[DreamSword]

Episode 20: Boy from the Past!

Wanna know what one of the scariest things in the world is?

A stalker. And worse than that, a very creepy, obsessed, and possessive one who knows how to gaslight.

Such is the case of Haiji Sawada and the main focus of this episode. He's a big fan of Samurai Flamenco, see? And all he wants is to be as important to Flamenco as Flamenco is to him.

Adding onto the real world evils inherent in what a seemingly normal person can do, the crimes he commits are ones that anyone could pull off. Hitting someone with a truck, pushing someone down the stairs, poisoning food, and making others question their own grip on reality.

But perhaps more poignant than that is that in all of this, the show still finds a way to continue talking about people's' relation to the media they consume. Sawada represents those who become obsessed to the point of falling into the darkness. As well as how many people, rather than embracing a story or character for what they are, focus on trying to force those things into their own self-image of perfection.

As such, he very much serves as a counter to the age old stance of "there's no such thing as a bad fan." To which the question then becomes, well, what about people like this? People who cause both physical and emotional harm in the name of the thing they claim to love so much?

Masayoshi might be an expert in combating the evils of the physical world, but he's not at all prepared for battles of the mind, as as such, it only makes sense for this to be the final foe he needs to face in the grand story of Samurai Flamenco as a whole.