So Rikuo finally ascended to take over the Nura-gumi as “The Third” (3rd leader of the gang). Meanwhile, Yuka is having her 13th birthday. As it turns out, she had a childhood encounter with a “mirror” youkai that takes the life of a girl on… her 13th birthday. As Yuka’s classmates study this youkai, and as Yuka’s fending off messages inside her head, Yuka runs off from the group and soon finds herself chased by the youkai on a fruitless journey home.

In fact, she’s been trapped in the school on the other side of the looking glass, so to speak. As a cell phone given to her (in the form of a creepy youkai-ized doll) exposes her plight to those on the other side, leading to a frantic search. Of course, Rikuo is the only one who can actually see her through the mirror. The youkai is very unamused and breaks the mirror and nearly has Yuka absorbed when Youkai Rikuo pulls her out of the youkai fully, asking what it’s doing grabbing chicks on his turf.

So, the mirror monster creates perfect copies of itself all around Rikuo and Yuka. It sounds very impressed with itself until Rikuo, sword drawn, simply cuts all of them at the same time. That solves the problem.

While Yuka manages to make it seem like she was just imagining things and waves off the search, she tugs on Rikuo’s kimono and demands to know more about him. He grants her request, in his own way, leading her on a trip to the stomping grounds of the Bake-nekos (Ghost Cats), who were featured early on getting their butts kicked by what you might think of as were-rats, but who are part of the Nura-gumi. So Rikuo gives her an introduction tot he world of the youkai, including how it is both scary and fascinating, making her realize that yes, Youkai Rikuo really is a youkai, and after a long night out, he takes her home.

Rikuo ends up back at his own house at morning, something that his grandfather and mother remark upon, thinking that he must’ve scored with a girl and being quite fine with that. (Now that’s some family…) Actually, Rikuo is pretty out of it as he walks to school. Somehow Yuka is not at all tired (granted, she looked like she’d passed out from sake, so she was nice and out of it while Youkai Rikuo carried her on his back), and wants to ask Rikuo something. Rikuo, breaking character, says “sorry about last night,” sending Yuki Onna into a tizzy, and Yuka grabs Rikuo and goes off with him.

So, it basically goes like this.

• Youkai Rikuo (whose name she obviously hasn’t heard!) tends to be around where Rikuo is.
• There seems to be a connection between the two.
• Therefore…
• Rikuo: (I’m busted…!!)
• “You must be friends with him, right?”

Rikuo, welcome to The Friend Zone, Clark Kent version. If the glasses fit, wear them.

Incidentally, the episode ended with some “recon” being done by three  youkai of another “gang” that figure it’ll take a week to completely conquer the town, given that the Nuras are softies.

We’ll see about that, won’t we?

In the last few episodes, Cell has finally made his appearance. (That is, he went from a “ghost” to getting on the screen, facing the Super-ized Piccolo who’s merged with “Kami-sama,” and has now escaped.) Seeking to stop Cell from absorbing Android #17 and becoming “a complete being” at all costs, Piccolo and others on, well, let’s call it Team Goku to keep it short, continue their search while looking into Cell’s origins.

So, we get a brief scene with Trunks and Kurilin finding Cell’s birthplace, a further hidden lab of Dr. Gero’s where a computer was “growing” the android Cell from cells plucked from various fighters that have graced Earth with their presence over the previous arcs. This long process would be completed in the future, where Cell grabs a time machine and comes back to become “complete” rather than rule a broken world in his incomplete form because, well, he’s an ass.

The voice actor for Cell is, I believe – I haven’t read the credits and looked quite that far – the same one who plays the diabolical Oda Nobunaga in the first season of the Sengoku Basara anime. At any rate, he does the “I’m Just That Evil” stuff well.

So, Cell’s agenda is now draining as many humans as possible – and he is now very quick and efficient about it – with that stinger of his to gain their life energy and become powerful enough to wipe the floor with even the “new” Androids, the ones more powerful than the ones Trunks faced (that still managed to wipe out his future Earth). So far, Cell’s agenda has been going rather well.

Before destroying Cell’s birthplace, Trunks and Kurilin find design plans for Android #17 that they hand over to Bulma and her father for analysis, hoping to find some kind of defining weakness so that they can take out #17 and prevent an apocalyptic situation.

When returning from this, Kurilin flies across Cell during one of his rampages and manages to, for a time, save a woman and her child from Cell, but is only saved from certain death himself because Piccolo and Tien Shinhan show up at the last moment, both hunting Cell themselves. But Cell, being very proficient at hiding his energy, leaps away and hides from them once again, going off to gain more strength at their expense.

By the end of the show, Team Goku is using one of the Capsule Corp’s machines – I can’t help but think of it as a flying van, but it’s an aircraft I suppose – to find Cell without using their “ki” to fly around, which tips him off to their own locations, an actual intelligent plan, even while the other Androids are getting closer to Goku’s house (not that Goku’s there, he’s been relocated to Kame House).

Finally, Goku is fully revived and fully cured of his heart illness that “should” have killed him. You know, he really should have taken the darned medicine during the 3 years since he’d had it, but that wouldn’t have been enough Drama, I guess.

Anyway, that’s where it is. I was absolutely not a watcher of Dragonball Z during its US airings for a wide variety of reasons, so I personally have no way to understand just how many original eps were crammed into this single one.

I reiterate that this makes watching the show much less of a chore. I have actually been able to enjoy the source material through this show, which I could never have said for the original, purely because it took too long.