Koutetsujou no Kabaneri Episode 7: [Begging the Heavens]

Ikoma has stolen one of Boris’s awesome moves.  According to Mumei, Kabaneris are good at copying stuff, that’s why he was able to learn it in a short amount of time. Ok… I guess… I mean, that seems a bit easy to justify Ikoma suddenly being good at fighting because “ he’s a kabeneri”…. You know… He was a Kabaneri all this time and he still used to suck at fighting. But I guess they can say everything they want about Kabaneris since we don’t know anything about them.

The train arrives to the Shitori station where there’s actually people who are alive in it. It’s strange how there is no signs of Kabanes around the station. I’d like to know where the hell the Kabanes are on this earth. Like, why is there no Kabanes at all around this station? Do they move in gangs, like some wolf packs? Do they only attack during te night? Why is there some areas with Kabanes and other where there’s not? Do they have some migrations periods like the wild ducks?

Well anyway, they arrive at the station and Ayame leaves the train to the gay scarf gang’s care… WAIT? WHAT? WHY ?! This is the worst decision ever! Because obviously, those guys did nothing that could put everyone in danger before, heh… OH WAIT… THEY DID! They are responsible for one Kabane attack, they wanted to kill the Kabaneris and to abandon them but suuure let’s leave them the control of the train, that sounds like a freaking good idea.

More importantly:

This…. I can relate to that a lot… I guess everybody can. Just add Watashi at the beginning and Desu at the end of every sentence and there you go, you speak Japanese.

They decide to celebrate Tanabata, a traditional Japanese festival where you write wishes on paper and hang them on bamboo leaves. Because they need money to organize the party, Ayame gives them a mysterious box to sell ohohoho I wonder what’s inside…. But we’ll probably never know….
So all the pleb is super duper happy to celebrate Tanabata, probably because it’s going to be one of the rarest times where they will be able to relax without thinking about the zombies who want to eat them so that’s a nice thing, good for them.
Oh yes! We also got a nice Mumei ass shot… I don’t personally care… I was waiting for some nice abs shots next but it did not happen so I’m a bit disappointed.

Anyway, after we get some nice little scenes of Mumei being really cute in her Yukata, Ponytail girl being a really annoying customer, which I found quite funny since she really doesn’t look like one. Also, Ikoma and Takumi almost went into a fight with a Bushi, which are I guess, some sort of samurai. Well Bushido (武士道) means ” way of the warrior” and is the “way of the samurai life” according to Wikipedia. Do (道) being way/road, I guess Bushi can be translated as warrior… That’s as far as my knowledge of kanjis goes…

Then, there’s a kid who was waiting for his father to return but heh, bad luck, his father pretty much died during he first Kabane attack on the first station in episode 1. Pink Killua was about to lie to him but Best guy arrived and without any tact told him the truth about his father. Honestly, I think that like Best guy said, it’s better to tell him right away rather than to make him wait for his father’s return the rest of his life. Although there might have been some other and nicest ways to tell him that, I agree with this decision. Plus, Best guy had some cheesy pseudo philosophical lines to add:

“The real fight begins when the tears dry up”

That’s so cheesy… but it works on me… God… I fell really bad for falling into this kind of trap… I’m the worst…

Oh boy, my fight isn’t over yet… right after his scene, Boris surprises Ayame when she’s eating some cakes and they both blush sooo hard that it made me blush too…

LOOK AT THIS FACE!
AAAH I CAN’T
THIS IS SOOO EMBARRASSING.
I don’t know why seeing people blushing and being embarrassed has this effect on me.. I just can’t…

So after all this nice fan service, there’s finally a hint of plot development when we see some guy representing the Shogunate and Solid Snake/Enoku, talking with the leaders of the Shitori station. Apparently, they are plotting something big, now that is interesting! Finally I’d like to say, finally there’s a bit of plot development.

While walking with the others, Mumei suddenly remembers that she actually did celebrate Tanabata with her mom before, and because this memory is painful, I guess, she runs away. Ikoma catches up with her and she explains him why she ran away but also that her real name is Hozumi. She also expresses her concern about turning into a Kabane one day so Ikoma decides that he’s going to turn her into a human again so that she won’t be troubled anymore. And he’s also going to kill all the Kabanes because why not. I guess at this point Ikoma kind of sees Mumei as his little sister which is quite sweet.

The next scene is painful… It’s really painful… My heart cannot handle such happiness. Everyone is basically reading their wishes but the subtext that I read are the ships. THE SHIPS GUYS! I don’t even have to look hard to find them. As far as I’m concerned there’s Mumei x Ikoma, Sukari x Yukina ( aka Best guy with best girl), Boris x Ayame.
But the most painful thing is that… Boris is actually a huge dork… MY WEAKNESS! He blushes all the time around Ayame, it’s so cute but embarrassing at the same time. GOD DAMNIT BORIS! I’m starting to like him when he doesn’t act lie a dick. I bet he wrote “I want to be with Ayame sama” on his paper, tsss, such a dork.
They do something good old damn Hanabi but don’t think one second that the noise could attract Kabanes. Apparently, nobody thought about this, not even the  Kabanes or the directors of the show. Well, I guess there’s no Kabanes around the station so that’s okay.. I don’t understand why buuut… I’ll let it slide.

I’d say that the main event of this episode occurred in the last minutes where we finally discover the “Hunters” who are basically the survey corp from Shingeki no Kyojin, led by Biba, who’s actually the one that Mumei calls “Brother”. Well, this is a bit confusing. Everybody welcomes them like heroes while Ikoma is the only one who is worried, and he’s right. It’s most likely that this guy is linked to the conspiracy between the shogunate and some other people like Solid Snake. Although Ikoma is only doubtful because he thinks Biba is the one “shaping” Mumei’s mind as he wishes, I bet he’s going to discover the whole political conspiracy while investigating.

Even if it was an actionless episode I did enjoy it a lot. It was nice to see more of the whole cast of characters, doing random things and having some lines of dialogue; because yes, until now, Yukina, Sukari, Ponytail Girl and even Boris, did not have so much lines and I think it’s quite a shame. I like  shows with a huge cast of characters but only when they have a bit of substance and are present enough to make me like them. So to me this episode wasn’t a “useless filler” but was actually more interesting plot-wise than the last one where all they did was fighting a big smoke monster.
Furthermore, thanks to this episode and his little character development parts,  I’m fan girling even more over Sukari and I like Boris. Yes… I feel like I’m the worst person in the entire universe for falling for such an easy character trope. Make the bishounen a huge blushing tsundere and there you go, you win, I can’t handle blushing Tsunderes…

However, I’m a bit worried, it’s only at episode 7 that the whole ” political conspiracy plot” is starting to move. Of course, we got hints of this before but heh I feel like it’s a bit too late now, especially since we know that the anime is going to be only 12 episodes long. Well, we are probably going to get a second season. Let’s just pray that WIT studio is not going to make us wait 4 years for itthis time ahahahahahahaha… *spreads salt*