“The Successor”
What They Say:
Everyone believes that Indra is the best choice to be Hagomoro’s successor, and the sage’s indecision begins to cause anxiety among his followers. Finally, Ashura returns home, and Hagoromo reveals who he has chosen
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
It’s almost hard to believe that enthusiasm for this show can drop any lower, but one way to do it is to put in a skip week. While taking a week off feels like a good thing, when you get back to the show you feel even more disconnected from the events than you already did. Bringing us back as Hagomoro makes his choices for successor with Ashura as events in the village he sent Indra to have fallen into a bad state is something that certainly makes sense, but let’s face it – there was going to be no happy outcome here when you essentially pit brothers against each other for a prize. It was destined to end bad and it’s just been a slow slog to get there with the actual choice before we can deal with the ramifications of it all.
For Ashura, he’s being told that he has to really step up here and watch out for Indra as the sharingan is something that in its own way corrupts those that has it. Hagomoro’s pretty good in making it clear that the bonds of the brothers is what’s needed to help smooth that over, but it just shows Hagomoro really didn’t think this whole thing through because Indra is just off the charts at this point with the way things happened. That we essentially get the sides here is no surprise and it doesn’t help Ashura that he’s alongside Hagomoro, reinforcing that the two are bonded in that way and that Ashura is just as much an enemy. Hagomoro had some good points at times throughout this extended arc but he’s also had some colossal screwups as well.
Naturally, a good chunk of the episode is the fight between the two with Indra ramping it up in a big way, thinking that he’s got this because of his abilities and determination. While we get some decent defensive moments, it’s also a moment for Ashura to make clear that he’s fully in protector mode and is utterly capable of it – because of the support that he gets from everyone else. Hagomoro serves as a kind of conduit for this in showing the way of working together to achieve goals and you basically get a kind of early look of sorts with what will happen in the present day storyline with the fight against… well, someone. It’s been so long that it’s all a sort of murky blur at this point.
In Summary:
Another episode of simple material expanded out far longer than it should be and of little meaning in the end. This entire arc really could be done as a decent montage across a single episode and accomplished a lot more because it would have been concise rather than dragged out. The whole thing is just mind numbing at this point with how boring and uninteresting it is.
Grade: D
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
