Black Torch has already trained us to be suspicious of every mononoke who smiles at Jiro Azuma. So when a mysterious figure named Fuyo shows up to run the Bureau’s training exercises, the instinct is to wait for the betrayal.
That twist never comes, and that is exactly the point. Fuyo is one of the only mononoke in the series who has picked a side and stayed there, and her backstory explains why Jiro’s squad can actually trust her.
Who Is Fuyo in Black Torch?
Fuyo is a mononoke who has worked directly under Ryosuke Shiba for decades, running the Bureau’s anti-mononoke defense training. She has almost no physical fighting ability, but she is a master of illusion and support magic, which has earned her the nickname Division 2’s Handywoman among the staff who rely on her.
Her methods are not gentle. Fuyo traps trainees in an illusory world built from their own memories and fears, forcing them to endure a personal trial before they can wake up.
Jiro and Rago face a colossal black panther that turns out to be Rago’s true form. Ichika relives her mother’s death and has to defeat a version of her mother that insists she will fail. Reiji is confronted by his brother Shinji, who was consumed by the cursed sword Yamakaze. Everyone survives, but nobody leaves unchanged.
Related: Black Torch Episode 6 Turns Its Weakest Trio Into Its Strongest Asset
Why Does Fuyo Want to Help Jiro’s Team?
Fuyo’s loyalty to humans goes back long before the Bureau of Espionage even existed. She was once the local deity of a small village, and that origin shaped her into a mononoke who genuinely likes people rather than tolerating them.
She enjoys human culture and hobbies, has a documented fondness for cheesecake and inari sushi, and finds the idea of mononoke who eat humans borderline incomprehensible. When the Oniwaban rose to power and forced every mononoke to choose a side, Fuyo chose humanity while her closest friend, Ibuki, chose isolation instead. The two of them did not speak again for centuries.
That history is what makes her connection to Jiro’s squad so personal. Training Black Torch gives Fuyo a professional reason to visit Ibuki again for the first time in generations, and their reunion starts out frosty before warming back up once Ibuki comes to respect Jiro herself.
After the Amagi incident, Fuyo keeps visiting Ibuki under the official cover of monitoring a rogue mononoke, though the two are really just sharing drinks and catching up.
Fuyo is not helping Black Torch out of obligation. She is helping because she has spent centuries choosing humanity, and Jiro’s squad happens to be where that choice keeps paying off, both for the Bureau and for an old friendship she thought she had lost.
With Black Torch episode 7 set for August 15, expect Fuyo’s illusions and her ties to Ibuki to keep resurfacing as the anime works through the manga’s Edo-period reveals.