The episode starts with two guys fighting over a marmite toast which is a dumb idea since eating marmite pretty much guaranties your death, but anyway, guess they want to end their suffering more quickly than the others. One guy pulls out a knife and he’s like “gimme back da marmite toast bro” and the other guy is like “neva bro, I’m gonna it’s ur ass that imma going to toast”. So Mumei who’s playing with kids beats the shit out of them. Then, the commoners and Ayame applause her actions, they’re like ” you are our hero Mumei”. One episode ago they all wanted to kick her ass out of the train but guess now that she’s stopping fights over marmite toasts that’s okay, she can stay. Tsss commoners are the worst.
In the meantime the soldiers discover the weapon created by Ikoma. They don’t seem so impressed that a young guy with strange hair could invent such weapon, when nobody in the army was able to create one. Plus, it’s barely if they ever thought of trying to develop a new weapon. Our current weapon can’t kill Kabanes? Should we then, invest in research in order to survive? MEH, no, let’s die, who wants to live in a world where the only food available is marmite toasts anyway?
On their way to the big station, they pass by a fallen station called Yashiro and since it happens that there is some survivors there, Ayame decides to send a rescue team. While they are giving survivors rations of food (again marmite toasts, which means that the survivors won’t survive any longer) most of them talk about a big black smoke that attacked them.
Right after, a dude who looks like Solid Snake called Enoku starts talking to Mumei. Apparently they know each from a long time, both of them are working for some sort of “young master” who’s most likely Mumei’s brother. Furthermore Enoku says to Mumei something like “stop being nice, kill more Kabane otherwise father will kill you” and then Mumei had a sort of flashback where a dude killed a girl, right in front her. Solid Snake is clearly messing with her head an I don’t like that. He also mentioned that the shogunate was collecting weapons to kill people, which is, you’ve guessed it, a bad thing. We already knew that the shogunate and samurais were bad people, but collecting weapons to kill more commoners? Bad, bad people.
Solid Snake’s intervention raises many questions. Who is Young Master? Who is Mumei’s so called father? Who was that girl who got killed?
Solid Snake made it sound like Mumei was some kind of weapon created only to kill Kabanes but is she really? Where does she come from? Why he is screwing up with her head when she was finally bonding with other people?! And HOW DID SHE BECOME A KABANERI I WANT TO KNOOOOW! Gosh I hate when a character appears and tells random stuff that is only going to make sense in a few episodes. To me Solid Snake looks like some kind of elf jumping around, throwing clues and hints about stuff while laughing at you, watching you trying to understand what the dam hell is going on.
After talking to Solid Snake, Mumei goes back to the train where Ikoma, Mumei Boris and the other dude are trying to figure out a plan to remove the fallen tower that is blocking the path. Ikoma comes out with a nice plan which could avoid useless deaths but Mumei is like “heeeeeellll nooo, I ain’t fighting with cowards like ya. I won’t do any detour and just attack right away”. Well it’s obviously because of Solid Snake who messed up with her that she acts this way. Heh, we’ve all seen this “you’re a weapon, act like a weapon, don’t create bonds with other people” kind of thing in a lot of other shows, so I’m not very impressed nor pissed off. I guess it’s like the “ KABANERIS ARE DANGEROUS” commoner thing. It will pass after a while, I’m just hoping it won’t take too many episodes.
Also, the saddest death of the show finally happened. Taro the dog died. NOOOOOOOOOO TAAAROOOOOO. RIP you’ll be missed. What’s important about that dog death is that it shows us the way Mumei is thinking. Since the dog had his leg hurt, she thought that the dog was lucky to die before his masters disposed of it since he was useless. Of course everyone thinks Mumei is a monster and doesn’t realizes that if she thinks that it’s simply because I assume, she was raised like that. People such as her father, young master or Solid Snake must have forced those kinds of ideas of her. If someone can’t fight and kill Kabane, they should to be killed. That’s probably what she’s been taught and what Solid Snake reminded her a few moments ago. That’s a pretty utilitarian point of view which is quite interesting to observe. So yeah, Poor Mumei, I’m fully on her side on this one. Although it’s not the commoners’s fault either, they don’t know what she’s been through and therefore can’t understand her way of thinking.
To operate the machine which would move the tower, they need the help of Takumi and Best guy. Oh yes! Best guy now has now a name: Sukari… I’m not too sure about this name, best guy sounds better to me but eh. Well anyway, Ikoma wants to know what’s up with Mumei since she acts weird and everything, but she’s like “eh, nothing” so he’s like ” you don’t want to tell me? PFFFF WHATEVER ! IT’S NOT LIKE I CARE ABOUT YOU OR ANYTHING. BUT STAY AWAY FROM THE BOILER ROOM. STAY AWAY FROM IT OKAY?!”. Yeaaaah, like she’s going to listen and stay away from the boiler room. After Ikoma is done shouting orders to the people who are literally 1 meter away from him, he starts running with Big Kirito and two random dudes who are probably going to die because they are not named characters. BUT OH SURPRISE SURPRISE! MUMEI GOES RIGHT TO THE BOILER ROOM, EVEN IF IKOMA DID TELL HER NOT TO!
There’s a short but as always awesome fight, however, Mumei happens to to have been a bit careless, I bet it’s Solid Snake’s fault again. So Ikoma and the gang arrive to the Boiler room and activate whatever switches they need to but activate, BUT OH SNAP! THAT BIG DISGUSTING BLACK SHADOW WAS KABANES! AND THEY ARE COMING FOR THEM. At this point the Kabanes look more like the Mannequins Dolls from Full Metal Alchemist than anything else… but oh lord, I’m scared of the mannequins dolls soooo much.
They think it’s Mumei’s fault since she fought some of the Kabanes before which might have made them angry but I’m not so sure about that. Ikoma tells Best guy and Takumi to get their pretty asses back on the train while he continues to remove the tower that’s blocking the way.
At this moment the shit ton of Kabanes is about to reach him but Mumei is here to defend him but appears to have completely lost her composure, thinking of herself as a weapon, only here to kill Kabanes. She actually get thrown away by one Kabane so Ikoma decides to go and help her abandoning his post and the removal of the tower. Therefore, the train is stopped and can’t go any further. At this point a lot of shit starts to happen everywhere, Ikoma grabs Mumei and reach the entrance of some kind of mine but there’s rocks falling on them. BUT GUYS! GUYS! THE SCARIEST THING IS THAT SMOKE SHIT KABANE. Who’s raising from the ground and looking at the train like he’s going to eat it. I don’t know why, but he reminds me of some Miazaki monster…. Maybe the one from Spirited Away… I don’t really know …. All I can say is that this thing… Is reaaaaaally scary.
With this episode we’ve finally ended the commoners’s arc and started to interest ourselves to Mumei’s character. She sure is an enigma and her past and motivations are, far more interesting than Ikoma’s. Sorry Ikoma, I still like you though. It will be quite interesting to see how our main duo is going to cooperate, knowing that they have two different visions of the world, Mumei being more utilitarian and Ikoma acting more according to the deontological morality as Kant sated it: the right action, the good act is find in every rational human being and does not depend on global frameworks such as laws or communities. Which can explains why Ikoma does not care about the laws of the shogunate and fights for what he believes is right. Oh good old high school days, I do not regret paying attention in class now.
I’m quite hyped for next week’s episode now, we might get some awesome fighting scenes!