Nobunaga can’t tell a ghost story to save her life.
What They Say:
At Tokugawa Ieyasu’s suggestion, everyone goes hawk hunting. Hideyoshi is looking forward to her first meat in ages. A bit after they begin, the hawk flies off into the forest after its prey… Everyone follows the hawk, but instead they find a grave and ghosts! If they can’t tell scary stories to satisfy the ghosts, they won’t be able to leave…!?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With so many forms of entertainment available to people today, it’s hard to imagine how simple and how little things there were to do for fun in the centuries past. Battle Girls examines that a little bit here as Hideyoshi is introduced to one of the more popular forms of entertainment, especially for Oda, with hawk hunting. Oda’s love of it is well known in the lands and there are plenty of people who bring hawks for her when they come to visit her, which is what kicks this off as Ieyasu does just that by bringing on to her. Everyone’s all excited about it and even Shiro wants to get in on it, but Hide just finds the whole thing to be pretty tiring in general.
Battle Girls goes to an interesting place with this episode as the hawk hunt progresses and everyone follows into the forest where the hawk has gone. It turns dark pretty quickly, and very creepy, which is why it isn’t a surprise that they come across an opening where there are several dead warriors from centuries past gathering around a circle of candles. It’s an old story that gets brought out about having to tell a hundred ghost stories as they meet Date there and she implores them for help. While they refuse at first, the gang is unable to get back to the hawk hunting as every turn they take brings them right back to the clearing again, which in its own way makes Date happy since it gives her what she wants in having more help.
The second half of the episode largely boils down to the various tales that are told by the women as they attempt to finish out the stories, but some of them get under the skin for a few and they react in quite the exaggerated manner. Oda’s story is pretty tame, which is amusing and expected as she doesn’t seem to be the truly creative type to get something like that across. Others get so caught up in their own story that they freak themselves out which is amusing. I was actually thankful that for quite a few of them, they just left it all voiceless to show the passage of time, though they’re not getting anywhere. Oda’s stories don’t help to put out the candles and Akerin has freaked herself out completely. It’s quite a fun little ghost story episode, something I certainly didn’t expect considering how bland they’ve been over the years in so many other series.
In Summary:
While telling ghost stories around the fire is a tried and true tradition that goes back a long way, the one you want to see tell a tale is that of Hide since she has likely seen or heard quite a few in her short years in the modern day. The differences in the kinds of stories she can tell can make it difficult, but she’s adapted so well into this time period that you know she’ll do all right with it. It’s actually adorable how she works with Oda to try and get her to tell a good story, and it shows the amusing way their relationship has worked for awhile now. While I do dislike ghost story episodes overall, this one left me smiling throughout and liking how they executed it as well as the way the characters acted and reacted to the situation. This series continues to defy my expectations of being absolute trash by instead being cute, fun and simple in a good way. Even with the silly fanservice which often simply looks too good and like too much fun.
Grade: B
Simulcast 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.