I’m impressed! We got three solid fights in this episode and a potential cult??? But wow, to have that much in a single episode? I can hardly believe that it was only 24 minutes. It does leave me to wonder what kind of fights we’ll have coming up, since it seems like all of the “spotlight” characters from the opening have already come and gone but who knows, it looks there’s plenty of mysteries to solve in this anime. I mean, I’m still hung up on the potential cult! And not to mention the Jester with a scythe! My curiosity is piqued, and I just want to watch more.
The fights were definitely the highlight of the episode, but I really wish that they would have lasted longer. I know it’s a running gag with anime watchers that when someone has a backstory, we have to pause the fight, but honestly, I’m starting to realize how much I appreciate it. Personally, I would have liked a little bit more depth to both Mira and Daewi’s opponents, but at the same time wanting to be surrounded by good men is a pretty solid wish. It sounds shallow, but hey, not everything needs to be deeply emotional. I liked Mira’s fight, one for her opponent, but two because we get to see more of her power without the sword. By even having a swordless technique where she can cut through the equivalent of iron? That’s incredibly cool.
I did thoroughly appreciate Daewi’s fight because it really highlighted him as a caring character (and also, we get a more info on who he’s fighting for, hooray!!). I loved that he was paired up against someone who would rather focus on reason rather than feelings and honestly I liked how simple his goal of “Combine Knowledge and Violence? Is this the true strategy?”. But for Daewi in particular, we see a lot of resilience and of our three main characters I think he’s probably the one to stick it out the longest. I mean, he was stabbed many times and still brought himself to stand up and defeat his opponent. If anything, he’s just really cool!! I mean, he was cool, when instead of attacking he offered out his hand, but still, taking that much damage and still claiming victory? I’m definitely routing for him in this tournament.
One thing that’s carried over from the previous episode to this one that I’m not a big fan of is how they start off the episode… or rather how they wrap up the previous episode to then go on to the next. Last week, it was a flashback to Mira straight up break Mori’s neck and this week… it was just “oh yeah, the two fighters? One’s pretty beaten up and out of commission, and the other? Well… he’s also not doing so hot.” And it’s just kind of frustrating that we don’t get to see the in between moments. We just sort of move on to the next thing and I don’t feel as if we get the desired closure with these transitions. If it continues like this, I’ll definitely be frustrated by it, but seeing how this is a fighting anime with very fun fight scenes I think I’ll let it slide for now.
I want to take a moment to circle back and talk about Mori’s fight. I don’t have too much to say about it except 1) how did he know the guy needed to take off his glasses? 2) What was that spirit that he fought? I genuinely thought this would be an intense battle anime, but now we’re throwing in all sorts of stuff into the mix and it’s exciting! Everything surrounding Mori’s fight raises a lot of questions: What are the fruits and what do they do? Who is Mori’s Grandpa? Why does Mori only want to fight Blond man? What the heck is Mujin doing behind closed doors? And what is this cult? I’m excited to see how these will be answered in the future, so I will continue to look forward to what will come next!
