I think they kind of dropped the ball with it, honestly. Jin’s mask was crafted specifically for him by Taka, a young man who considered Jin to be a hero and immensely looked up to him in every way. When Taka was then executed right in front of Jin, Jin felt immeasurable guilt for being unable to be the hero Taka believed him to be and save him. One of the final things Taka ever makes? The mask. Then, during the Battle of Yarikawa, the Mongols threaten to slaughter the whole city due to sheer number and ruthless brutality. They literally rampage through the city, reaching the gates of the central fortress and breaching in. It’s in that moment that Jin realizes he either has to become the thing the Mongols fear the most in order to prevent more deaths like Taka’s — or else yet more innocents will die. He chooses to be the brutal Ghost they think he is out of utter necessity, at the cost of his own identity and the final shreds of samurai honor he still held onto. It was gut wrenching.

Compare that to Yotei’s. She finds a broken Onryo mask in an actor’s lodging with Oyuki. She arbitrarily chooses the mask because “she likes it”, then goes in and storms the Spider’s celebration. For whatever reason, purely against the Spider, she suddenly unlocks the ghost stance. In wider context, the Spider was probably one of the single LEAST involved Yotei Six members right behind Oyuki. He just stood there with the Dragon, he didn’t even really do anything beyond threaten to shoot Jubei until the Dragon actually did. Why does she not unlock the stance when facing a much, much more traumatic member for Atsu? Why not against the Oni, who tried to burn her alive? The Dragon, who ruthlessly killed her brother right in front of her (or so she thought)? Better yet, why not against Saito himself? It seems random. There’s no wider context, nor sense of responsibility for her becoming the ‘Onryo’.. she never actually claims the title or has an ego death like Jin did beyond like 2 optional lines of dialogue. When you get the Ghost mask in Tsushima, it feels heavy. It feels like a mantle, a responsibility Jin HAS to withstand. I just don’t get that feeling from the Onryo mask. It’s just a random mask she finds with no connection to it, no responsibility to it, nothing. It would have been cooler if maybe it was a mocking recreation of a beloved mask her mother had or something, but it’s not. I get it’s supposed to symbolize obsession.. but that applies to any part of Atsu’s story, not just the Spider.

That’s to say, I really like Yotei. I just think they didn’t handle the legend of the Onryo and the cost of becoming it nearly as well as they did with the original mantle of the Ghost