Yoshimoto’s intent on keeping their location secret, but Kotaro may screw all of that up.
What They Say:
No episode summary is provided.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As the series nears its conclusion, things have been ramping up in some small ways and some bigger ways. With this episode, we get a few more characters brought into events while the imagery of Nobunaga is in the background to keep everything going. Bringing us a fun little sequence at first with Sessai and Yoshimoto and then tossing in the always adorable Kotaro a bit later, we get the good stuff with the secret base quickly. Of course, we also get to see that people like Kotaro aren’t being too alert in the modern world since she’s having packages shipped there. She does try to mollify the situation, but we get some amusing stuff right out of the gate that leaves you smiling and already getting into the mood of the characters.
A lot of the episode just deals with Kotaro as she gets out of the base for awhile and spends her time training, if you want to call it that. It’s almost like a kids adventure to the outside world, but there’s a lot of fun as she does this and even goes fishing. Of course, she doesn’t do all of this alone as Yoshimoto is there as well as she tries to get a bit more experience with the hands on real world that’s out there. Kotaro is a good one to show it to her since she does it all with a big smile and a lot of heart, something that Yoshimoto needs more of in her own life, even as they hide from Nobunaga. It’s a decent relationship overall and it’s easy to get into both girls and their personalities here as they spend their days along the river.
For Yoshimoto, it’s a good bit of growth overall since she’s doing things she normally does. And it does have its interesting moments along the way, even when she’s off doing things alone for awhile in order to learn more about herself and what she can do. But it also does slow down a fair bit along the way when we’re really just wanting more story material. There is some amount of reason to it all as we see how Yoshimoto becomes more connected with the world, and it has a rather surreal few minutes as well that are beautifully animated. Grasping the real scale of things challenges her preconceptions well, and while it may be a little erotic in how its portrayed, the end results are pretty solid and enjoyable.
In Summary:
Sengoku Collection sets things up for the match that will happen next by giving us a look at Kotaro, Yoshimoto and Sessai and how they haven’t really connected to this modern world. Their time is spent in secret, away from everything, finding something to eke out until they can deal with Nobunaga. Kotaro’s the heavy focus in the first half, which works pretty nicely, and then it shifts to giving us a lot more about Yoshimoto as she ends up being connected to the world more through her experiences. None of the characters really stand out, but they play well and are enjoyable to watch, even if it does slow things down a bit too much at times.
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.
