About the Culling Game

Greeting the group in their aged, world-fused form, Tengen unmasks Kenjaku as the host inhabiting Geto's body and, before that, the ancient Noritoshi Kamo. They spell out his real goal, the forced assimilation of every person in Japan into Tengen, made possible because, twelve years earlier, the death of the Star Plasma Vessel let Tengen keep evolving until they could fuse with anyone. Such a union would risk ending the world if even one person slipped out of control, because the walls between individuals would collapse.

Because their nature now leans more toward cursed spirit than toward humanity, Tengen has become a target for Kenjaku's cursed spirit manipulation, which is why the Tombs reject all entry. They trace how destiny binds the three of them, namely themselves, the Six Eyes, and the Star Plasma Vessel, and how Toji's intervention severed that chain. The Culling Game, Tengen explains, is a ritual that channels the players' cursed energy and the colonies' boundaries to ferry the populace toward assimilation.

Tengen unveils a hidden half they have kept, the Prison Realm's "Back," which also holds Gojo. Opening it demands a tool able to forcibly cancel cursed techniques: the Black Rope is one such option, the Inverted Spear of Heaven the other, yet both are now beyond reach. The remaining path is a thousand-year-old player who calls herself Angel, whose technique can extinguish other techniques. The group works through every rule of the Culling Game and divides the labor: Yuki and Choso protect Tengen, Maki returns to the Zenin clan to recover cursed tools, Yuta enters a colony to gather intelligence, and Yuji and Megumi go to recruit Kinji Hakari. The episode closes by introducing Fumihiko Takaba, a floundering comedian and Culling Game player.

The episode covers the tail of chapter 144 through chapter 146 and brings in Hana Kurusu, Angel, and Fumihiko Takaba. To carry the heavy exposition, the adaptation invents original visuals, rendering the game's rules and the sorcerers' plans as floating holograms and having Tengen multiply themselves down the corridor. A day after airing, two chibi explainer shorts starring Yuji and Megumi were released to clarify the mechanics.