Hikari no Ou cranked out another pretty good ep this week.  But as a public service I must point out, if you want to see a really great animated lightning gun story, check out TaleSpin’s “Plunder and Lightning”.  That’s a lightning gun caper done right – and any excuse to talk about TaleSpin is a good excuse these days.  If this series gives us Kun cloudsurfing sometime in the next 11 weeks, maybe I’ll revise my ranking – but I feel pretty confident that isn’t gonna happen.

I’m pretty close to retracting my initial guess that Kira’s mom was actually the good one in that family.  If she is she’s selling the obnoxious pill thing to the max – that “strays” comment was pretty cold.  Yusoichi seems to be very much what I expected, however.  He is interested in defending the capital from a Spider attack he knows is coming, but his real agenda is to take out the divine families.  Koushi didn’t sign up for that of course, but he’s too far in to back out now.  An interesting question (and test of character) is whether Yusoichi (again, try a balm), having basically gotten what he wanted from Koushi, will cut him off (or try and do worse, since he knows too much).

Akira and Rokuro being allies is a new twist.  She prevails on Yusoichi to send new supply trucks for the villages (normally the divine families’ job) in exchange for providing him intel (she uses Shouzou’s dog tags to prove the attack she described happened).  Her real game is seemingly to lasso the millennium comet and thus, become the titular Hikari no Ou.  She also notes that Koushi’s father could easily have won that title, had he lived.  So, presumably, could her late fire hunter big brother, who was eliminated by the divine families (she claims) because he tried to bring the story of the millennium comet to light.

The Wind Family’s Hibari (Ishida Akira), seems ambivalent about Koushi’s scientific pursuits and the spider invasion when he visits Koushi.  But he wouldn’t be too happy about anybody becoming the lord of the hunters, surely.  The divine families are certainly one center of power here, and Yusoichi’s group another – the spiders are more or less a distraction in that war as far as I can tell.  I don’t think Yusoichi will want anyone becoming the Hikari no Ou either, given that his ultimate goal is to gather power to himself and anyone else gathering it is a threat to him.

Koushi’s anti-aircraft gun probably wouldn’t meet Shere Khan’s standards, but Yusoichi is more than satisfied with the test results.  With nine days until the spiders reach the capital, how will he use the lightning gun in the meantime?  And when exactly will the comet be arriving?  These seem to be the key questions as Akira heads off to the palace, apparently with Touko in tow(ko).  More than likely everything is going to come to a head at the same time – and the spiders may even be timing their invasion to coincide with the comet’s arrival for reasons not yet totally clear.