Almost there, but not quite. That’s where I am with Angolmois: Genkou Kassen-ki right now. For sure, I feel more positive than I have in a couple of weeks – this might have been my favorite episode since the premiere. I remain convinced that the key for Angolmois is to sail close to the wind – keep steering along the layline of history as much as possible and resist the temptation to excess. History over histrionics, that’s how this series is going to succeed if indeed it’s going to.
We started off on what was admittedly a bit of a rough note, at least to me – Teruhi wigging out and firing an arrow at the scout party she and Team Jinzaburou were trying to hide from. They’d already been spotted so in the end it wasn’t a huge blunder, but she didn’t know that – and what she did could easily have signed the death warrant for all of her people’s survivors. I don’t necessarily love seeing the only female among this group of warriors do something so emotionally unhinged in a moment of crisis, but it was a blip in an otherwise very solid and occasionally brilliant episode.
Much of the narrative centered on Yajirou Abiru, the adopted son of the slain Daimyo. We’ve already seen him to be something of a coward, but in truth, I don’t think he reacts any differently than most normal men would when facing such a hopeless situation. The struggle of such a fellow to bear up under such circumstances is actually quite relatable, and the ep did a good job of playing up Abiru’s dilemma. Jinzaburou could have tossed him aside altogether, but he’s a very smart man, and he realizes that Abiru has symbolic importance on this insular and isolated island. And he’s not in a position to discard a single potential ally.
The flashback sequence used to illustrate Jinzaburou’s lesson to Abiru about why one doesn’t give up in such situations is a strong moment, maybe the best of the series. It retells the tale of the Nagoe clan, who’d made an enemy of the Shogun’s retainer Houjou Tokiyori thirty years before the Mongol Invasions. Jinzaburou is a friend to the Nagoe, though the patriarch Tokiaki (a superb Kusumi Naomi) – who was clearly a friend of Jinzaburou’s father – tries to warn him off being seen as such. Jinzaburou’s unwillingness to sacrifice anyone may be a weakness at shogi but it’s fundamental to who he is, and no doubt a major reason why he was sent to Tsushima. This fictionalized account of a tragic real event is told with restraint and a deft touch, and it reveals much about the man at the heart of this series.
In the “present”, the increasingly desperate fight for survival now means a flight to the northern part of the island, with Jinzaburou’s small band trying to stop the Mongols (who seem to have brought out a higher grade of zaku for this battle) on a narrow mountain pass (why they can’t just sail around the island and wipe out the survivors I’m not certain – if they know where they’re headed). Jinzaburou pulls out all the stops here – including making a newfangled weapon, the spear – but the Mongols bring explosives and numbers, and a long delaying action here is asking a lot. But then – everything about what happened in this incident is unlikely to the point of seeming miraculous, so there’s certainly nothing wrong with Angolmois showing us its characters trying to do the seemingly impossible.
