The quiet moments before the storm comes.
What They Say:
Episode #212
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Pirako’s story continues with this episode as she works her way into the world by causing a whole lot of problems. After the incident involving Otose in the previous episode, which has left one of the Four Divas in the hospital in intensive care with the possibility of never waking up, Pirako is making her play against Lady Kada with her goals that need to be accomplished. Kada plays her game close to the chest and it’s amusing to hear Pirako call her out for being difficult to deal with as all women are since you can never tell what they’re really thinking. Considering what Pirako has done since her introduction, it all applies to her as well. Kada does have some choice words that almost seem like they might stab at Pirako, but Pirako continues to be very hard to read with what she wants and what really affects her. She’s always got a reply to people as well which can be a bit annoying after awhile.
With this episode, a good bit of background is brought in to play as we get to know more of what happened in the past with Jirocho and Otose and even the birth of Pirako to some degree. It comes after a particularly bloody and surprising move by Gin with the man that he had saved in order to try and stem the tide of fighting. He’s the type that will do anything for Pirako and Jirocho based on what he’s been through with them, but seeing how Gin, even mostly off camera, tries to gut him a bit in a bloody way was surprising, even when taking into account what happened with Otose. With Otose listening in to this, it’s a somber moment that has Gin breaking the mood perfectly at the end of it by saying he’ll pay off his rent, so she better stay alive. It’s one of those good, defining moments for Gin.
This episode spends a lot of time on setting the pieces in place as Gin gets the information he needs and makes his decision on how to handle it. With the stakes high at this point though, he intends to keep everyone else out of it. Considering the nature of the relationships between everyone in the series, it’s hard to believe that he’d believe they’d acquiesce so easily and it’s the farthest thing from what actually happens. With the Kabuki District ready to deal with Gin because of their faith and pledge to Jirocho, there’s definitely a disparity in the size of the forces that become assembled to deal with it, but there’s always a little more that can be done to increase the odds, something that Pirako most certainly does set about to doing.
In Summary:
Because the show is so focused on getting the people into the proper places and highlighting some of the history that the characters share, it’s a very quiet prelude kind of episode more than anything else. It ends on a promise of a big event to happen, but largely this episode felt far too drawn out. But that’s how I’ve largely felt about the arc with Pirako beyond the first episode of it where it was kind of silly fun. When it started to turn more serious, it lost my attention more and more as it all just feels very forced. Pirako doesn’t have the strength to carry it herself and I find it particularly hard to be interested in the Four Divas and their shared history and with what Jirocho is up to with it all. The show can do serious well, but this arc just hasn’t had the critical mass to it to make it engaging enough to really get behind.
Grade: C
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.
