It isn’t every day that anime leave me literally muttering to myself just through the power of how amazing it is, but Dororo has already done that several times this season.  I’m expecting the general reaction to this episode to be a little more muted than the last one, because this was a bit less flashy and superficially “conventional”.  But in its own way it was every bit as spectacular as the first three (of which last week’s was the best, IMHO), especially the ending.  That was poetry of the highest order, though it did leave me scratching my head about one thing.

The nature of this series – at least as reimagined by Furuhashi, Kobayasahi and MAPPA – is extremely cinematic in every way.  The series is being directed like a short theatrical film every week, and that’s accented all the more by the nature of the story, with each youkai representing a new body part for Hyakkimaru.  Stand-alone narratives paired with Furuhashi’s cinematography and the lush backgrounds mean that every episode feels self-contained, with a recognizable introduction, body and conclusion.  That could be dangerous in the wrong hands or with the wrong material, leading to a disjointed feel to the series as a whole, but that appears to be no danger here.  Self-contained or not, each episode is contributing a piece of the overall puzzle just as each demon slaying is building towards the completion of Hyakkimaru.

One thing’s for damn sure – even without the presence of youkai and curses, the Sengoku period was a pretty awful time to be in Japan.  Man’s inhumanity to man seemed to know no bounds, warfare was incessant, and “honor” compelled men to do dishonorable things every day.  Add demons tempting us to ever worse and you have Dororo’s bloody and terrifying landscape.  This time around the focus is on a cursed sword named Nihiru and the man who was cursed with wielding it, at the cost of his own soul.  That man is Tanosuke (Takahashi Hiroki) who wields the executioner’s axe for yet another craven and ruthless daimyo terrorizing both his enemies and his allies.

That whole bit about the architect of a just-finished castle being executed in case he should ever be captured or otherwise turned against the lord, revealing its weaknesses?  That was a thing – it was known to happen on occasion in both Japan and Europe with especially paranoid nobles.  Tanosuke is clearly aghast at the idea of beheading the man (and all his assistants, apparently) but the daimyo gives him no choice – or rather, his choice is to perform his duty or commit seppuku using the rusty blade the lord tosses to him.  That blade is Nihiru and Tanosuke’s fate is sealed as soon as he takes it in his hands and draws blood.  This is an especially brutal scene, as the sword is rusty and dull – though the lord refers to a legend that it grows sharper the more human blood it drinks.

Meanwhile Hyakkimaru and Dororo run into a woman named Osushi (Inoue Marina) at a shrine in the woods.  As Hyakkimaru stands transfixed in the rain which falls incessantly throughout the episode (Oshishi speculates that he’s listening to it, even after Dororo tells her he’s deaf), Osushi tells Dororo that she’s been waiting five years for her older brother to return from whichever war he was sent off to.  Eventually Hyakkimaru dashes off, his eyes drawn to the red outline of a sword, and when Dororo follows he stumbles across a scene of horrible carnage on the road.

Yeah, even reading it I can see where this sounds more conventional than what came before, but for me the genius is in the telling.  Furuhashi’s touch is so light and deft – he lets the moments speak for themselves, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that the visuals are once again stupendous.  Dororo gets directly involved in events here, picking up the sword after Hyakkimaru allows it to impale his leg and flings it away during his battle with Tanosuke.  Whether Dororo is especially strong-willed or Nihiru simply limits itself to one master at a time, Dororo never loses mental control even as the blade controls his movements, seeking out its master.

As for the sibling Osushi and Tanosuke, their tragedy is hard-coded from the moment we meet them but it still hits pretty hard.  The fact that he made one more paper crane before he left to meet his fate suggests that a part of Tanosuke still resides inside him, and he goes to that fate willingly.  And the smile that briefly flashes across his face as Hyakkimaru ends his life (and remains there afterwards) suggests that Tanosuke was eager to be released in any way possible.  Seeing his sister just reinforced his will to leave the world as quickly as possible and allow her to move on, rather than wait for a life together that could never happen.

What really got me here is that when Hyakkimaru’s ears are restored, the first thing he hears (over the rain) is Osushi weeping in grief.  There’s something unspeakably tragic in this which speaks to the cursed nature of his own existence (which his father now suspects did not end when he sent the midwife off to dispose of him).  The only thing I don’t understand is why Hyakkimaru’s ears were restored when, by appearance at least, Nihiru (clearly it was the youkai he sought – his “vision” proves this) wasn’t destroyed – only put to sleep by Tanosuke’s death (edit: it is indeed broken which I didn’t pick up on initial viewing).  Perhaps that’s something that will be explained as Dororo fleshes out the mythology.  The truly glorious thing is that we have 26 episodes of that to look forward to.