If you look back over Urobuchi Gen’s writing career, you could certainly say it’s been stylistically diverse.  But there are some common threads running through most of it.  Urobuchi seems to have a fundamental disdain for any authority figures, institutions especially.  Christianity has been a common target, but any organized religion basically gets tarred by the same brush.  Politicians, law enforcement, organized crime, magic power brokers – “a pox on all their houses” is the usual creed.  Urobuchi does take a pretty dim view of humanity, but not to the extent of arguing that there are no good people in the world.  Rather, the tales he weaves are mainly of those good people being ground in the gears of authority.

Now, at least, we more or less know how things stand in Revenger.  This is basically a historical crime drama, largely period-accurate (though with obvious tweaks), but it could easily be transplanted to the modern world by changing only a few details.  Yuuen is at the fulcrum of events.  Once he decides not to carry out Kanou’s bogus revenge, he’s more or less sealed his own fate and that of his men (and Nio).  But to do otherwise would be a fundamental rejection of what he believes.  I don’t know how seriously Yuuen takes his supposed Christianity but he does have values, notwithstanding the fact that he’s a hired killer.  When he talks about the mission of the Reben-ji, it’s clear that he at least believes in it – though I’ll wager he’s troubled by it too.

The two big set pieces here are extremely tense.  Yuuen has betrayed Kanou, and Kanou knows it.  Kanou may say otherwise but Yuuen has crossed a line which he can never cross again.  These two men are engaged in a charade, feeling each other out.  Isarizawa knows what’s happening here, and sees Yuuen as a natural ally against Shishido.  But he also seems disinclined to take on the powerful union boss and the apparatus he wields.  Like pretty much everyone else in Revenger Isarizawa wants to use the Reben-ji for his own ends, but those ends mostly overlap with Yuuen’s even if the motivations do not.

Shishido has Sada’s group openly targeting the Reben-ji, which forces Souji and Nio to shelter at Teppa’s place while Raizou heads to Yuuen’s.  Shishiido also invites Yuuen to a tea ceremony honoring the memory of a pottery artisan named Tenzan (who I don’t think we’ve heard about before).  The other guests are there merely for show – this is Shishido’s way of telling Yuuen that he knows all his secrets and intends to be the last man standing.  Yuuen fires back as good as he gets, but it’s he and his men who are on the run at this point.

Even here, Yuuen is trying to guide Raizou towards the light.  Sick as he is Shishido is basically right that “Taishin” is subjecting himself to the same brutal memory every time he paints Yui.  Raizou talks of committing seppuku once the opium has been dealt with, but frets that Yui and her father would disapprove of him dying as a samurai.  Living on as Taishin as a means of punishing himself is hardly the atonement that Yuuen thinks Raizou should pursue, but it is at least living on.  Circumstances however may be about to render such distinctions moot.

Yuuen finally does go to confront Kanou, and again it’s a tense exchange where coded accusations and threats fly like Souji’s killer playing cards.  Yuuen is prepared to be a martyr to this cause, though he’d surely prefer not to take the others with him.  The fallout from this meeting finds Souji – always the weak link of the group where this pursuit is concerned – entrapped into betraying the Reben-ji by the nun from the chapel (posing as a dice roller at the gambling den).  It’s hard to see a way out from this trap for the Reben-ji – and that’s a development that perfectly aligns with Urobuchi Gen’s history.