What They Say:
Kanate and Ginchi have been taken by The Reckoning of Warden Tsutsuga. Arata goes to search for them and finds them facing off before Tsutsuga in a battle to the death. Tsutsuga says the winner will be declared innocent of his crimes. Outraged, Arata draws his Hayagami on Tsutsuga, but ends up in a tight spot when he’s unable to call upon its power…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Bringing in a few more characters in the previous episode certainly wasn’t a surprise as even with the number of characters there are in the wings with who Arata has to face off against, we’ve had a fairly slimmed down cast so far. Unfortunately, the pairing of Kanate and Ginchi weren’t all that interesting and felt just like the usual child-like comedic relief that irritates me after awhile and didn’t come across as something that would add much, though I suspect they’ll be shoehorned into key roles along the way. What I did like however was the way that Kotoha and Arata managed to get a bit closer together and he started to come into his own in being proactive rather than accepting what comes his way, which is importing since both Kanate and Ginchi got abducted.
With Ginchi pretty much caught in a difficult place and now being controlled, Kanate is freaking out because of how Tsutsuga has set up the situation and put them in danger, but also because he has to actively fight Ginchi since he’s being controlled. That provides for some good background moments as the two go at it, Kanate with some really strained expressions on his face, while Arata has to step up and try and go against Tsutsuga himself since that’s the only way to break the control. There’s some amusing bits between Kanate and Ginchi as they go at it and the power differences are apparent, but there’s also the simple fact that sometimes a lucky blow can change the course of a fight in a big way. And the fight gets to be drawn out a bit with some flashback material that’s supposed to strengthen our connection to them, but it falls just a bit flat for me since it’s so by the numbers.
The episode doesn’t do all that much special in terms of the fight, or the revelation with Tsutsuga, though there are a few tough moments when it comes to how Arata takes him down but also does the “right” thing afterward when it comes to mastering the sword and what’s involved with it. More than anything, I appreciated the flashbacks to his own past with how people have treated him back in Japan and the kind of scars its left, which shows his connection to Tsutsuga in an interesting way, though he goes in a different direction with it. This does result in some decent dialogue between Tsutsuga and Arata which makes an impact on him, especially since it presents a change to the place that Tsutsuga was protecting as the Warden of it as Arata is able to return it to what it was. Though it’s all easy in the end and makes for a change of scale too quickly, I like the simplicity of it and the almost basic adventure kind of feeling it presents.
In Summary:
With this episode spending its time doing a focused story that largely centers on Arata, though you expect more of it to deal with Kanate and Ginchi based on the start, it works out pretty decently. Though we don’t have a lot of real depth or understanding of Arata just yet, the expansion we’ve gotten on his being bullied and mistreated by others continues to be grown and that’s helping to define him in a way few leads have been for quite some time. Mostly we get decent guys with no real problems in their lives, but here we have someone flawed that could go down the wrong path, though I don’t expect him to simply because that’s not how this kind of stuff works most of the time. But there are challenges for him and seeing how he grapples with it, how his past defines his choices, makes it more fun than I expected and this episode reinforces that.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
