Kanaguri’s introduction last week did a great job of injecting some extra tension into the arc, and this episode mainly follows it. While the man himself was absent this week, the show managed to help improve the action by giving us another new character and gain a deeper understanding of all the mysteries around Akira. The answers to these mysteries aren’t that surprising, but their experiences are enough to make the arc more dynamic.
Surviving the plane crash, Sakamoto and Shin prepare for the third phase of the JCC exam. This involves splitting into teams to steal each other’s smolder belts, which is fun when Shin finds the activity as childish as it looks, and Proctors just riff after how many participants have already kicked the bucket. While the competition seems rather simple, it doesn’t take long for the two of them to start having problems, the first one is that they are placed in different teams, and Shin insists on avoiding helping each other (which kind of hurts Sakamoto’s feeling, which is a little sweet and a little cute and a little cute, knowing he doesn’t like Shin either, and even if he’ll take Shin, he can take these three new exams), and it’s a new show. Although we didn’t know much about two of them, we learned a lot about the third Toramaru because she turned out to be a huge sakamoto fangirl with her own keychain plush. As fun as it sounds on paper, it seems she isn’t exactly pieced together the big guys are her idols, but that kind of lost comedy potential is far beyond her danger. It was a very interesting time to watch her carving guy with her giant axe, and her craze for violence eventually led her to reach Shum instead of Sakamoto, who now had to figure out how to deal with her. It’s really a bit of a waste to have her fight with Shin instead of Sakamoto, but considering that Shin is basically Sakamoto’s fanatic herself, we should still get some interesting interactions from it, and I’m glad to see how the rest of them goes.
Sakamoto himself ends up with Akari and a guy named Kill Baby (as the name suggests, he’s all here just for comedy relief), and seeing more unusual moves from Akira makes him more suspicious of her. These suspicions are tested when the three of them fall into a trap from one of the other teams, and Akira is the one who has to save them. Her intuition begins as she watches anxiously as the two die in front of her, and we see her piercing into a man’s neck jul bone, only her fingers before Sakamoto intervenes. This is really shocking, although some of the animation shortcuts surrounding the action of the scene reduce some of the impact. While it doesn’t seem too bad, it just distracts the attention to it’s obvious, and it’s a bit disappointing compared to the other action sequences we’ve obtained in the past few episodes. However, even outside of the shortcomings of the animation, some of the moral feelings here make the scene a little awkward. Understandably, Sakamoto will try to stop Akira from killing people because he promised not to let anyone die on the watch, and Akira is obviously too kind because the life of the assassin is kind, but when they see Baby and their attackers encounter murderous attackers while fighting, they all become Pro killers. It’s not enough to get rid of the fun of litigation, but it’s weird, which does make me wish the show had more to say about Sakamoto’s (Semi) pacifism and all the killers he faced.
We can at least learn more about Akira from all of this and see her skills close at hand, which makes Sakamoto realize that she has something to do with his old classmate named Akao. The name has appeared before, but there is no detail about her relationship with Sakamto, so this connection can provide much-needed opportunity to explore more of his past. It’s also fun, and it’s also fun, considering that Slur is still looking to add some young assassins to his roster, and she’s probably the one he wants. We have to look at the ability of the show to deliver on all these imminent threads, but at least there is enough work here to help this season’s sensation
grade:
Sacmato Day Currently flowing
Netflix On Saturday.
