It’s back! One of 2024’s best anime series returns for a second go-round and it hasn’t missed a beat. This is such a great palette cleanser after the title I chose to cover for Spring 2025, Lazarus, turned about to be a massive disappointment despite a promising premiere. Anyway, without further ado, let’s recap what happened in this episode and why this show is such a joy to watch.

We return from last season’s cliffhanger of weird grey skinned ghoul people attacking Momo. Fortunately for her, it turns out that the buildings around the hot springs are collapsing and pinning the ghouls under rubble. Momo looks into her backpack and finds out that Turbo Granny has snuck inside. So it appears that Turbo Granny magic has saved the day. Momo goes to a shrine with a goofy shrinekeeper who does headstands for his Youtube career. She tours the shrine and learns the legend of the snake god guarding the volcano and the ancient tradition of sacrificing children to the snake god. Unfortunately, the shrine appears to be just a tourist trap as there are no talismans available to deal with the ghouls. Momo tells the shrinekeeper that maybe the story about the snake god might interest people and might get them to watch his Youtube. The shrinekeeper is upset he didn’t think of such an idea earlier. It is obvious that the snake god story is foreshadowing something.

Meanwhile, Okarun and Jiji cover up the whole that leads to a secret room with a soccer poster. Some ghouls come up to them and casually gathered for tea. Things aren’t fine and dandy though as they ask if Jiji sent any pesky exorcists. He denies such and explains that Okarun is just a friend. They ask Okarun if he is really Jiji’s friend, what is his favorite soccer team. The poster is the clue that allows Okarun to answer correctly.

Momo comes to the haunted house and finds Okarun and Jiji are passed out half naked and the ghouls are in sumo gear for some reason. They attack her and we get the big shonen fight scene of the episode. In a rarity for the genre, a girl fights solo and uses her psychic powers and fisticuffs to lay a beatdown on the ghouls. This scene was pretty epic. Even if she was able to take down a good number of ghouls. The fat ghoul lady in the purple tracksuit turns out too much for her and she is knocked through the wall into the secret room. It turns out that said secret room has quicksand. She attempts to use her powers to get out, but the ghouls keep knocking her down. We find out the intent is to sacrifice Momo to the snake god. Okarun and Jiji eventually are able to be conscious again and go down the quicksand with her.

It turns out there is a whole world under the quicksand and they encounter the “snake” which is actually a giant worm. Okarun remembers from a paranormal magazine a story about a Mongolian worm cryptid. This appears to be said cryptid. Before our heroes can deal with the cryptid, it turns out the sun in this weird world hidden under the quicksand has the power to force Okarun to transform into his yokai mode. He seems extremely feral and attacks Jiji to end the episode on a shocking cliffhanger.

This episode was a lot of fun with supernatural shenanigans, Momo being a certified buttkicker, and a cool twist revealing what is in the secret room we’ve been wondering about all season. The openings and endings are great both musically and visually, with the visuals in the openings and endings showing off wild and crazy animation techniques that are more about being expressive that strictly “on-model” animation. These credits are a feast for the eyes. It seems like after a disappointing Spring 2025 season with a few gems here and there, Summer 2025 is righting the ship. Dan Da Dan is just as strong as it was in season one and I’m ready to see how this episode’s shocking cliffhanger resolves.

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