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Touge Oni (峠鬼, Mountain Demons) also known as Primal Gods in Ancient Times and Touge Oni: Primal Gods in Ancient Times, is a manga written by Kenji Tsurubuchi and published by Kadokawa Shoten Publishing. Its first chapter was published in Apr 13, 2018 and the series is currently ongoing.The story is an adaptation of the legends surrounding the 7th Century monk En no Ozuno. The most iconic of these legends is that he had two kishin in his service: Zenki, the male "oni in the front" who handles an ax, and Goki, the female "oni in the back" who carries a pitcher. Normally, media that incorporates this trio either focuses on The Leader En no Ozuno (or a modern-day heir of his) or Zenki as the warrior. Touge Oni is a very rare case in which Goki, the healer, is the spotlight character.
In the days of the land of Wa, three souls find each other in dire circumstances. En no Ozuno is a human servant and the lover of the goddess Hitokoto-nushi. She's fallen ill and En's journey starts with the desire to become a sennin so he can help her and be with her. Zen is the last remaining child of a village that was forced to starve to death or turn to cannibalism and risk becoming oni. Zen is saved by En, who thereby fails his final trial to become a sennin, and given a neck seal to return to his human form and mind. With no one else to turn to, Zen becomes En's disciple. En still seeks to be with Hitokoto-nushi, while Zen wants his humanity back. One day they meet a woman who introduces herself as Goki and joins them until they reach a small village readying a human sacrifice for the local guardian deity. This sacrifice is the orphan Miyo, who accepts her responsibility to the village even though she wants to live and visit the capital one day. The trio accompanies her on her final journey to the deity's shrine, where they accidentally get into a fight with said deity. Miyo learns that Goki is her older self and the revelation that she gets to live inspires her to join up with En and Zen and escape. Miyo's desire to see the world and selfless nature stabilizes the team on their joint quest that, all things considered, has only just begun.
Touge Oni contains examples of:
- Age-Gap Romance: Played straight and averted. Azuma no Miya is an important man in the capital and has many wives, all of whom he married for political unions. The youngest he married was a twelve-year old. Azuma's age isn't given, nor what it was at the time of that marriage, but it seems at present he's around 30. When En confides that he wants to leave Miyo at the capital for her safety, Azuma shares his desire to marry someone free of political necessity and argues that Miyo's courage makes her a lovely candidate. While Azuma is honest, he also recognizes that Miyo is just what En and Zen need to their team and is trying to enrage En into keeping her as his disciple. En doesn't bite, prompting Azuma to give Miyo his proposal and a divine incense burner to help her make her decision in a time-dream. Miyo gets to see her future as Azuma's wife and how it will benefit no one, so she leaves to rejoin En and Zen, much to Azuma's delight.
- Artifact of Power: The trio constantly comes in the possession of divine artifacts that, even if risky, come in handy some trouble later. They also lose them with high frequency, either because their power gets depleted or because the true owners reclaim it.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: A requirement for a human to become an enlightened Sennin is to surpass human thoughts and morality, which is why the last step to transcendence is to pass a place of suffering and ignore it. En failed to become a Sennin because he was incapable of doing this.
- Contrived Coincidence: When the party and Ho-No-Kigunushi are stuck inside the Great Well of Heaven (a black hole) and looking for a way to escape, Kigunushi says that it's impossible unless they conveniently happened to have magical tools which allow them to shrink and enlarge the black hole at will. Guess who was gifted such tools just a few chapters ago?Ho-No-Kigunushi: "WHAT THE FUUUUUUCKKK?"
- Dark and Troubled Past: Implied to be the case with Zen and why he has the curse of an Oni, a curse that befalls only those who broke the taboo of cannibalism. And he's barely much more than a kid. Whatever his backstory is, the thought of it or his horns is shown to deeply upset him, and it is strongly hinted his backstory will be revealed in a later chapter.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: The dream-future versions of En and Zen in Chapter 6 realize that they aren't real and that Miyo will wake up and make a different choice than the one that leads to their dream-present. They are happy with their own imminent demise because it means the guilt over her death will cease and never have existed. However, they notice that the dream is infested by people who previously used the divine incense burner and never woke up and they are targeting Miyo for her ability to still wake up. En's and Zen's last stand as the dream crumbles is to fight off these beings and guide Miyo towards their real selves.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: The oni encountered in Chapter 2 has lost all of his humanity and can only think of humans as food, but he still cries out for his mother whenever he's scared.
- Everyone Has Standards: Hitokoto-Nushi is perfectly okay with people dying on the mountain climb to her shrine, saying that people risking their lives for something is beautiful even if they die in the attempt. However, she forbids the inn at the foot of the mountain from selling sake to pilgrims, since alcohol-related accidents are a poor way to die. On the flip side, she's okay with mobile aids like canes.
- Flying Saucer: Appears in chapter 10 as the Tensen's legendary treasure ship.
- Foregone Conclusion: In most versions of the real-life legends, Zenki and Goki are husband and wife. Zen's and Miyo's love therefore is set and the narrative goes along with it by omitting almost any sense of tension, leaving a gentle slowburn of a romance.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: When the party meets Tsukuyomi, he shows this in stages. He first appears as a gigantic eye in the sky whose attempts to speak cause great pain, then as an enormous jellyfish that constructs a human body right in front of them.
- Good All Along: The party is warned to never meet the kami Ho-no-Kigunushi, and when they visit his home village, are confused because the villagers seem to love and admire him. When they do decide to visit him, they discover that he's genuinely benevolent... it's just that his shrine sealed away a miniature black hole, making it extremely dangerous to visit him.
- Hikikomori: All kami have a sacred treasure, but the one of the all-knowing Ai-no-ko is special in that it is a 21st Century boy who wished for summer vacation to never come to an end. She isolated his room into her shrine across time, meaning he can't leave, but he always has food and internet access. He is genuinely happy as a goddess's prized possession and refuses to leave when En no Ozuno offers to free him.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Oni are humans who have consumed the meat of other humans. This act grants them horns and superstrength and in some cases changes them further into a behemothic monster, but also makes them crave human flesh endlessly. Zen, only a child, is an oni because his whole village was deprived of food specifically to make them suffer. En has made him a seal to keep the oni blood from his mind, which allows the boy to pass as human and not need human flesh.
- Metaphorically True: The party is informed that Hitokoto-Nushi relocated herself to the 'highest mountain in the world.' The easy answer of Mt. Everest is quickly nixed; Okuninushi says that the moon is the highest mountain, since it's high up, made by raised rock, and revered from afar.
- My Future Self and Me: Goki from the first chapter is Miyo from the future. It's not revealed why Goki was travelling through time, but chapter six reveals that she first visited her past self from her time in the capitol before going on to see her past self from the day she was to be sacrificed. In both cases, she takes the opportunity to console and encourage her past selves while revealing nothing that would've retroactively taken her choices to live and to travel away.
- Oh, Crap!: En knows he's made a mistake when in Chapter 2 Sadera-no-hime-ho-kami casually mentions there's a maneater out and about in the mountains and she's done nothing about him yet. The mistake here is that En left Zen and Miyo outside the shrine to wait for him.
- Older Than They Look: Shirato started an inn in her youth for people on a pilgrimage to pray to Hitokotonushi. The goddess herself came down to thank Shirato for this and grant her a wish. Because Hitokotonushi was in human form, Shirato didn't take it seriously and wished for her beauty to last. In the present, Shirato look more like En's sister than his mother, but her youthful beauty is only appearance. Her health and strength match her true age, which she's loath to admit.
- Oni: Oni are humans who have consumed the meat of other humans. This act grants them horns and superstrength and in some cases changes them further into a behemothic monster, but also makes them crave human flesh endlessly. Zen, only a child, is an oni because his whole village was deprived of food specifically to make them suffer. En has made him a seal to keep the oni blood from his mind, which allows the boy to pass as human and not need human flesh.
- Pretty Boy: Azuma no Miya has the characteristic androgynous traits and is a handful of times said to be beautiful in-universe. His appearance is tweaked towards the slender forms of an evil bishōnen to communicate his moral ambiguity.
- Reflective Teleportation: Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto's ancient treasure, the Yata-no-Kagami, can transport anyone to the Moon and other compatible mirrors. Tsukuyomi however reveals that his treasure isn't the mirror given to the royal family—anything that can reflect the Moon, including the entire ocean, counts as his treasure and can work just as well.
- Reincarnation Romance: Downplayed. It's implied in Chapter 6.5 that Miyo and Zen met in a previous life as the miko Kuina and Sahiri. Despite speaking different languages, the two girls bond readily and intensely and Kuina specifically stays a miko, despite her kami being a jerk, to see Sahiri again at the next meeting of gods.
- Stable Time Loop: Older Miyo (who's already an old companion of En and Zen) will travel to the past in order to save her child self from becoming a human sacrifice.
- Superpowered Evil Side: By locking away his oni blood with a seal, being an oni is Zen's superpowered evil side. He only undoes the seal when the situation is desperate and is very conscious of the destruction he is capable of if he doesn't manage his condition. Chapter 14 illustrates his trauma when he imagines a future in which he no longer is an oni and has started a family with Miyo. It promptly shifts into a vision of his oni self murdering Miyo and their small child.
- Third Eye: En's master gained a third eye after he became a Sennin. It's one of the creepier portrayal of this trope
◊, emphasizing the inhuman nature of the holder of such an eye rather than their enlightenment. - Variable-Length Chain: En's sword has the ability to produce a variable length bandage/cloth from its hilt.
- Water Source Tampering: How Sansei Shounin is planning to deprive mantras from the population. He spread parasitic insects he created through alchemy in water sources throughout the land which would burrow into the bodies of anyone who drinks from tampered sources. This is why he's shown to have interest in various water veins.
