Not for the first time in watching Revenger, I’m reminded of how good a writer Urobuchi Gen can be.  A writer who composes like a grown-up, writing about grown-ups doing grown-up things.  Being freed of the overcoat of anime tropes Urobuchi is so often adorned with always casts his work in a different (and generally better) light.  This is a good series, (very) well-directed and acted, with an outstanding soundtrack.  But ultimately it’s the writing that makes Revenger stand out.  I see no evidence it’s making much of a splash on either side of the water, but that doesn’t diminish its value in any way.

This episode was packed with interesting ideas and twists, all beautifully woven together.  We begin, as is so often the case, with Raizou’s continual struggle to accept his past (and future).  His art continues to draw attention, and he’s taken on a pseudonym – “Taishin”.  But his crimes haunt him relentlessly.  He finally paints his late fiancee, reasoning that if he’s tormented by her visage all the time anyway there’s no reason to avoid it any longer.  Yuuen dangles the possibility that Raizou could “die” and Taishin live on.  His talent gives him an option the other revengers don’t have, a way back to a life without killing.  Yuuen even offers him his old retreat in the mountains as a studio.  But Raizou isn’t sure if he deserves any of it.

Yuuen tells Nio he’s testing Raizou, to determine whether he deserves to die.  But the truth is he’s being genuine here, I think.  Yuuen knows the path his people are on is one-way, and he cares about them.  If there’s a way to save one of them from that fate he wants to pursue it.  But even assuming Raizou was willing to accept that salvation, there’s no guarantee he could leave his past behind.  That evening he goes to dine in a small izakaya, where he’s seated with a cynical priest (Suwabe Junichi, so you know he’s important).  They proceed to have a fascinating conversation about killing – a subject the priest takes a distinctly un-pious attitude towards.

Religion of any sort isn’t coming off especially well in Revenger – and that, to be sure, is a consistent Urobuchi theme.  The priest’s argument that vegetarians and flower sellers are just as tainted as samurai doesn’t sit well with Raizou.  But the real meat of their disagreement comes when the priest makes a disturbing argument about how paying someone for a service – or employing them (“livelihood”) – is a murder in its own right, with coin rather than sword.  That coin (the symbolism in this context isn’t accidental) buys a portion of that persons life, something they’ll never get back.  Ultimately I think the priest’s position is pedantic, but there’s enough cut to it to unsettle Raizo profoundly.

What happens next really unsettles the foundations of Revenger like no earlier development has.  Kanou the (Christian) priest calls Yuuen to the chapel, scolds him over the Chinatown theatrics, but offers him a chance to secure a desired result – stopping the opium trade from spreading.  There’s just one problem – the gold (a fat ingot of it, too) isn’t bitten.  No matter, the priest says – the scorch marks on it are the proof of the grudge.  It comes from Shimabara, where a 1637 rebellion by the largely Catholic peasantry was brutally put down by the domain’s lord, Matsukura Kitsuie.  Matsukura executed an estimated 37,000 rebels and sympathizers by beheading.  He was later beheaded himself by the shogun for his actions, but his strict anti-Christianity laws would stay in place for more than two centuries.

Kanou’s argument that the grudge of those dead Christians (and the others) speaks for itself.  But this puts to lie not just Yuuen’s declaration that the Reben-ji never kill without bitten gold, but the entire pretense that what they’re doing isn’t simple murder.  It’s no leap to go from grudge contract hits to targeted murders – in this case Liu, who Kanou declares is trying to expand the opium trade – based on supposed moral superiority.  Yuuen knows this of course – knows exactly what the cost of carrying out this “revenge” would be.  Souji is in favor, Raizou against (and Nio too, who takes Yuuen at his word).  But Yuuen also knows that if they refuse, they become the enemies (and eventually, targets) of the group that’s underwritten their activities.

As it turns out, the priest from the izakaya is a revenger too, in town at the behest of the Kaishou chief Shishido.  And his group uses rifles to kill from long-range (I’m not an expert, but their weapons look too advanced for the setting – another historical tweak, perhaps).  The target is Liu, who the Reben-ji have decided to investigate to determine whether Kanou’s order is indeed rooted in justice.  With Shishido targeting Liu that strongly implicates him as the one who wants Mitsumine’s opium and the trade windfall it can bring him.  That’s more or less confirmed when the Reben-ji intercept Liu’s letter to Lin Zexu, who as Scampi pointed out in the comments last week was strongly opposed to the opium trade (an opposition which led to the first Opium War in 1839).

The Reben-ji’s refusal to “wag their tails” may indeed show that they aren’t the chapel’s lap dogs, but it effectively makes them marked men in Nagasaki.  And even as they refuse to carry out the hit on Liu, Shishido’s revengers do – fatally, one presumes, though that’s still to be confirmed.  Occam’s Razor suggests that both Kanou and Shishido are interested in the same thing – the opium and control of its distribution – and saw Liu as an obstacle in their path.  Now they’ll take that view of each other, and the Reben-ji are likely the enemies of both of them.