Donnerstag, Dezember 08, 2005

Tactics 7

You know what? Either Kantarou is drawn exceptionally well today, or that I'm slowly falling for Kantarou after Haruka. I have a fickle "heart"... =o=

Okay, proceeding to the commentary. I love this episode! And I applaude ye. It starts off really uncomfortably - because Kantarou and Haruka had a fight. Well, we learnt later that it was a "staged" fight at the end of the episode. Seems like Kantarou was inspired by a roadside performer with his monkey and decided to test and also to find out how Haruka felt about this master-and-servant relationship. Kantarou was misbehaving at the start of the episode, and was ill-treating his "servants", namely Youko and Haruka. We were repeatedly reminded that demons were bonded like a rope to their master by their given name. I felt that it's unfair - because that makes us humans looks superior to demons, although we definitely fear them as well. I guess it's somewhat reflecting our dog-eat-dog world of reality.

Firstly Youko was bullied into writing rough drafts for Kantarou - which in the end turns out to be really useful because Youko helped Kantarou in solving tonight's case. And Haruka received harsh insults from Kantarou (it wasn't revealed that it was all staged by Kan-chan then, so then I thought Kantarou was behaving weirdly). Poor, poor Haruka. He was really upset, and when Kantarou called him a "clumsy" tengu you can see that he was really hurt. The last straw came when Kantarou tried to auction away Haruka's rice bowl (it is very important to a tengu) - Haruka left Kantarou. Just for a period of time. Because of what Haruka heard Kantarou said to Youko. Shinjiteiru. And during the combat between the baddie of tonight, we see the flawless teamwork of Kantarou and Haruka again. Aah, what strong bonds... Shinjiteiru desu. Zutto...

And my wish came true. Tonight we really have a more scheming Kantarou! He schemes about money (Aha! so Youko wasn't the culprit; she learnt those bad traits from Kan-chan) at the beginning, and then schemes about bullying Youko and Haruka. It may not be the Kantarou we're used to seeing (the anime Kantarou is a gentle, gentle, gentleman), but it really provides the gusto for his personality. While Kantarou may have failed at getting a ten-fold pay from the person who hired him for tonight's case, he succeed in "testing" Haruka's loyalty and trust (because, well, Haruka did fall into his trap) I think, like what Youko said at the closing of the episode, that is more worthwhile than the earnings Kantarou lost. The concluding scene was very touching. Kantarou returns with Haruka to watch the same roadside performer and the tengu commented that he's watching the [monkey] act with mixed feelings. Kantarou's touching reply came to be - "however so I did bind you with a rope; and however so, you continue to hold on to that rope."

Overflowing sweetness. ^^


I seriously think I didn't find any crossovers in this episode. There was, however, a mention of the word "kodoku" that reminds me of Inuyasha, but the word has a completely different meaning here. Hence, not counted. And I don't want to ruin the awesome and original piece of work by tainting it with other anime titles - this is a perfect master episode tonight. *kowtows*

posted by empress @ 6:40 PM