As opposed to the previous episodes, this episode was much less “out there”, and instead was quiet build up. It again had surprisingly little of Sasuke, even though he’s the main character, and again a lot of time here was spent on the side characters and the setting. For this series a build-up episode like this isn’t nearly as bad as with most other series because a) it has already caught my attention and b) it has more than enough time to get it to pay off.
This episode was well spent in any case as it showed that Sasuke was still young (oh, the irony; in any other anime he’d be of retirement age), but I’m still curious whether or not this series will delve into the “takes forever to go somewhere” syndrome. It avoided this pretty well so far, though: every episode so far has been slow, but incredibly fun. What makes this series fun is its combination of its dialogue and its acting. This episode just had a tad too much dialogue and it’s up to the next episodes to balance this out, because this kind of build-up deserves to be used well.
In either case, this episode especially solidified Akechi Mitsuhide as a character (it’s interesting by the way how this character has shown up in three different series during the past year: Sengoku Basara and Otome are set in the same time, although I still cringe at how poorly Sengoku Otome treated these characters).
Oh, abut I did love that scene at the end where Sasuke gazes upon the wondrous pineapple. It’s a nice reference to the cultural differences at the time, and I can only imagine how a pineapple looks to an aesthete like him.
Rating: * (Good)
