I wish I knew more about the Hissatsu TV dramas that are apparently a major influence on Urobuchi Gen with Revenger.  It would be interesting to know what tropes he’s paying homage to here, but while I don’t know Hissatsu, I do know anime pretty well.  And an episode like this one feels pretty traditional for an Edo Period samurai anime.  Having established the cast individually, an episode focused on their everyday lives is a very traditional follow-up.  There were some definite twists here, and indeed there are some very non-traditional (to anime) aspects to Revenger, but on the whole this felt pleasantly familiar.

One of the challenges for Gen and Fujimori Masaya is to flesh out Raizou’s character.  It’s been happening very incrementally (like showing us how surprisingly adept he was at stealth attacks).  But basically, he projects as a man going through the motions in life, the emotional core having died along with his fiancee and her father.  That’s realistic, but in order to be the anchor for Revenger he needs to be more than that.  At first this episode was Raizou at his most Raizou – literally sitting in Souji’s room and refusing to utter a word.  His reasoning?  He was trying not to bother Souji (as promised).  Well-adapted socially Raizou is not.

He’s also not well-off financially, having spent his share of the Sakata bounty on a screen (and a tatty one at that) to wall himself off from Souji.  Out of boredom more than anything else Souji decides to help Raizou earn some money, but Souji’s area of expertise – gambling – seems ill-suited for the straight-laced samurai.  He tries to fawn him off on Dr. Teppa (performing an early form of chiropractics, it seems), but his presence in a doctor’s office is a non-starter from the start.  Nio’s suggestion doesn’t fly (except in Souji’s fevered imagination), And while the housewarming bowl Yuen gave Raizou is valuable (he’s quite in-demand as an artisan, it seems), Raizou seems reluctant to sell it.

Meanwhile, Yuen pays a visit to the chapel and the vengeance priest (and his scary nun) and receives another hit.  This time around it’s the middleman who was providing opium to Sakata – and his mistress, who was getting people hooked on it as a customer base.  This is mainly interesting because Yuen seems uncomfortable with the continued demands of this vocation – indeed, he points out the fundamentally un-Christian nature of it.  It wouldn’t have been outside the realm of possibility for Yuen to be a zealot who was totally into this based on the first three episodes, but that’s clearly not the case.  One might reasonably ask why he keeps doing it then – especially as his artistic reputation means he doesn’t need the money.

The hit is pretty much an afterthought in this episode, which I don’t think is an accident – Gen is accenting how easy this is for the Reben-ji, and how dehumanizing.  The method chosen is to stake out the bookshop across the way from the mistress’ apartment – the only place the cautious Azumi surfaces publicly since Sakata’s murder.  Souji reasons that no one is better suited to sit for days doing nothing but watch than Raizou, so he gets the gig after Yuen convinces the owner to go for a healing trip to Unzen Onsen.  Raizou’s manner is as off-putting in a bookshop as a doctor’s office, but he keeps a clean house and even reveals a hidden talent along the way.

Raizou being a Sumi-e prodigy is a very interesting twist, and adds something both to the plot and his character.  There’s precedent here (Miyamoto Musashi, probably the greatest Japanese swordsman of all, was a brilliant painter).  I’m fascinated to learn where he draws inspiration from – representative art simply wasn’t a thing in Japan at this stage.  But the more practical matter is that the owner on his return is struck by Raizou’s talent and wants to take his work to a publisher.  Drawing attention is the last thing Raizou should be doing at this point, which I think explains the look of alarm that flashes across Yuen’s face at the bookseller’s suggestion.  I’m very curious to see where this thread will lead.