What They Say:
The helpers save a hurt Okuni and she shares her disgust of Romans smile.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
It is a fine day at sea aboard Admiral Perry’s ship; a fine day for all except Okuni, who finds herself at the business end of a revolver. Perry’s aide shoots her causing her to fall overboard. Doctor Hans finds her during his usual exploration for new zombie material and saves her life. What follows is a series of flashbacks that outline what Okuni’s life was before she met the helper year ago, what happened after their fateful parting, and how it shaped her into helping Perry achieve his goals.
It is a decent backstory for her character and allows everyone to gather their resources for the upcoming war. However, it felt like a step backward with respect to the story; we were just getting things heated up, ready to finally have some meaningful action. If this episode had been worked into the story slightly earlier, I would have felt different. Here, it just feels like a detour away from what was making the series finally enjoyable.
In Summary:
This will hopefully be the last quiet episode of the series, as it quickly approaches the final episodes. Roman was beginning to build up a great head of steam, and this exposition driven episode sucked some of the life out of that momentum. However, Okuni’s backstory makes her an even more tragic figure and one sure to be involved in the final conflict. It is great to see the series flesh out its main characters, but this should have been accomplished slightly earlier. There is only so much time left for all the final twists, turns, and reveals, and this seemed like a detour away from arriving at that goal.
Grade: B
Readers Rating: [ratings]
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
24” Early 2009 iMac, Firefox 17.0.1
