Short Synopsis: While away from Manji, Rin runs into a certain someone.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
You know, this wasn’t exactly the episode you’d expect as a semi-final one of a series. Even though it involved the main villain, it was just a standalone episode. If the creators plan to wrap up the series in the next episode, it’d all have to happen in one episode. But then again, that’s also what I said of Amatsuki and I’m still waiting for that second friggin’ season announcement. The thing that’s interesting here is that the only times at which Bee-Train left their series unfinished, another studio jumped up at the chance to finish off what they started (namely .Hack//Roots and Tsubasa Chronicle). Who knows? The fact remains though, that this series needs to be continued so badly.
This episode’s purpose was to remind that not all action of this series lies in swords and other sharp weapons. The majority of the action in this episode went on in the characters’ minds: Rin was incredibly unfortunate to run into Kagehisa while Manji was assuming that she was taking a bath, and of course she tried to attack him by herself. Kagehisa easily overpowered her and she spend the rest of the episode, unable to do anything against the killer of her parents.
It’s a great move: to actually be able to talk to the one you hold a grudge against, and have this person explain his reasons, rather than blindly charging at each other without listening to what the other has to say. It also was different from when a character suddenly stops mid-fight in order to spontaneously blurt out his life story: Rin really wanted to do something against the guy, but she was paralyzed, while Kagehisa kept looking down on her, and never found her worthy enough to kill.
psgels, did you understand the reasons why Kagehisa killed her father and all, I didn’t get it at all but her father must have done smthg to him, otherwise the reasons wouldn’t be sufficient, and besides he didn’t look like the most villain character here. So why? He talked a lot but about what? And Rin didn’t take the chance to kill him while he was waking away at the end so I supposed he somehow gave a good explanation.