Aaaaaand we’re back to really weird pacing. Not in the general sense, but the overall flow of the episode felt weird. Though I suppose that’s nothing new, but it is still kind of jarring and annoying for them to insert random “funny” moments in the middle of battles. But more on that later. Not to mention this entire episode felt like it was dong a lot of stop and go with the overall energy of what was happening. However, I am glad that they found the true culprits of what was going down in the 7th’s jurisdiction rather than dragging it out.
They’re definitely allowing this arc to have more breathing room than Hibana’s. With Hibana’s arc, it was like BOOM BOOM BOOM, you have all the information about her and why she is doing the things that she does. However, with this arc, we slowly got to know a little more about Benimaru and how much he cares about the people under his jurisdiction. And now we’re learning more about his relationship with Konro and just what happened before he was made captain of the 7th. The way that Konro and Benimaru care for one another is very touching and they both have such high opinions of the other. They work really well as a team and I definitely get the feeling that they’re trying to show that they work the best as a team rather than having one over the other. Especially since in the captain’s meeting, Benimaru was the only one to show up with a subordinate while the others came alone (bar Obi). I’m still a little confused as to why Konro thinks Benimaru is the best to lead the people since in this episode, when all the infernals were erupting all over the place, Benimaru couldn’t get the people to calm down and they just scattered all over the place. So hopefully they’ll address that in the next episode. Which I hope will wrap up this arc because if not then they’ll definitely be stretching it out for way too long.
But man, the 4th division captain is SHADY as heck. I mean, I got that feeling from the first time I saw him in the captains meeting. Characters that have their glasses reflect light like that cannot be trusted, especially in anime. Not to mention he just popped the proposition for them to become the 7th at such a random and inopportune time. Give the guys some breathing room and when they’re not in critical condition, GOSH.
Just as this one commenter said, we do learn what the heck happened with the whole misunderstanding between Benimaru and the 8th. The whole town is filled with arguing people over misunderstandings because lookalikes have been placed through out causing mischief and breaking trusts. However, I still think they could have shown that scene in the previous episode better to make more sense like if the doublegangers started running and then turned into an alleyway to lead to Obi and Hinawa before disappearing to let the real ones take the heat (literally) from Benimaru. Something like that to make more continuity sense scene-wise. However, this show has always had really wonky scene continuity so it’s just me pointing out the obvious yet again.
But anyways, looks like I was wrong about Sho having Matsuoka’s voice because it turned out to be a completely different character, whoops. Back on topic, seems like this new guy, Yona is able to use his fire abilities to completely change someone’s face. Flaming plastic surgery anyone? Though it is weird that their voices changed upon their facial change, but I shouldn’t get hung up on that. It’s very interesting that both Hina and Arthur were able to see through the disguises of the fake Hika. And I had a pretty good laugh when Arthur just knees the fake Hika in the face and then proceeds to throw them into the wall while Hina cheers. And then immediately gets beat up by his teammates. I also love that Hinawa was just was on standby with his guns loaded. I am really worried about what happened to Hika and I totally thought that the guy turned her into an infernal (which isn’t out of the realm of possibility at the moment). I hope she’s okay somewhere or else this arc really is going to be a tragic one. Though thinking about it, the cult was kidnapping children to find someone compatible in becoming a pilot light… OH GOODNESS NO. HIKA PLEASE BE OKAY.
Crap really hits the fan when infernals start popping up in bulk and the cult uses the chaos to their advantage to snipe the 8th’s members. I had a good laugh when Maki transforms the arrow into a sputter at the last minute and just gushes about how it leapt into her arms. However, I felt extremely annoyed by Shinra and Arthur’s fight against the cult members that had attacked during the Rekka incident. It’s like: THIS ISN’T THE TIME TO BE FIGHTING WITH EACH OTHER. Sure they need to work on their teamwork in fights, but they really should not be yelling at each other when VERY DANGEROUS assassins are literally attacking you! Not to mention they kept punctuating the fight with supposedly “funny” moments with them getting in each other’s way or yelling at each other and it just drove me insane. I hate that this series keeps inserting unnecessary things in the middle of very serious fights. It also just makes the fight lose its momentum, which is a shame. And for some reason the assassins just LET them talk to each other and watched them when they could have used that opportunity to attack. UGH, the first half of this fight was a hot mess.
However, I will say I thoroughly enjoyed the second half of the fight. There were no interruptions from dumb things happening and I loved how they didn’t always segregate Shinra and Arthur’s fights with the cult members but had the two separate fights happening in the same frame, giving it such a dynamic shot. There’s also scenes where I didn’t even catch the guy coming in to push the arrow cult member out of the way when she was being aimed at until I went back and rewatched it.
Unfortunately the fight was cut short when the guy assassin eats the infernal bug to which my response was: EW. I wonder if he’ll turn into that devil infernal that has appeared a couple of times in flashbacks. Especially since they called attention to that kind of infernal. There’s definitely something special about that kind of infernal and I wonder just what kind of significance they have.
This was an okay episode and while I have my gripes with it (to no one’s surprise), I’m still enjoying this arc way more than previous ones. So I guess that’s a plus. It feels like they finally decided to slow down a bit and actually focus on certain things and flesh them out more. So I’m looking forward to what will happen next and I do hope they don’t linger too long on this arc. But it does look like Benimaru is finally going to start helping against the cult members and hopefully will be another captain ally.
