Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi – 08

「韋駄天」 (Idaten)
“Idaten”

After a little bit of a wait because of some delays, Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi is back, and it doesn’t waste a single second getting straight back into the action. Starting right where we left off, Hayato continues his fight with Takeshita the emperor of the demon kingdom. The fight goes well but Hayato doesn’t finish him off, wounded and seeking shelter he comes across a new Idaten portal, namely the title of the episode, as a new Idaten is born, and is quickly accepted by the rest of the cast. It seems the new god takes the form of the one with the most profound thoughts, in this case, it was Gill, the nun who was locked up and recently released. Prontea quickly finds her human double, so I wonder how will this affect the story and the Idaten lore moving forward. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing more.

Nevertheless, so much happened in this episode, Prontea taking hostage the Miku lookalike, Rin’s fight with Pisara, the way she just walked into one trap after the other was laughable at best, but she uses brute force to bring in all of the hairs and form it into one big yarn, which she just slices through, great stuff. I honestly thought someone was going to die this episode, and not the bad guys. It was giving me big vibes like that, but thankfully no one did.

Once again I have to mention this show’s way of using color, it really makes some moment’s stand out, like when Hayato twist’s ​​Takeshita arm and blood comes out, they accent the blood color with yellow, not only is it a great way to get past the censors, it’s also a bold choice that accentuates certain elements of the show. I’ve mentioned this before in previous episodes, so I won’t go into great detail once again.

There was so much fighting this episode, there was little time for exposition or advancement of the lore, but still, this episode gave us a resolution to a lot of plot points that were hanging in threads of episodes yore.

It’s weird how Takeshita decided not to blow up the kingdom with a nuclear bomb, he died moments later. Was he trying to save those that were still in the kingdom thinking they had a fighting chance? I wonder what was his reason’s.

The most important part of the episode of course was when Dr. Mao-sama revealed his identity to Rin, causing her to be thrown for a loop, she makes the connection that he might be his grandfather, and it could be possible as the demons might have taken his consciousness and placed it inside a robot that they can conjure up time and time again. Like Ysley’s brainwash surgery, something similar might have happened to Dr. Mao, he did say several times he had vague memories of Rin. Really interesting stuff, that I hope continues to be explored in later episodes, it wasn’t a huge secret Dr. Mao had something to do with the Idaten as he blatantly explained in past episodes. But the meeting of the two, Rin and Dr. Mao really proved that he has more hiding in his closet, and he’s not willing to show because of this amnesia.

I really love how people just switch sides in this show, it’s just a simple surgery away from changing your whole personality and making you work with the good guy’s now. But who is really good and who is really bad in this show. Yes, the demons were harvesting humans and stuff, but the Idaten blew up their whole city like a nuclear bomb had fallen down on it. And it was just by sheer power. Thankfully the citizens were evacuated, so no one but demons got hurt.

But I guess I’m opening up a can of worms with that last sentence, it really is a question Idaten is trying to poise when it comes to war, and morality, who has the right answer? But at the same time, that question might be a lot more difficult than just that, there are so many caveats and so many gray areas I fear I might not have enough high prose to answer them. If that just sounded like mambo jumbo to you, take away this. Idaten is poising with intellect. It’s not afraid to destroy bodies like they’re nothing and its sense of humor is dark and quirky. Once again I cannot recommend this series enough.

What a great episode this was, don’t you think? Thanks for reading and look forward to next week for another episode of Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi.