Category: Katsugeki Touken Ranbu

This is a good week for Ranbu, as it starts to hit its stride. A new mission begins, some quiet character moments occur and finally a whole new cast member is introduced!

We open in a rather unexpected manner, our party fleeing from a group of police. I was expecting a relaxing, beach like episode, with how we left off last time. However it appears we are jumping right into the next mission, as they arrive in Edo. This time our cast is tasked with protecting a 2-day meeting between Katsu Kaishu and Saigou Takamori. This meeting, if left alone, will end in a bloodless surrender of Edo. Should this meeting be attacked, no doubt war will break out, and history will take a massive swing. It wouldn’t take much to set that off, so our casts job is a difficult one it seems.

During this opening segment in Edo, the music does a good job of building suspense. Everything is very calm in the beginning, but the music gives even daylight scenes a sense of foreboding. That this mission wont go our heroes way, at least not easily. This is broken up by moments of comedy, with our cast trying to do their job while dodging the Shogunate Police. This is good, it shows that our heroes are a part of this world. Their clothing actually gets them into trouble and people see them and know they exist. They are a part of this world.

As night comes, the light hearted comedy gives way to some one-on-one character moments for some of our cast. Specifically Kane and Yagen, as they discuss their duty and their previous masters. Yagen gives a short speech which is made better by the fact that he hasn’t talked much up till now. We see through Kane’s imitation of Hijikata, his old wielder, that he still holds onto his time as a weapon. Its a nice, short scene. It fleshes out these characters during their downtime while we wait for the Retrograde army to make their move.

This time, they have managed to place a samurai in Katsu Kaishu’s party who was not originally there in history, who has slipped away between days of the meeting. As this realization hits our party, we transition to night and another fog rolls in. Soon after a new type of opponent is introduced, the Ootachi, a large sword wielder, who raises a question in my mind. Our main cast are weapons given personalities, and these Retrograde samurai are named after their type of weapon. Are they weapons history has forgotten? Why are they mindless, yet our main cast are not, even though both are weapons? These our questions I hope get answered as we progress, but for now lets head back to the fight with the Ootachi.

The Ootachi is very clearly overpowering and out fighting our cast, as we can see small, subtle movements as he reacts to our main characters attacks. Yes, with its raw strength and endurance it simply takes some blows, but for many others it seems to be acting with thought. Because of this, the Ootachi is putting up quite the fight. This combat also takes place on a bridge, which gives us a rather pretty combat scene. I have criticized Ranbu’s combat choreography before, but this episode does it well.

While all this is going on, Yagen is off trailing the Samurai who snuck off from the meeting, who apparently plans to fire on the meeting from the sea. Yagen gets some quick scenes to shine, to show what he can do, and handily defeats the ship crew. Once the Retrograde army appears though, it becomes clear that front line combat isn’t his specialty as he is pushed into a corner. Disappointingly he is saved by a new character teleporting in at the last moment, but it does make for an amazing entrance. Art has always been Ranbu’s strong point, but these scenes looked good even when compared to the previous episodes. The white against the blues and blacks of the ship at night, the red on the sword and the petals, all frame a beautiful shot to end the episode on.

Overall, this episode is a step in the right direction for Ranbu. It has improved its comedy, and the character moments are focused and the combat is stylish. The story can still improve, but it has become clear that Ranbu is more concerned with Rule of Cool scenarios. So for this season sit back, relax, and enjoy the eye candy.

See you next week!

 

The farther into the season we go, the clearer it becomes that Ranbu is a video-game adaptation, as this week Ranbu takes two steps forward and one step back.

We start this week off immediately where we left off, with the Dutch steamship mid explosion, and wow was it a beautiful explosion. If nothing else happened this episode, we would still get a number of good wallpapers out of this opening segment. The digital effects team of Ufotable are clearly working hard as the smoke curls around the screen and water floods in through a hole in the wall. Truly, this is 5-minutes of animation eye-candy, ending with Mutsunokami looking over a gorgeous sunset sea.

Its a good image, as it shows early on who this episode is all about, Mutsunokami. He is the main focus of this episode, as we see his ideals clash with that of our lead Kane. Kane explains that though some died here, it didn’t have a large enough effect to change the course of history and so all is well that ends well. Of course Mutsunokami disagrees, saying that while the whole future is the same, what about the individuals future? He even goes for the low blow when he brings the Shinsingumi into the argument, striking at Kane’s own original owner. Needless to say this heats up the argument and Mutsunokami goes storming off into the night, with Kunihiro following to cool him down.

This leads us to a nice transition to our next plot point, the Roushi who attacked the ship. At first I was confused as to why there was no Revisionists zombies at the ship, but it would seem our villains actually know what they are doing. In history a group of Roushi, masterless samurai, attempted to kill foreigners and no doubt blow up the ship but got caught. Rather than blowing it up themselves, the Revisionists simply helped the Roushi avoid getting caught. Its a very indirect way of effecting history, allowing them to avoid the superior combat force of our main group. This is the sign of an intelligent opponent, who I hope will stay intelligent, who I hope will continue to attack where our main group is week. If the Revisionists stay smart, there is a good shot at a genuine feeling of threat from our villains when our main cast reaches them.

Getting back to Mutsunokami and Kunihiro, the two have a quick heart to heart that really says nothing at all. What this segment is really meant to do is give the Roushi some character. To show us that the Roushi aren’t the bad guys, that would be the Revisionists, the Roushi are simply people trying to survive in their era. Had we more time with them this may have worked, but for the quick 5 minutes we were given it comes across more than a little hamfisted. It does end up turning into a good example of the moral quandaries of preserving history though, as the Roushi are caught and killed by the Police later on. Had Kane not saved a little girl in episode one, completely negating any real consequence for changing history and saving people, this would have been a much stronger scene.

It is with this scene however, plus the little girl and the final ending dialogue, that the real issue of Ranbu comes out. Nothing is lasting. There were no consequences for saving the little girl in episode one, the conflict of ideals between Mutsunokami and Kane are introduced and resolved in the same episode and finally Mutsunokami comes to terms with having to let the Roushi die far to easily. There’s no cost to their ideals. In Rurouni Kenshin, a samurai piece set in a similar era, the main protagonist Kenshin had ideals and there were real consequences to him sticking to them. He swore not to kill again, and so over and over again specters from his past arrived whom he could not definitively get rid of. It got to the point where he left his friends so that they would not get dragged into the conflict he created. Ranbu handles its characters ideals in such a way that if Kenshin were here, he would kill and get over breaking his vow in the same episode. Its disappointing, as they could do so much more with this premise had their writing been better.

While their writing is lacking however, the animation is not. We end the episode on a flashy fight scene with a 3D camera rotation through the battlefield, and each of our cast cutting down some zombie samurai. Its all very pretty, even if the choreography is a bit bland. With the Revisionists dealt with, it seems our cast is due some down time, as the little talking fox comes in and informs them of their next job. In three days we get a hop skip and a jump to another time period, with more Revisionists and hopefully more plot. Depending on when they go and how the Revisionists use the small changes in time that have occurred, things could get interesting. Lets just hope next episode isn’t a beach episode eh?

That concludes the episode review, but this does lead me into a personal theory. Based on Mutsunokami’s attitude for most of this episode, I have hope that there is actually a member of their organization that left and joined the Revisionists. It would explain why the mindless zombie samurai we see so often are acting so intelligently with their plans. It would also mean that our main casts opponent knows how they work, and would give us some much needed conflict. I have hopes that this is the case as Ranbu is in desperate need of some sort of clear antagonist. A former comrade would supply the show with some required character drama. We shall have to wait and see however, as next episode might end up being a relaxation episode.

See you next time!

Our story resumes immediately from where we left off, our six leads battling their way across the rooftops to some undisclosed location. Just like last week, we are greeted with some beautiful visuals ranging from a halo in the clouds to the best bullet casings I have ever seen in anime. Truly Ranbu is a feast for the eyes. Sadly, that is all the series seems to have.

This episode can be easily split up into three distinct sections. The opening fights, a boardroom meet’n’greet and the buildup. For the opening fights section, we get brief glimpses of what each of our leads can do and just how strong they are compared to their opponents. There are a lot of issues with this section, such as where did the fire from last episode go, how does no one from this era notice the red bolts of lightning summoning zombie swordsman and the fact that these time police are using swords and spears when they could easily use guns and bullets. This is explained later on, but that explanation only opens more questions.

Next after our team dispatches the remaining Revisionist forces, the leader of our motley band must leave, as cannot stay in the same period for to long, assigning Kane to be the team leader. Our party heads out, finds an inn and rests up, waking up to the aforementioned meet’n’greet. This section has the most meat of the episode, but the dialogue and how it is presented is agonizingly slow and boring. They essentially do “State your name, home city and one interesting fact”, as if they were freshman university students. Contrived, but we do get a lot of information from this.

Our main cast, and supposedly everyone else in their task force, are apparently weapons once wielded by historical figures. This explains each characters predilection for the weapon they once were, it explains their personalities since they are similar to their old wielders and it explains some of their dynamics. For example, Mutsunokami (Gunman) and Kanesada (Our Mentor MC) were wielded by Sakamoto Ryoma and Hijikata Toshizo, two commanders on different sides of a war, explaining their hostility towards each other. Sakamoto Ryoma also had an interest in military technology, such as guns and ships, explaining some of Mutsunokami’s reverence in regards to such technology. It helps a good bit with fleshing out the characters, but it opens up the question, how did these ancient weapons become time police? Hopefully that will get answered in the future.

Finally, we have our buildup to next episodes inciting incident. It appears the Revisionists plans are to spark a war between the Dutch and Japan. For a bit of background, the Dutch were the only Europeans allowed to trade in Japan after the Christian Rebellion, so a break in their relations could cause serious harm to Japans economy and technology at the time. Not a bad plan all things considered, and the Revisionists don’t seem to be stupid as they ignore our Leads and instead attack the Dutch steam ship scheduled to sail home. Had the meet’n’greet been half as long, this episode might have gone somewhere. Instead we are faced with one of Ufotables greatest weaknesses, writing.

Ufotable is fantastic when it comes to things like animation, sound and visual effects, but so far nothing they themselves have written has been good. Tales of Zestria, while beautiful, lacked substance, just as Ranbu does. All of our characters seem like cardboard cutouts, and the story itself feels hollow. I am sure those who played the game will get a lot more out of it than people like myself, but from where I am standing the only redeeming factor is the art. Its a shame, because we know from anime such as Fate/Zero that Ufotable is capable of making an episode with 90% dialogue engaging. Just go watch the Feast of Kings episode as proof! Yet here we are treated to a 10 minute info dump, which while necessary, could have been done in a number of different ways.

So it’s clear Ranbu has issues, but we are only two episodes in. With time and patience, its not to late to recover, as a large cast takes time to flesh out. Assuming some quiet character moments and less info dumps, it could work. I am not expecting it to, but it could. At the very least, we will be getting some gorgeous wall papers and action scenes from this season.

As a final aside, all future reviews for Ranbu will be posted the Sunday after that episode airs. With being brought on as a writer, the transition and all that, episode one was a bit late. From here on out we are on a schedule!