just finished it. i was wrong. it was 50 times. at point blank range
(spoilers under the cut)
chapter 118 in itself was bad enough for me, the humble Mitsukou fan
and of course seeing Amane reduced to little more than a meat puppet for the goddamn chthonic deity beneath the red house, seeing yashiro come to the realization that the hanako of this world never got to be happy and her crushing hopelessness as her friends, fighting a losing battle, tell her to abandon them, yeah, that got to me
and then there’s this panel
while I have my thoughts on Teru, i don’t lean strongly either towards supporting or hating him. but when I saw this, all I could think was
he’s never looked more like his brother
and doesn’t he look like Kou now? when he does what he’s refrained from doing his entire career as an exorcist and lets his feelings show? Kou has always let his heart guide him toward the right course of action. He’s always expressed his affection for those he cares about. And Teru never really got to do the same thing for his brother before he had to exorcise the thing that was possessing him, and kill Kou in the process. It’s this panel that made my heart go out to him much more than anything prior ever has.
…being shot directly in the heart this many times is not good for me…think I’m gonna go to bed now…wake me when physical copies of volume 25 drop…
finished undertale true pacifist route and fullmetal alchemist brotherhood in the same day…what am I supposed to do after reaching the end of such peak media
Theory time! The Minamotos are half supernaturals.
Minamotos are inclined to like supernaturals despite being tasked to eliminate them for generation after generation. Tiara got attached to a Mokke, Kou is empathetic to half of the supernaturals he met, and even Yorimitsu, who told us there was something wrong with his emotional attachment, took a liking to Hakubo: He stayed with the demon on his death bed, no humans in sight.
Usually that wouldn't mean much but oddities keep piling up.
The Minamotos have fangs, that's not something any other human character have. No matter how dramatic the manga can get, a living human does not get fangs.
Yorimitsu, the oldest Minamoto we have seen, had the biggest fangs of them all, comparable to Hakubo's and Yako: A demon and a fox spirit.
Minamotos are closer to the Far Shore than normal people. Not because 'they are born doomed' but because they have a mysterious sixth sense.
This sixth sense doesn't only makes them able to see supernaturals it gives them resistence to their influence. Even a supernatural as powerful as Mirai had trouble messing with Kou, who is not a trained exorcist.
We are told spiritual power is what give them this resistence but no other human have this: The Nagisa family, the Kannagis, they all have more spiritual energy than a normal person, and while that gives them the capacity to see supernaturals and use spiritual weapons, we get no sign anyone besides other supernaturals have resistence to a supernatural's influence.
Speaking of spiritual weapons:
It is heavily implied this lightning cannot hurt humans.
We never see a person be hurt by a spiritual weapons, even someone as unexperienced to exorcism tools as Aoi and Nene were able to use lightnings without hurting themselves.
There is no control to Nene's attack here, she probably wasn't even planning on using an attack, yet she wasn't bruised, there are no signs using that hurt her at all.
Meanwhile Kou zapped himself. The 'demon vanquishing' energy that his staff creates can hurts him if it hits him.
So it seems Minamotos are resistent because they have both high spiritual energy and some supernatural energy: The two powers that give other supernaturals trouble combined.
Notice how Kako say 'supernatural' as if any supernatural will have resistence to his power but spiritual energy needs to be 'excessivelly high' to count?
Teru can open a gate between boundaries with a few drops of his blood, no tools needed.
The only character we know with a power even close to that is Yako, who is a fox spirit born in a shrine, a mix of spiritual and supernatural power.
People may say Teru and Kou needing to eat a demon hand to reach the Far Shore train means they can't have supernatural ties but even full supernaturals have trouble crossing boundaries during a severance.
What this moment implies is "Trying to be closer to supernaturals is something people have been trying to do for a long time"
And I have reason to believe the Minamotos had far deeper supernatural ties in the old days.
Yorimitsu was able to form a contract with a demon.
A contract have always been a supernaturals tool to take advantages of humans, we see it with kako, the mermaid, tsukasa, hanako... So a Minamoto being able to do that without needing to offer anything in return (akane got the watch, nene had her mermaid curse halfed by hanako eating a scale) is wild.
It makes sense though, Minamotos are less supernaturals then they once were: their fangs are shorter and despite still having a lot of powers and staying sharp with constant work, Hakubo calls them weak sauce compared to the Minamotos he knew while he was alive:
BONUS: There are some implications that Teru is affected by rumors.
This part is less airtight but hear me out.
Teru's introdution was not as his main role of exorcist, but as the prettiest boy in school, the well known school prince!
His popularity is off the chart, he is treated as an idol! A pavillion was build for him, this pavillion is the most popular attraction of the festival, check out the line!
People bow down at his presence in valentine's day! He is the god of valentine's day!! Everybody loves him!!
Yet the second he is off school no one cares. We see zero admires, zero fans stopping him on his way to work, zero people commenting on how handsome he is. He is at most 'a pretty boy' the same level as natsuhiko when he is out, he is not an idol.
This becomes obvious when we compare him to Aoi.
Aoi had 'fans' since she was a little kid, people have always noticed her beauty, to the point Akane had to build a habit of stalking her to make sure no one harrassed her.
Meanwhile, Teru was isolated. He couldn't spend much time with people, but is not like people looked at him anyways. Teru is the only one interested in his classmates, watching them have fun when he reflects on his isolation.
But Aoi is always in the spotlight, even at her most isolated people will stares at 'the beauty queen' and whisper about her, something they had done all her life. She can't catch a break.
There are no hints Teru used to have this attention as a child, and even as a teen, he loses it when he steps outside of school. His rumors of being the school prince is no longer applicable. Only Aoi's beauty keeps being treated as abnormal:
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