Bringing a knife to a gunfight.
What They Say:
Episode #18: “Stone Wars”
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Gen reveals the reason he returned to team science. Tsukasa is about to attack the village. Time is of the essence, and sure enough, a group of thugs are lurking on the other side of the bridge, looking for their opening. Leading them is a man named Hyoga, who like everyone else in this series is a quirky superhuman lunatic. He gives off the air of a ninja and seems to be preoccupied with people fitting into his concept of ‘proper.’
My real question at this point is, who the hell are these guys Tsukasa is reviving? Nobody is built like that, they certainly aren’t the ‘youth’ that he was going on about. So much for his high-minded ideals. I don’t know why Tsukasa hadn’t suspected Gen of lying to him, then again, maybe he did. It’s also curious that every time they show Tsukasa’s group the two friends from the start of the series are nowhere to be seen. Tsukasa is a lunatic reviving serial killers and thugs.
Hilariously, rather than construct the guns that he had been talking about for ages and went through all the trouble to source the ingredients for, Senku takes a different approach. Against stone spears, he decides to teach the master craftsman how to make katana. Somehow in a period of three days, he manages to arm enough members of the village to ward off a major attack. Somehow he teaches them how to wield the weapons with enough power and accuracy to take out the weapons of the attackers.
And then there is the myth of the katana, that it’s the perfect sword. At least Senku does provide at least a tiny bit of myth debunking when he points out the steel only has to be folded a few times and not the sixteen that real craftsmen and smiths were known for. They don’t have the time for that master craftsmen bullshit. They just need to cut some dudes.
The real challenge ends up being how to counter Hyoga’s twisting spear. The group simply doesn’t have a good counter for that sort of attack. It takes a combined effort of the village’s strongest warriors to attempt an attack on Hyoga, but in the end the match is decided by Gen’s duplicity with an assist by Senku. Unfortunately, they have probably lost their man on the inside now that Gen’s double-agent status is out in the open.
In Summary:
War is coming to Ishigami village. A strike team moves in to attack the villagers and Senku must reveal himself. The ruse ends as lines are drawn and weapons are made to combat the warriors that Tsukasa has revived. Hyoga is a dangerous opponent with unknown skills and a mysterious background. Katanas don’t strike me as the easiest weapon to simply pick up and use, not like a spear. Senku has placed a great deal of faith in his people, let’s hope it pays off.
Episode Grade: B
Streamed by: Crunchyroll, Funimation, Toonami!
