi and Mei's face-off is the episode's definite highlight (samurai girls going for each other's throat is hot as it is without this to up the temp) but what caught my interest more are all the implications: What happened to Mei will happen again, to Yomi and Kagura this time.

Poor Yomi. No doubt, she is my favorite character this season. But I think it's going to be even more amazing watching her go bad-ass all the way. HOTNESS.

On a different note, about Yomi's flashback. That was in Tooru's flashback as well and if I'm not mistaken, that woman was Aoi. So then, that means Yomi knew Tooru from that time and Tooru probably worked with Kagura's mom before she died. That's weird because from episode 3, where Ayame and Kiri talked about the airplane crash that killed white-haired boy and his entire family, I thought it was a pretty recent event. Ayame and Kiri even sounded like they didn't suspect foul-play, when they should have if Kagura's mom died exorcising white-haired boy.

LOL at the First Special Combat Squadron. Characters from Episode 1 are making random cameos. I hope the next episode would feature more Tooru and Natsuki goodness.