In a way, this is an episode where Sarazanmai breaks many of its formula: it’s the first episode where it doesn’t feature any dance routine, it’s the episode when finally the cops meet our leads for the first time (with disastrous results), but for me these last two episodes is where Sarazanmai loses its steams a little. It brings many characters together for the bigger plots, with two main developments: Toi decided to part way in order to follow his brother, and Enta gets shot and presumably dead. Before going to details for each of them, I will address the details that I’m not fond of at the moment: the miçanga. Ikuhara loves to reveal the intriguing past his characters have for each other. This episode he uses the same trick as we eventually learn that Toi and Kazuki already met in the past – right where Toi decides to give up what he treasures the most at the time – soccer – in order to follow his brother. The issue I have with that is that it frames their chemistry as “fate”, and that somewhat negates the “connection’ theme Sarazanmai aims for.
But the miçanga thread also does one thing right: it brings Enta’s jealousy into forefront and jealousy is a “shade” I want to see more from this series. All he did last episode was out of jealousy with the amount of attention Kazuki has for Toi. Interesting, Enta spends the entirety of this episode with Toi’s brother Chikai, who doesn’t aware that Enta knows his brother. Chikai’s attitude towards Toi is unhealthy, to say the least, as he realizes Toi giving up his precious for him, yet kind of expect him to. Toi gave up his soccer path once, and now just when he makes friends, he’s forced to give them up. With Enta – Chikai scenes, we get to see more of Toi’s hidden emotions side.
But those scenes work for another purpose, in the name of Reo and Mabu and they go full-villain mode: Killing people on the street and brainwashing witnesses, which I’m not sure if I like it or not. Speaking of which, I’m not to sure how Reo’s “extracting” gun work. Why do some of them become a zombie kappa, other just die from the gunshot? That brings me to the cliffhanger where Enta was shot as he saves Kazuki. There’s subtle hint in the ED where we only see 2 shadows that could imply that Enta stays dead. I would definitely prefer it that way, although I won’t be surprised if it’s just a cop out. Fake death is something anime medium isn’t shy of, sadly. Speaking of positive, I quite like how Kazuki goes through some sort of a mood-swing regarding Entai. At this very stage he doesn’t really know how to feel about his friend’s betrayal, and hopefully he will learn a thing or two about Entai’s affection after this turn of event.
I feel like Sarazanmai’s format was already broken by the end of episode 5, where Kazuki fails to secure the Sachet kappa zombie’s shirikodama. They don’t revert to their human form, and they remain kappas for the majority of episode 6 (which is the actual first episode with no dance sequence and no memory leak). The main objective in #6 is a rescue mission, rather than a shirikodama extraction, making it completely distinct from everything that came before.
With this change-up already on the books, episode 8 wasn’t that far outside my expectations. Reo’s gun has always had different modes, which is why a gigantic label pops up before he fires it. And the otters are the villains of this series*, having engaged in manipulation and murder since the very start. Remember, all the kappa zombies are first identified as dead victims in the police briefing scenes. Even when Reo’s gun is in SUCK mode, it leaves behind a corpse.
*For the time being, anyway – the foreshadowing surrounding the Kappa King has some seriously evil vibes to it.