「阿九斗の帝都大戦争」 (Sai Akuto no Teito Taisen)
“Sai Akuto’s War on the Imperial Capital”

Given the rapid progression thus far, I’m not really sure if I can take the entire war against the gods with demons, superheros, and ninjas seriously. However, if I take this episode at face value and assume the story made complete sense up to this point, it was actually pretty cool. Quite frankly, it felt like I was watching a completely different show than I started over two months ago, but I’m not exactly complaining when there were scantily clad female ninjas everywhere (kunoichi = win). My only real gripe is that there is clearly a lot of material from from the light novels, but the anime hasn’t done a very good job piecing together an adaptation of it. For this week in particular, there was a ton of good action and a real sense of an apocalyptic war going on, and I didn’t even mind how new bad guys from CIMO8, Two V and Rubber, showed up without any warning. However, that still didn’t change my impression of how they’re trying to cram way too much content into every episode.

For instance, they suddenly introduced the Hattori family treasure, the Sword of Sohaya, which can’t be drawn from its sheath unless under certain conditions. Following its introduction, it’s now all of a sudden the object of interest to Eiko, who’s trying to get all the Iga ninjas killed so that she can claim it for herself. In connection with that, we also learn that one of Kouga ninjas sent to kill Keena last time is her father, yet she kills him in his wounded state to become the heir of the clan. So in the matter of less than half an episode, we now have a new subplot for Eiko’s character. It’s nothing anyone could have foreseen based on prior episodes, nor was it introduced in a way that made me personally feel like it was necessary in the overall story. The sword undoubtedly has importance to the god Suhara that Akuto is taking up his war against right now, and Junko will likely be the one to draw it at some point and do something significant with it, but the fact that it was never mentioned or hinted at before makes it seem like poor writing to just tack it on here.

In contrast, some of the story elements that were much better developed are Fujiko’s obsession with becoming Akuto’s queen, Lily’s mysterious way of keeping a close eye on Akuto yet allowing him to do whatever he wants, Peterhausen’s desire to take flight and wreck havoc with his master, and Yuuko’s demon-infected blood. To a lesser degree, even the school chairman’s connection with Bouichirou from their battle against the demon lord over a hundred years ago wasn’t too bad, seeing as they foreshadowed it a bit last time. The screenplay for all of these probably could have been better for earlier episodes,but seeing them progress further was consistent with what we’ve seen at least. In other words, they didn’t come off as plot devices that were inserted arbitrarily while a whole lot of other things were already going on. Plus, they generally had an episode and a half to depict the change of focus in the story, unlike the Sword of Sohaya.

With that said, I did find it kind of dumb how Akuto’s attempt to kill the gods is more or less him going on rampage now. I mean, who exactly is he trying to direct all his frustration at right now? There clearly isn’t a physical embodiment of the gods in front of him that he can destroy. All we have right now is him going on a frenzy with a bunch of pent-up anger but no one to take it out on except the imperial army and anyone else who tries to stop him. If anything, Akuto’s rampage only served to show Hiroshi how he’s a lost cause that he’ll have to try and kill, which is understandable considering how he’s a demon lord retaliating against anyone and everyone. The semi-saving grace is that Keena has shown signs that she’s either connecting with the gods or being used as a surrogate for them. I guess a nice twist would be that Keena ends up embodying the very god Suhara that Akuto is trying to kill right now.

Whatever the case, I just hope the story doesn’t try to introduce anything completely new in the coming episode and just focus on what’s already been presented because there’s already way too many open-ended subplots at the moment. Also, I’d like to see more of Korone who was nowhere to be seen this week. We did get a Jeffrey Wilder lookalike as the captain of the imperial warship though.

 

46 Comments

  1. That was a pretty decent episode compared to what we’ve seen in the past few weeks. Too bad that it’s quite hard to understand the true motivations behind the characters’ acts since they have been built up in the wrong way and a lot of stuff still comes up out of nowhere (the prime example is Eiko in this episode as you’ve mentioned in your review). But if they can keep this quality in the last two episodes, it’ll be okay I guess.

    Jurkasz
  2. if anyone can fill me in on what has happened to reach this point in the story, I would be grateful. I mean its a joke that they expect people who have not read the light novel to even accept anything going on as even close to being sensible.

    stupid
  3. hmm..this anime definitely has issues. no doubt about it. it feels so rushed and things are all over the place

    but the fact that we have a unique main character and storyline makes me think that this anime is good.

    Alec
  4. Damn you Hiroshi, you are a jerk.

    Bros before hoes

    On a serious note, the pacing on the anime is way off. I guess that’s what happens if you try and jam so much into a 13 episode anime, but really start the plot at episode 7.

    Random Calamity
  5. My main issue with the anime is that they could have easily explained things earlier in the series to make this final arc a little less chaotic and rushed. Instead they focused on the LCD: boobs and censored fanservice. sigh.

    Funkatron
  6. I never read the light novels but this is how I imagine they did it…

    Guy1: Hey you know what we need? A ninja gang war!
    Guy2: You what else is cool? Really buff old guys!
    Guy1: And a guy air surfing on his sword!

    There’s ridiculous and then there’s… well this. Gonna at least finish it at this point though.

    mist666999
  7. This seems like they didn’t plan it out too well. The earlier episodes could have had more plot and now it wouldn’t seem so chaotic. I watched the beginning and was like, “WTF is this?”. Its almost like they need an extra episode or two or they will end up like Basquash/Code Geass R2.

    I forsee one of three endings.

    1. Keena becomes “God”, Akuto tries to protect her from being killed by Boichiro.
    2. Boichiro uses Keena to copy Akuto’s poer and Akuto either: 2. Dies fighting Boichiro, winning a pyrric vitory
    3. Live and kills Boichiro with “the power of friendship” and we figure out the old Maou was similar and not really evil. Akuto decides not to become the dictator and we get a “happy ending.

    MMBinNC
  8. I’ll tell you how this is going to end: Stupidly!

    Which is such a shame, since the concept the show had GREAT potential! Akuto could have been the Lelouch of the Harry Potter world. Instead, they over fill it with needless fan service, horrible characters, and horrible plot holes.

    Remy
    1. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

      They rushed this show way too much in the last few episodes. Had they spent a little less time flashing undies and a little more time progressing the plot and developing the characters they could have ended with a half-decent anime.

      Tomer
  9. i don’t know the combination of things isn’t that bad i find it rushed a little but what can you do with only 12 episodes plus there have been things that have led to this and im kinda interested in what will happen to the situation with the MC as he has at last count 5 girls that have the hots for him and one that he has pissed off to the point she is leading the army to kill him. Ive hear of being stalked by a girl you turned down but that’s a tad excessive.

    Chaos
  10. Why I’m still watching this ? 😛 I just wanted the harem ending like Sugisaki Ken wanted! Lost of girls and onsen fun food times. As some of you has said: too much in too little space/time. I was confused about 20 minutes of the episode. A father takes the stage, get stabbed by evil daughter (did her hair grow? it was way too long than before). A mystery sword out of the blue. The idol secret went public and now is hack and slashing. Spaceship Yamato lol! The producers could have an open end, hopping for a second season, than cramming all this in 30 minutes! It’ll have made more sense than this. I won’t call the whole thing a disaster; but it sure is a let down how it was piece together.

    Island Esper
  11. Wasthen i watched this last night, i seriously felt like i had missed an episode, or the tv channel had missed an episode. What was with the rapid growth of monsterss. And ninja master being in an off off screen fight we had never seen. Just feels rushed, its the same feelin as when a shower gets axed just past mid season and they hav to wrap everything up in three episodes when they originally had six. Frustrating is the word.

  12. War’s finally begun and shit’s finally happening. Two episodes left, so let’s see if they’re gonna end it all with a big blast, or a let down, in which they throw entirely new questions at us, but would most likely only be answered in either the manga or light novel.

    questionmark
  13. This wasn’t bad. I mean, a lot of the stuff is rushed because they only have 13 episodes apparently, but it wasn’t bad, and I enjoyed this episode. One of the things I enjoyed the most the were the sweet things Akuto said to Junko (sooooo she’s the winner?). I kinda also expected that Yuuko was a total bitch, since her kind of characters usually are. Some things unintentionally made me laugh though, like how they have a character named 2V (which reminded me of V.V for Geass for some apparent reason) and how Peterhausen has a chair attached to his back. Anyways, I think that Hiroshi’s gonna get the shit beaten out of him, and that Hiroshi’s naive view of justice is gonna conflict with Akuto’s.

    Click
    1. i agree he definatly going to get beaten then find out that Akuto is probably the only one who can save the girl, who as someone else said is batshit crazy. i sometimes wounder if we shouldn’t name this condition that anime charaters get were they go this particular brand of crazy. Also thinking the ending to this series is going to be good. I find it very interesting that the world seems dependent on a god and that Akuto realy hates that everyone use it as an excuse for things. I feel that way about it in general myself.

      Chaos
  14. I am not quite sure what is going on. The girl with red hair showed multiple personalities which explains why she doesn’t remember her past. And Akuto wants to kill the gods to protect her. But other than that, Akuto also explains that the Gods is a system that humans created that lead to wars and so on. But how that system lead to wars and who exactly are those Gods are completely unexplained which is why i am confused. Anyone who knows bothered to explain me?

    banzemanga
  15. yuuko is such a douche.. or mentally unstable rather. just because u got bitten by a dog doesnt mean u have to kill all dogs.. how she became an “idol” with that massive monster infection on her neck i dunno :/

    N0216332
  16. Code Geass R2 type plot development.

    Spouting off Cliche lines every other scene with tons of forced plot development.

    Yuck.

    Don’t get me wrong. I loved Code Geass, just not a fan of super rapid plot development. ( If you can call it that ).

    Samurai Pumpkin

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