This was a bit of the problem with the first season: it spent so much time on building up that it forgot to actually deliver. This episode was bugged by a bit of a problem: there were no fights at all. There was just one point where Masamune and Uesugi crossed blades, but that was more as a sign of friendship than anything else. Oh, and there were some cannons who destroyed a bunch of ships, but that too was just build-up for the next episode.
The build-up is nice and all but this is supposed to be a hot blooded action series that really needs its time of 12 episodes. I know that Sengoku Basara in total has 25 episodes, but it’s still a bit different compared to your regular 26-episoded anime. I really hope that the creators know what they’re doing here.
Either way, another reason why the first season was so boring was because the battles that it did feature were rather boring. I think the biggest offender here was the battle around Tokugawa. I mean, here the creators had the founder of modern Japan, but the huge fight around him never really was interesting. With all of the battles that this episode has been building up for, the next episode seems like the perfect place to make up for it.
And it’s not like this episode was boring in the way that the first season was. It’s just that we hardly learned any new information here: everything that happened here was just meant to flesh out the different subplots: rather than getting from A to B, this episode described the road between A and B. It’s cool, but the creators really have to use it in the rest of the series. The part I liked best probably was that scene in which we saw Masaune’s men take care of their own injuries and see then recovering. Now THAT’s more than just build up.
Rating: (Enjoyable)
