Koutetsujou no Kabaneri Episode 9: [Fang of Ruin]

Make it rain

Okay so Biba meets with some guy sent by the shogunate and for some reason only women and kids are allowed. I wonder why, I mean, it’s kind of obvious that Biba is going to use Mumei and that blond chick to attack them. Did the shogun really think he would be safer this way? As far as I know, Biba did not hide the existence of Mumei nor that blond Chick and girls can be samurais too so… It’s pretty obvious that they are dangerous, at least that blond girl… well, whatever, yolo I guess

So, once inside the meeting room, Mumei pretends to go to the toilets but in fact she’s doing ninja moves on some dudes outside, opening the gate for the big train to go in the city. But oh snap! There’s actually the swagg team spreading blood to attract Kabanes into the city. Mumei is like “Whaaaaat? Whyyy would they do such thing???”. Well, Ikoma did tell her that those guys are assholes but she did not listen since she trusts her dick of brother more than anything on earth. So the Kabanes invade the city, Biba and the blond chick attack the guys in the meeting room, what a surprise, and they kill the shogun’s representative off screen. Which is quite a shame, I would have liked to see him getting killed, just because. I don’t really have any reason, but I think it’s been quite clear that in this show you don’t really need reasons to act, things happen just because. So yeah, I guess we should deal with it.

Anyway, moving on. Biba turns the blond chick into some Kabane monster to create that big smoke Kabane thing, because apparently normal Kabanes aren’t enough, you need to sacrifice a supposed love interest to show that you are truly evil. By the way, am I supposed to care for that blond girl? She was introduced one episode ago, told some exposing stuff, said some bullshit about Biba actually being scared and tutti quanti and turned into a monster. I don’t know about you, but I care more about the Euro 2016 than this character ( which is something). You know, at this point I decided to start a little game on my own. I had some little chocolate animal biscuits and decided to eat one every time something makes no sense or is just here for the plot’s convenience. There were 6 little biscuits at the beginning, two lions, 1 rhinoceros and 3 monkeys. I thought I should keep the monkeys for Biba’s bullshit, Lions for mumei’s and the Rhino for Ikoma’s. Obviously I was a bit short on the Rhino and Lions but I clearly was lacking some Monkeys.

Okay, so Boris fights with some random scientist dude whom existence is as meaningless as perfumed toilet paper and they both fall into some smoke cloud. Also, the blond chick isn’t dead, she turned into some sort of mutant that can shots lasers from its mouth… well that’s a first… I can’t wait to see until which point they are going to extend the “Kabane/Kabeneri” concept. The blond girl is  about to kill Biba but stops right before because she recognized him? Maybe… But Biba doesn’t care at all so he kills her. It’s during this time that Mumei started to realize that her brother is actually a dick so she’s like ” Brother, did you lie to me?”. Yeah well, I really wonder, what do you think reader, did Biba lie to Mumei?! Gosh, I really don’t know… The suspense is killing, such cliffhanger, wow, I almost cut my tongue eating one Lion biscuit when I heard that.

Oh yeah, also a kid gets shot. I wonder if it’s Taro the Dog Kid, the one who was crying because of his dog’s death. This death makes Ikoma really angry, agrou agrou, killing kids is not nice. Maybe now Ikoma is going to start rebelling against Biba with all his might, I wish this is going tot happen.

I was thinking, is this sort of revolution supposed to represent the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1868? When the Choshu and Satsuma clans made an alliance and stuff? The Kabanes being the westerners invading Japan which enclosed itself behind some doors, to avoid trade with western countries during all the Tokugawa reign? I don’t know… I think I might be fantasizing a bit too much here. But yeah, that’s what I thought when Biba said that he’ll destroy the symbol of man’s cowardice: the shogun. That’s the only explantation that could make sense to me, I heard that this anime was supposed to be set in that period so yeah… At least I tried.

I think the main debate on this episode could be: Is Mumei a bitch or not? I personally think that although she has some good circonstances, she is quite annoying. I used to think that, me slightly getting annoyed by her was due to the fact that I don’t really like anime girls for some reason but apparently, I’m not the only one, some even calling her a bitch. I wouldn’t go as far as calling her a bitch but she sure is too naive for my taste. She did lose her mom when she was a kid, she’s only 12 and the guy who raised her is a douchebag so she has quite a past. In my opinion, that’s not really her fault but mostly the fault of this overused plot device, “oooh you liiiiied to me” thing. It’s getting a bit generic and tiring after a while,
As for the rest of the cast, eh, they don’t do much, except Ayame and Boris, the remaining side characters are like the cast of Pokemon or Yu-gi-oh, they only shout the name of the main protagonist in times of need, and thanks to the power of hearing his name, the main guy defeats the bad guy.  It also looks like Ikoma’s character development has been abandoned completely and the animation quality went really downside since a couple of episodes.

I know that I might sound a bit sarcastic in this review but that doesn’t change the fact that despite all the fun I made about how incoherent (and a bit stupid) the show is, I’m still enjoying it. I’m enjoying it for what it is, a brainless action anime, with some bad ass things and zombies, that’s it.

Ps: I still have some animal choco biscuits left, so if you want I can take pictures of them. I don’t guarantee that those pictures are going to be useful though.