I’m rather glad I stuck it out with Angolmois, which is a nice feeling to have.  It’s a good show and getting better, and it scratches an itch nothing else on the anime schedule this anime season (or any for a while) has scratched.  There are definitely things about it I wish I could change (that filter!) but truthfully – how many series can we not say that about, even ones we like?  Sometimes history provides us with better stories than any we might invent ourselves, and even if imagination is necessary to fill in the blanks as long as that imagination is fairly faithful to events as they really happened, those great stories can thrive in the telling.

There are really two stories playing out side by side this week, one of which is the still uncomfortable forced marriage of two groups whose fate is now inexorably linked.  For Jinzaburou, the truth of Kanatanoki’s defenses is a matter of hard practicality – it’s too big to defend and eventually, will become a tomb.  But for the Toibarai, it’s the place they’re willing to die for and if they abandon it after centuries, they may as well be dead anyway.  In time Jinzaburou comes to realize this – he’s playing defense on their ground, and he has to accept the boundaries that implies.  I thought it was very interesting that his punishment for the Toibarai who he thrashed was to show their faces, on the grounds that if you’re going to be fighting and dying next to people, knowing their names and faces is a minimum requirement for trust.

But the main headline here is the matter of traitors.  The Mongols employ a common invasion tactic – find likely defenders to turn traitor and act as spies – and Jinzaburou’s subordinate Obusama is as likely as they come.  A lowlife who’s in it for the rape and plunder, he’s only too happy to sell himself to the highest bidder in the first place, and fortune seemingly smiles upon him when the Mongol general Nergui happens upon him just as angry villagers are about to execute him for attempted rape.  He gives the man a silver pass which grants him entry into the Mongol camp and sends him back to rejoin his comrades.

Shiraishi, however, is another matter.  He was as close to being Jinzaburou’s right-hand man as anyone in his group, and clearly a man of considerable talent and intellect.  The scene as it plays out by the riverbank certainly has an air of tragedy to it from the beginning, as Obusama tries to lure Shiraishi into becoming a traitor to the islanders as well.  The question this scene begs is whether Shiraishi would have taken the path he did if Obusama hadn’t tried to kill him, and I suspect the answer is yes – because, frankly, how could he possibly have let Obusama live if he himself was planning to remain loyal?  No, the die was cast as soon as Shiraishi saw that silver pass, and the Toibarai diver was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It’s quite significant that Shiraishi notes that he’s willing to work with the Mongols, but not a scoundrel like Obusama – in his tortured logic, there’s more honor in it.  Obusama is a traitorous scum, but the Mongols and simply employing well-established strategy.  Ironically it’s Shiraishi’s genuine self-loathing at betraying his people that makes the Mongol general trust him.  And even more ironically, the general has all but decided to abandon the pursuit and take the fight to Kyushuu when Shiraishi arrives in his camp with information as to where the islanders are hiding.

Any way you slice it this is a terrible blow for the defenders.  Reinforcements are still coming, but they’re days away.  Nagamine suspects something is amiss with the scene Shiraishi has left behind, and suspects Shiraishi as soon as he arrives back in camp bearing the wild boar he’s supposedly been tracking.  If a sharp cookie like Jinzaburou doesn’t suspect, he’s thinking with his heart – and that seems very unlike him.  In any event when the Mongols arrive on Kanatanoki’s doorstep the very morning after Shiraishi’s return, he must surely know what’s happened.  But whether he does or not matters little in practical terms, as a seemingly hopeless battle looms on the immediate horizon.