No Kenshin, no problem.

As I noted in last week’s post, there are so many big dogs hunting in this arc that the leader of the pack doesn’t have to be present for an episode to click. Some of them we already knew, some not – and one of the biggest outstanding figures was introduced this week. We’ll get to him in a minute, but there was plenty happening across several fronts here. Starting with the hangover from last week’s events at Location A, which figured to cast ripples across a wide area of the story.

That obviously starts with the Oniwabanshuu, whose former leader just took out its acting leader in an act of stunning betrayal. Aoshi shows up at the Aoiya and makes no pretenses about why he’s there. And the Oniwaban have no pretenses about what his arrival means for Okina. They’re stumped – if Okina was no match for Aoishi they know they won’t be. But in fact it’s Yahiko who stands up to Aoshi and in no uncertain terms. Yahiko is effectively fearless – at times to the point of recklessness, but it serves him well here. Effectively, he and Kaoru are able to convince Aoshi that he’s going to get his shot soon enough – there’s no need to target the Oniwaban further to make it happen.

Things looked mighty grim for old Okina, but somehow Misao manages to patch him up enough to keep him alive until she could get help. That help comes, surprisingly, in the form of Megumi (whose appearance this early in the Kyoto Arc is probably the biggest change from the manga so far). She does her best to keep the old man alive – to the tune of 130 stitches – but he certainly looks as if his fighting days are over. Megumi and Kaoru have a heart to heart, and the latter says it was Oguni-sensei who encouraged her to come to Kyoto. I’m still unsure on what this early arrival means for Megumi’a arc and the larger story, so I’ll withhold judgment on it for now.

Is this the end for the Oniwaban group? That was actually Okina’s plan, but Misao has other ideas. Aoshi’s actions have certainly forced a decision on her. And to her credit, she makes the right one. She chooses the Oniwaban over the man she loves, and ignores Okina’s letter – instead telling the others that they’re going to dedicate their talents to helping Himura and stopping Shishio. The idea of her being the new leader is met with considerable disbelief and dismay, but no one pushes back against her plan itself.

Meanwhile, Saitou heads to cell where Chou is being held in order to question him. But there’s another prisoner there the police chief wants him to take a look at. Sanosuke has finally found his acorn and arrived in Kyoto, and figured the fastest way to find Kenshin was to find Saitou. And the easiest way to find Saitou was to make himself as big a nuisance to the local constabulary as possible. Saitou seems utterly disinterested, and certainly so in Sano’s demand for a rematch to square things between them. But he does take a little interest when Sano shows off some of the skills he learned from Anji, even if it’s the opposite of the instructions Saitou gave him (to beef up his defenses).

Sano could pick a fight with a lamppost, but he and Chou seem to particularly hit it off. Especially when he smugly declares that Chou’s disinterest in Saitou’s offer to release him in exchange for information is because he’s afraid of what Shishio will do to him. The two are immediately branded (by the other) “Boom-head” (Chou), and Bird-head (Sanosuke). Eventually Chou challenges Sano to a fight with a promise to dish if he loses – and then promptly abandons the idea when it becomes clear that he’s no match for Sano without a sword in his hand. He winds up delivering a fair bit of intel, most shockingly that Shishio’s plan is to destroy Kyoto in a massive fire and wipe out the city officials in the chaos.

Chou offers one other very important bit of information. When Saitou says a band of 50 of his recruits were wiped out in one night in Kobe, Chou declares that only two of the Juppongatana could have done it. Soujirou could – but wouldn’t without orders from Shishio. If it was a spur of the moment decision it was Uonuma Usui. He’s a powerful swordsman who was an attack dog for the shogunate, taking out several hitokiri before losing both his eyes in a fight with Shishio. Now blind but no less powerful, he’s arrived in Kyoto and his relationship with Shishio is unique among the Ten Swords.

I’ve already penned an opus on the casting choices of this reboot, which in my view is a somewhat mixed bag. Suwabe Junichi is not who I would have picked for Usui. Not because he isn’t a good actor, but because he’s totally the wrong voice. It doesn’t help that Ryuuzanj Show delivered one of the all-time great performances in the 1996 anime, but it goes deeper than that. Show is not a seiyuu by trade – in fact Usui and a memorable role in Uchuu Kyoudai are it for him  in anime. He’s mainly a stage actor and director-producer (and a very important one too), and contrasting him against Suwabe highlight the “usual suspects” approach this version has usually (along with casting “brighter” voices as a rule).

Usui has a simple deal with Shishio – if he gets a chance, he has free reign to try and kill him. Shishio is on-board with this, but Usui doesn’t restrict himself to attacking Shishio, which irritates the hell out of Houji when Usui kills a bunch of his foot soldiers. Of course he’s also taken out Saitou’s new army in Kobe, which is an inconvenience at the very least. Now knowing about Shishio’s grand plan to repay his own suffering in the flames of Hell many times over, Sano and Saitou are determined to stop it – but there are still some of the Ten Swords to be accounted for first.