You know, there’s an absurdly good amount of anime on Sunday (my time) this season. It’s always the busiest day of the week nowadays, but you’ve got Nige Jouzu, Karasu wa Aruji, Makeine, The Fable… And that’s not even including Tensui no Sakuna Hime, which has seriously grown on me (and had a fantastic episode this week). The credit for two of those series goes to spring of course, but it’s one of the more packed anime days I’ve seen in a good while.

I do struggle sometimes with this series romanticizing the yakuza, because that’s a general pet peeve of mine with animanga. And not just a yakuza, but a hitman – a murderer of dozens (at a minimum). Do you think Akira investigates to make sure they all “deserve” it before he fulfils a contract? No way – he takes the Boss’ word for it. But he comes off as genuinely sympathetic here – even loveable at times, dammit. The key is that it is genuine, though. He’s such a guileless freak that it’s hard to judge him as harshly emotionally as you know you should intellectually.

So  yeah, this bizarre individual is really the one that makes all this work. The writing is sharp and you know how I feel about the cast, and the series’ offbeat humor is spectacularly effective. But ultimately, it’s Akira – or Fable, or whatever you want to call him. What I find myself wondering is whether once his “sentence” is up, will he just go back to assassination? It seems possible to me that he’ll emerge from this year with a different sense of what life is – not least his own – and a less cavalier attitude about his right to take it from others. But who knows, that might just be me getting caught up in the romanticizing.

I’m not going to speak to how realistic Akira’s solution to the Hina problem was, because I’m singularly unqualified to do so. All I can opine on is the way it played out on-screen, which was remarkably effective. That Akira is a superhuman in combat situations is a given at this point. What’s striking here, though, is the way he reads people and uses that to his advantage in the heat of the moment. It’s pretty obvious that he realizes early on that he needs to pit Suzuki against Utsubo if he’s going to bring events to a close without breaking his vow or losing Hina.

If Suzuki hadn’t genuinely not wanted to see Hina get hurt, I think Akira would have been in a lot of trouble. So for sure that was a gamble on his part – but again, for someone as socially awkward as he is, Akira is remarkably good at reading people (which itself may not be all that realistic). He correctly assesses that Utsubo plans to take him out by shooting Hina and thus exploding the mine, and by declaring it publicly forces Suzuki to threaten to shoot Utsubo if that happens. Once that’s out in the open it’s only a matter of time before Suzuki caves and helps him save Hina. Youko is guarding Utsubo during this entire exchange, but he manages to toss a grenade which Akira uses his own body to shield Hina from (at some personal cost).

Again, the whole excavator thing – no idea, but it looked cool. Once it was clear Utsubo had failed to take out Akira, he seemingly decided that he’d rather go out on his own terms. Utsubo baits Suzuki into shooting him using another grenade from which he never pulls the pin. It’s an ignominious end for one of the most detestable anime villains in years, and again, it’s interesting to speculate on what would have happened if Akira had been forced to make the decision about whether to let Utsubo walk away from all this (it’s not impossible that Suzuki would have taken him out himself, either way).

Obviously, Hina feels something for Akira at this point, be it romantic or not – that hug speaks louder than words. What is he thinking as he rolls down that window and stares at her, knowing that they’ll never see each other again? Who knows if we can ascribe any recognizably human emotion to Akira – to do so might just be anthropomorphic. But it sure seems as if there’s something there – regret, affection, wistfulness. Soon enough it’s as if Akira has forgotten the whole thing happened and he’s back to drawing his Christmas doodles for Octopus, naked in the tub. What a singularly bizarre creation Akira is, but undeniably a memorable one.