Hozuki No Reitetsu
Episode 12 – Lady Lilith And Her Husband/Why Monsters Are So Widely Spread Throughout Mundane China
Another week, another episode and I’m so glad because I cannot get enough of Hozuki No Reitetsu. Welcome back to another installment of Hozuki No Reitetsu Anime Impressions, I hope you’ve all been as excited about this new episode as I have! This week marks the release of Hozuki No Reitetsu episode twelve: An episode that introduces us to the “corrupted” mother of all mankind and one that confirms that having Hozuki in your life only means turmoil in the end.
Lady Lilith And Her Husband:
Finding love in life is hard but it’s also pretty hard even in death and don’t think becoming a high-level demon is going to raise your chances of hooking a “hottie”. If you’re anything like European Hell’s second in command, Beelzebub, you may go against everything I just said and get with some fine-looking broad in the afterlife but if it IS anything like Beelzebub’s situation, it may not be that of a good one. The first half of episode twelve introduces us to a beautiful young woman who goes by the name of Lilith. She’s introduced as a temptress-type demon but in the same sentence she’s also described as the original wife of Adam…as in; Adam and Eve. It turns out that couple were the first ever human beings to be married but also the very first two human beings to get divorced. After fighting about who gets to be “on top”, as described in the show, the two decide to part ways with Adam going off and doing whatever it was he did and Eve changing her name to Lilith and going on one hell of a manhunt…the good kind, ladies. Throughout the rest of her existence she simply acted more like a succubus than anything else but instead of living her victims lifeless she just left them penniless making her hells greatest gold-digger. Now the bride of Beelzebub, Satan’s second in command, Lilith hasn’t changed too much from how she was described.
Despite them being bound by unholy matrimony Lilith still continues to prance around town getting with any man she can making her…not so loyal to her hubby. She heads down to Japanese hell one day alongside her husband and his boss Satan for a “press conference” of sorts and while the two men are doing their hellish duty she’s out on the town living it up…with Hozuki and the gang. Obviously hilarity ensues when Lilith falls for Hozuki and he shows no interest towards her, instead he introduces her to a known male gigolo, our friend Hakutaku. The two immediately click and that’s the last we see of them. The rest of the episode has Beelzebub trying his best to beat Hozuki in any way he can just to prove that he’s the greater demon, but Hozuki being the main character barely gives the poor guy an inch. This half of the episode featured something we haven’t seen in Hozuki No Reitetsu for a while at this point in time and that’s some classic slap-stick comedy. The one-sided competition between Beelzebub and Hozuki was undoubtedly the most humorous part of this episode and it really made it for me. I was happy to see European Hell character come back into the story, they’re probably my most favored characters apart from the main crew because they’re just so goofy.
Why Monsters Are So Widely Spread Throughout Mundane China:
Everyone reading this has clearly been following Hozuki No Reitetsu since the very first episode. In twelve episodes the series has taught us that having Hozuki around is like having an unbreakable curse but I’m sure we all knew that by the end of the first episode. Each and every person he comes into contact with almost always goes through some sort of Hozuki-induced trauma…and that’s just the people he DOES like. In this half of episode twelve the audience takes a step back into the past of Hakutaku. In previous episodes it was noted that Hakutaku is actually a ferocious and mystical Chinese beast but all we see him as is what looks like a typical human-type creature living somewhere in the afterlife. This episode is like a lot of my favorites; it takes a myth or legend and puts it in simple words while also being quite accurate tot he original story. It centers around Hakutaku and his connection to the “Yellow Emperor” of Chinese mythology who encountered each other a very long time ago while Hakutaku was out on one of his drunken strolls and the emperor was out patrolling his land. Without doing the whole “play-by-play” way of writing anime impressions I’m just going to jump straight into what I enjoyed about the episode: I loved the way the stories of Hozuki and Hakutaku intertwined but neither of them remember encountering each other so long ago.
You see, during that time Hozuki was out patrolling other afterlives to investigate the ways in which they were run, what structures have been put in place for the souls of the deceased and just how everything ran in general. He just so happened to be on an “excursion” to the Chinese afterlife when he happened to come into contact with a very young Hakutaku who was much more of a drinker back then. Hozuki used alcohol to his advantage and got Hakutaku drunk enough to spill the beans about what exactly was going on in the Chinese afterlife. After giving all the information he could, Hakutaku decided to head off for a stroll, that stroll just so happened to be the one where he fell through the clouds in Shangri-La and down to earth where he was met by the Yellow Emperor and his crew. It was just an interesting half of the episode that, although not exactly hilarious, did give more insight into the world of Hozuki No Reitetsu while also teaching us a thing or two about Chinese culture and mythology which is something I really enjoy and something that I believe Hozuki No Reitetsu does better than any other anime series I’ve seen as of late.
Check out more Hozuki No Reitetsu impressions HERE.
