[DreamSword]

Episode 6: Lurking Demon

I liked this episode too!

Not as much as the previous one, but I felt this one worked for the most part. It definitely has a few issues though.

Before all that though, the premise. Xehanort unleashes an ancient Horror which specializes in causing plagues and disease to any that come near it. Meanwhile, Raiko and crew come across a young boy named Gobeh, a thief.

To start with the stuff that didn't quite work out, the character development in this one wasn't as strong as in the previous episode. While I still was ultimately liking Gobeh and his family, compared to the previous episode, the character writing was definitely a small step backward.

This episode also brings in a "deep" point of discussion about coming to terms with death, only to never give any sort of definitive push nor answer to said question. Like yeah, it's implied that everything is going to work out for Gobeh in the end, but given the hellhole the setting is, I have my doubts. Plus, I think most people would agree that death kinda sucks, whether you accept it or not.

And while I know the action scenes are not exactly the big focal point of this show(which is ironic given the Toku inspiration), this was the exact kind of enemy that sort of demands some big action sequence. For a Horror so strong that ancient Makai Knights had to seal it rather than kill it, Raiko literally takes it down in one swing, resulting in a really anti-climactic finish. Atleast with the previous Horrors they weren't anything special, but this? Lame.

Now, as for the good stuff.

We got some payoff as well as set up as to what Yasusuke has been up to. He is now the leader of a band of thieves, and he goes by a new name: Hakamadare. And man does his new design look friggen cool! His disposition really makes me interested and excited to see where his character arc goes moving forward.

Outside of that, while the character writing was a bit of a step down, I did still overall like it. I really dug how Gobeh and Seimei bonded over their love of occultic trinkets. I also thought the character humor itself worked pretty well. The "little servant" joke actually managing to get a decent laugh out of me.

And finally, I liked how absolutely messed up this episode was compared to the previous ones. While still not on the level of how dark things could get in the previous anime, this episode featured people dying en mass and getting their corpses shoveled into a quarantine zone, among other twisted imagery. Children included! It definitely helped to make this episode stand out when compared to the previous ones, which were mostly tame.

All in all, another solid episode. Can't really complain.