Summer seems to be a season relatively light on bubble series.  But proportionally, not so much – there just aren’t that many decent shows, period.  Angolmois: Genkou Kassen-ki is at the top of that swing group, certainly one of the better shows of the season and at this point, one I’m quite likely to continue covering for the duration.  There are still a few lingering concerns and the series hasn’t blown me away or anything, but it’s checking enough boxes to make me pretty confident it’s going to make the cut.

If I was to put my finger on any one thing that didn’t quite sit right this week, it’s that the episode – and Jinzabruou – felt a bit more like stock anime than they have in the first couple of episodes.  Up to this point the historical feasibility (if not actual accuracy) of events has been pretty tight, but Jinzaburou came off a bit more like your typical protagonist who skates by on sheer sackage and the devil’s luck.  I would have liked to have seen the strategic side of things a bit more nailed down, and not asked to take quite so much unlikely success as read.  The visuals took a bit of a dive this week, too – especially wherever movement was required.  And as this was a battle-driven episode, there was a lot of it.

But then, this whole episode in Japanese history does have a lot of the fantastical about it even in real life – if we’re to take historical accounts of it as being accurate – so maybe it isn’t totally fair of me to criticize on those grounds.  I won’t go into details but some pretty fairy tale stuff reportedly went down on Tsushima and in the battles which followed the fight for it, and I assume Angolmois is going to take on some of that stranger than fiction stuff as it progresses.

The state of play on the island as it stands in the story is becoming pretty clear.  Lord Sou’s adopted son Yajirou isn’t keen to take on the Mongols again, and he intends to flee back to the capitol even as Jinzabrou shows up in Sou’s Taira armor and declares that the Mongols are overeager, stretched thin and primed to be counter-attacked.  That’s exactly what he and a few of his followers do, with a fragment of the local army deciding to break with Yajirou and follow him.  Jinzaburou manages to break through enemy lines and slay their general, though at the cost of the lives of some of his precious few men.  He also manages to reclaim the heads of the lord and his son, so as to prevent their presence on Mongol spears from depressing morale in future battles.

Realistic or not, Jinzaburou has a game plan – harass and terrorize the enemy in guerrilla fashion until his promised reinforcements arrive.  It’s good enough to sway Teruhi, who’s looked into the eyes of her adopted brother’s cowardice and claimed leadership of her father’s men herself.  And the plan has all the looks of a successful one until two of the locals betray him during a night raid (paid off by the Mongols, one assumes), and a third seems about to despatch Jinzaburou.  Teruhi saves him (though she’d mused on the idea of killing him herself, as he slept) at the cost of a serious wound from the traitor’s blade.  She won’t die here, of course – she’s in love with the protagonist, after all – but it still makes a good cliffhanger…