Dull Knife

Near a station exit Nanami comes upon Ijichi bleeding out, and seeing a friend dying leaves him seething. Down below, Mei Mei coolly pursues a legless, fleeing Niji Ebina, preaching her conviction that a life is worth only what it is useful for. When Ebina has no answer to her riddle, she rules that his blindness to a person's value is exactly why he lost, and her axe ends him. Elsewhere Yuji and Megumi finally crack the curtain blocking sorcerers from the station, though the barriers caging Gojo and the civilians hold firm. Megumi catches sight of Ino falling from the tower and cushions the drop with Nue as Yuji grabs him.

Up top, Ogami sends her grandson to deal with the sorcerers beneath the tower, only to discover in horror that Toji has seized the boy's body whole. Remarking that his vessel is special, he obeys her standing order and kills Ogami. Inside the station, the Zenin group is busy cutting through transfigured humans when Nobara and Akari, having heard Ijichi attacked mid-call, peel off to track him down.

On a side street Haruta Shigemo corners Nobara and Akari, thrilled to finally meet a girl after butchering so many male managers. His airborne sword hunts Akari on its own and rips her ankles, and he plants a hard kick in her chest before parrying Nobara's nails. Nobara drops the ceiling with Hairpin, yet Shigemo walks out unscathed and concusses her with a strike from the flying blade. Just as he readies to finish both girls, owning up that he kills for nothing but his own fun, the station's glass door bursts and Nanami strides in.

Shigemo's slash and kick land harmlessly on Nanami, who demands a count of the curse users. Using his Ratio Technique, Nanami hurls Shigemo across the room, hauls him up by the hair, and drives a body shot that splits the wall. Once Nobara pins the curse user's blade to the ceiling, Nanami reveals the dead managers he passed and punches Shigemo straight out of the building. Awed, Nobara names him the genuine image of a grade 1 sorcerer. Meanwhile Mei Mei meets Pseudo-Geto, who calls up the Smallpox Deity, a special grade disease curse that seals her in a coffin-and-gravestone domain she only just escapes.

The installment covers the manager-hunt and Mei Mei's standoff. It opens on a flashback of Nanami's pre-sorcery life and features Yu Haibara. The final beat pushes Yuji deeper into the empty station, where Choso marks him as a killer of his brothers and triggers Convergence. The anime reworks the Nobara-Shigemo bout in several spots, among them when Shigemo burns a stored Miracle and the way Nanami grips him for his second punch.