Tougen Anki: Nikko Kegon Falls Arc

Three sides finally lined up at the gate and it feels like a game loading screen before the real fight. Calm before something loud

I keep thinking about Yaoroshi joining a group that wants every Momotaro wiped out. He is too soft for this and it is either going to break him or change them. Feels like the show is setting up something big with him and I am not sure which way it goes. Rest of the squad being a bunch of loud goofballs makes the whole thing stranger in a good way

Tetsuji telling them to save Remi and then the flashback of the raid hitting right after. That one landed heavier than I expected for an episode full of goofing around

Yaoroshi bailing on his loud friends to find some quiet and then instantly getting adopted by an even louder bunch is the funniest thing this arc has done. Introvert nightmare cycle continues

Naito yelling that everyone is an idiot while Shinichi just stands there saying nothing summed up this squad perfectly. Lovable weirdos the lot of them

Yaoroshi throwing that jacket down and climbing onto the crow got me angry in a way I did not expect. Like we spent a whole season watching this kid grow and he just walks away because some guy with a katana said the right words

Yaoroshi throwing that jacket on the ground barely registered until the crow lifted off. Then it landed. His dad and the rice balls at the waterfall at the start and then he just chose the people who'd kill kids. That hurt more than any fight this week

Yaoroshi throwing his jacket on the ground hit harder than any fight this episode. The flashback with the rice balls and his dad made it worse. He's not wrong about the island being too slow but he's walking straight into a slaughter. Can't blame him and can't forgive him either

I get why people are frustrated with Yaoroshi walking off but I kind of respect it. He watched Shiki get stronger and admitted to himself he's not there yet instead of pretending. That ending with him alone at dawn stuck with me

Kogasaki wanting to kill his own father right after Shiki talks about avenging his is a hell of a one-two. Everyone in this group is carrying something heavy and the show is not letting us forget it

The 5km blood shot debate on reddit is funny because who cares about physics when the sequence looked that good. Muden watching Shiki improve in real time said more than any speech could

Rokuro flickering into that flamboyant dancer persona mid-firefight is the dumbest funniest thing I've seen this season. A defense mechanism because he feels lame is such a specific character detail

Barefoot blood sled needs to be studied. Sliding down a mountain shoeless while being hunted should not look that cool but here we are

That whole snow and torii gate backdrop carried the episode for me. Sumire roaring behind Homare in that landscape was the shot of the week and the fact that the giant was her sister the whole time reframes every earlier scene

Sazanami got a lot less use once Rokuro transformed and the one-on-one with Inami basically froze her out. The back half is doing the heavy lifting here and the first fights feel like setup for it

I had Homare pegged as the flashy design character and nothing else. Episode 2 made me feel like an idiot for that. Her whole reason for not trusting her own strength ties right back to Sumire standing in front of her every single time

So the shivering kid who claimed he was sick was holding back the whole time? Rokuro just casually outpacing the guards after playing scared is a turn I did not see coming

Sumire slapping Homare and admitting she was the one who took her confidence away is such a wild direction to take a dead sister. Most shows would just make her a saint and call it a day

Homare's dad kicking her while she had a cold and then Sumire picking up that knife is the most I've been affected by a backstory in a long while. Nobody warned me this arc was going to go there

Shiki crying while Homare finally says out loud that she wants to save him got me more than the fight did. He just listened. No speech. That mattered