The past comes into the present in a big way for Akechi.
What They Say:
No episode summary provided.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the continuation of the story from the previous episode, the show takes a good little twist as we deal with Akechi not remembering who she was and Ranmaru in quite a panic over it. She’s served as quite a faithful sidekick for awhile but now things are moving in a way that leaves her uncertain about what to do, especially since Akechi knows who she truly is having regained her memory. And that memory contains something particularly powerful as she was the one, in her mind, that killed Nobunaga before. This little bit gives the show a chance to give us a look at all the girls together at a meeting that they had at some point in the past, which is bright, a little garish and quite colorful with a good deal of personality in play. Especially with Nobunaga at the head of it all.
In this context and the time they spend together, sometimes with very bland and non-existent backgrounds, we get a good feel for the kinds of interactions that they have. It’s a curious piece of dialogue overall when you get down to it and there are a lot of hints and teases here in some of the turns of phrases and what’s said in general. The subtext to a lot of it is all about a hidden treasure, which we come back to more in the second half as Akechi’s memories focus more on it and how events unfolded in regards to it. While it’s not entirely through her point of view for the episode, she does provide the binding part of it all.
The jealous that rear up from Akechi in the past are amusing to watch as Nobunaga favors Hideyoshi over her and Akechi’s own standing seems to fall further and further. When we see events play out in the past and then in the present, especially where her memory has returned more and she comes across Rikyuu who calls her by name, it’s the final straw for all the pressures she’s faced so far, especially in working through her memories. It becomes interesting to see how she tries to deal with the past as she lived it and how she pushed it down so far that when she arrived in this world, she lost her memory entirely before taking on the role of Akechi. Of course, everything could go quite bad for her from here since she believes Nobunaga is dead but the reality is anything but.
In Summary:
Sengoku Collection has a good episode of story material here, but the presentation for it is lacking in some ways. Mitsuhide has a lot of things she brings to the table here overall with her memories and it changes up some of the perceptions of the show with what Nobunaga is after and why Mitsuhide was trying to stop her. Getting a look at so much of the past here is a big positive that left me quite pleased overall though and the series once again wins out on style. As we get more and more of the pasts, and big important pieces like this, it does leave me wanting to rewatch the show from the beginning again already to see how it all pieces together in ways that I may have missed the first time around. While it’s unlicensed, it’s still one that I’d love to see get the high definition home video treatment.
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.
