While I’m somewhat of two minds about that episode of Immortal, it’s mostly positive right now.  First and foremost this Burando arc seems finally to be over, and irrespective of how that came to pass it would still be a good thing.  And this episode itself was certainly entertaining in a balls-out preposterous sort of way.  It got very silly sometimes in my opinion, but it still felt like it was shaking off the ponderous weight of the dreary run of eps leading up to it.

That said, I’d be lying if I said it really worked strictly on its merits.  Of course I have no idea how all this played out in the manga, but if you told me that the anime crammed a whole bunch of disparate incidents into one gigantic FUBAR confrontation I wouldn’t have any trouble believing you.  It got to the point where I was literally expecting to see the kitchen sink come through one of those gaping holes in the prison walls along with a torrent of water.

Too many characters in one place is a problem Immortal has occasionally had already, and one endemic in long series shoehorned into short broadcast slots.  Then of course we had characters coming back from the dead, though given the premise I suppose we can’t quibble with that, and ones reappearing totally out of the blue.  The worst for me, though, was characters popping up in Deus ex Machina fashion who I don’t even remember meeting.  Did we know Burando had a brother, much less a doctor one?  And who was the guy who saved Toraemon and his allies at the end?  Maybe we have met them and these 17 eps have just had so many characters that I forgot, but I don’t believe so.

Speaking of Toraemon, he was the unsung hero of the occasion to be sure, finally turning his back on Burando’s butchery and starting the chain of events leading to Manji and Rin (and half the men of Edo) escaping.  Not that Rin didn’t do her part too, as did Manji with Dewanosuke’s hairpin.  And then we had Isaku, who Doa reassembled.  Why did he stick together and not turn into a zombie at that, while all of Burando’s other experiments did?  If there’s an answer forthcoming we don’t have it yet, but this ep wasn’t exactly full of answers.  It was nice to see Isaku and Doa back together whatever the circumstances, though I really wonder if this resurrection will last.

It wasn’t so nice to see Renzo again – not under these circumstances.  I noted at the time that it was rather cruel of Rin to just leave him to fend for himself, but I thought he might end up at a brothel or something.  The reality is far worse, as he’s with Shira – though why either of them happened to show up in the dungeons beneath Fukiage is (again) not explained.  Their arrival cost Manji his arm, and I assume he’s permanently without it now unless he somehow gets it back (but Shira will probably sew it onto his forehead or something).  His foot’s gone too, presumably for good, which is going to make fighting rather more difficult for him I would imagine.

Well – as I said, the main thing is this arc is over, and even if none of this ever makes sense I’ll still take it as long as it stays over.  I’m assuming Habaki survived so him we’ll hear from again, but in different circumstances.  The fights were good (Asaemon proved an entertaining adversary), there was some nice Rin-Manji and Rin-Doa bonding, and did I mention this arc is over?  With another couple months worth of episodes to play with hopefully Hamsaki-sensei can bring this series to a satisfying conclusion despite the formidable obstacles in his path.