What They Say:
“Who Is Righteous!? Tenma and Justice!”
The fourth battle of Wakayama Castle is between Ichinotani Tenma and Anayama Kosuke. Anayama says “Justice” a lot. He attacks Tenma with his warped sense of justice. A badly wounded Tenma continues to fight, hoping for just one thing: to meet the father and mother he’s never seen.
Content: (please note that the content portion of a review may contain spoilers)
As the group makes their way towards Sanada, they come to a split in the hallway. So naturally they do the “lazy thing”, as Koikawa calls it, and split up, with Jinbei immediately running off with Tenma (because it’s Tenma’s turn, and Jinbei has to be present for every fight, right?) Because of this I felt like the episode was going to take a less serious turn, like the Tenma-focused episode way back at the beginning of the series. We start off with a bunch of goofy reactions as Tenma is apparently afraid of everything — getting lost, loud noises, small spaces, extreme heights. Jinbei somehow manage to segue this into asking about Tenma’s parents. While I’ve spent the whole series thinking they were dead — we have seen him talking to a pair of dolls on an alter, after all — it turns out that they were just separated, and are waiting to reunite with their son when he becomes strong enough. It’s a little weird (I feel like there must be more to his backstory than that) but still just sweet enough to warm your heart.
Then we get to Tenma’s actual fight with the Insect-man Anayama Kosuke. Again, it starts off seeming not quite so scary as some of the other fights, as Anayama makes Sailor Moon-esque poses and talks about “justice”, using the English word, in his high-pitched, grating voice. But the fight turns pretty brutal, as Tenma initially loses, only to be saved by Anayama because he “doesn’t deserve to die” yet. While Tenma fights back, it basically becomes a huge guy beating up a little kid, throwing him across the room and smashing his face into a wall. Like with the last couple of episodes, the Insect-man then begins lecturing Tenma on why he isn’t strong, his problem being that he leans to heavily on things like friends and family. But, again, that turns out to be what gives him strength. After an inspirational word from Jinbei, Tenma suddenly unleashes a new power with his Shikigami, and the paper crane and his dolls transform into a mega doll, which then punches Anayama straight into outer space before he can shed his skin, where he then explodes. It’s exceedingly over the top, more like something out of Dragon Ball Z, but the only question I had when it happened was, why didn’t he just do that from the start?
As for the other groups, we see the Moon Group, the one with the villagers and the Hibachi’s little sister (and the flying squirrel thing) for only long enough to see that they’re building something. A little more time is spent with the Mushibugyo’s group than previously, but as they’re still walking towards their destination, nothing much happens aside from the occasional evil smirk from Saizo. Because of that, the shots over to them serve more as a way to break up Tenma’s brutal fight than anything else, though the anticipation is rising as they get closer to the Mushibugyo’s cure, and Saizo figures out what they are trying to achieve.
In Summary
This Tenma-foucsed episode was pretty cute, with some funny moments as Tenma overreacts to thing, though as before his fear kind of jars with the usually calm personality he shows when the spotlight is not on him. It gets brutal pretty fast, though, and while that heightens the drama here the lack of brutality in the other fights leads me to believe that the show is relying on the shock value of beating up a kid to get people invested. Shots of the other characters are limited, but not so much as they were before, which makes it seem like the Mushibugyo and others will soon reach their goal — or, at least, an obstacle to it. As everyone nears their goal at the same time, it’s possible that the show will start to get too cluttered, but it may also help to break down some of these overblown fights.
Grade: B-
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment: 13″ Apple Macbook set to 720p
