天下制覇

Why all the Chinese mythology? Why not Zeus? Everybody likes Zeus.

Impressions:

We get a bit more background on what exactly happened with Daigo last episode, though I have the sinking feeling that we’ll be seeing the various superdemon forms of the other four as we go through the series now. Kyouichi managed to recover damn quickly after being essentially a corpse at the end of episode one, and I’m looking forward to hopefully another nice fight scene out of him and whose-his-face next episode. We also get the first overt clue that Maria is something other than a simple school teacher. As if the name Maria Alucard wasn’t enough of a clue that she was a vampire. :-P

Summary:

Badgers! Thousands and thousands of badgers.

The rain pours down on the city while punks beat up some brat (chibi-Kyouichi) with a wooden sword. He refuses to let them leave and ends up beaten up even worse, but a man dressed like a samurai is watching them from the shadows. Kyouichi wakes up to the sound of rythmic pounding as a man works at his bench.

At a hospital, Mibu is visiting a woman apparently in a coma. As he gets up to leave, he accidently knocks over a vase. The water that splashes on her looks like tears. Origami dude is perched somewhere outside with a ton of paper animals around him.

Team Good Guys has met up with Daigo and Komaki. The two are pretty shaken up about what Daigo did and became. Komaki says that he became a demon and killed the other person and starts crying that it was her fault.

Elsewhere, Maria is heading out of a shrine-looking house while the detective keeps an eye on her. She leaves and he starts shadowing her around town. She knocks on the door to a store, but nobody answers, so she heads home.

In the past, it was snowing at a funeral. Daigo and his gang show up with a backhoe to break it up. We also get a series of scenes about Daigo’s past as a punk as he tried to deal with his friend having gone to jail.

The elders finally spill the beans about powers they have. It’s the usual Chinese stuff, if you’ve seen Fushigi Yuugi, same deal. Daigo is the White Tiger of the West, Byakko and assumably Kyouichi, Aoi, Hiyuu and Komaki are the other four (one person that stands in the center). Komaki refuses to believe that that could have really been Daigo. Hiyuu tries to place his hand on Daigo’s shoulder, but is sharply repulsed.

Kyouichi finally manages to wake up in the middle of the night and looks around to see that he’s in a workshop full of weaponry. He calls out to see if anybody is around and heads upstairs to find an office and a secretary working there. She says that he must be the guest, and he looks down to see that all he’s wearing are panda boxers and slams the door in embarassment. The old man comes up behind him and tells him that he’s the one who brought him here.

Kyouichi gets ready to leave to find his friends, but the old man asks if he’s really ready to fight the guy who beat him again. Kyouichi rebuffs him and tries to leave, but the old man grabs his sword with two fingers and Kyouichi can’t wrest it away. The old man throws Kyouichi, says that he neds to make a blade of his own will, and leaves him with a carving knife.

Another Daigo flashback about when Renji told Daigo that he was going to kill his father. Renji started crying and the two talked about how they’d be together, even to hell. Remembering this, Daigo is pained again. Komaki is staying up with him and trying to comfort him, but he just curls up and whimpers.

Kyouichi is hard at work on his new sword… sorta. He just has a giant piece of word that he’s hacking at. He remembers being at a destival when he was young. His father was killed by some random punks. Kyouichi then became a berserk child, attacking any punks he could find and beating them up. Until we come full circle to the scene at the start where the punks drew a knife on him and the samurai guy had to save him.

The samurai was named Kyoshiro and took him under his wing and began training him. Kyouichi fought many opponents, including Daigo, but could never beat Kyoshiro. Kyoshiro claimed it was because his sword and will wasn’t his own. The last thing Kyoshiro thinks about is Hiyuu asking him why he wields his sword.

Maria has come to a shrine. She looks at it in disbelief and reaches towards the gateway, but is repulsed. She’s unsurprised by this though. Suddenly, a ton of strange dolls come flying out of the shrine towards the city. The detective was still following her, but she rides off on her motorcycle, following them.

Origami MiB is has his own cranes out. Apparently the dolls were attacking the barrier that Team Goodguy had up. It shatters, and they’re surrounded. Aoi tells Komaki to protect and take care of Daigo.

Inside a room, a sword is unsheathed with young Daigo’s eyes reflected in the blade. He takes the sword and comes to a man crying on a bed, apologizing to nobody in particular for forgiveness. Daigo can’t go through with it, drops the sword and runs away. He heads to Renji’s hime, where they find Renji standing over the bloody murdered body of his father. Renji is in shock and mumbling inhumanly about how they were supposed to be together and how Renji betrayed him.

Daigo sees all the recent images of Renji and starts to lose it again. He hunches over in pain. Komaki tries to get him to come back, but Byakko bursts out of him once again and starts destroying all the dolls surrounding them.

The evil swordsman tosses down half of Kyouichi’s sword, letting them know that he’s the one who dealt with Kyouichi.

Komaki asks for more power to control and stop Byakko. She manages to summon a bow and arrow, and aims it at Byakko. She fires the arrow and it rips through Byakko.

Komaki and Daigo’s first meeting at school. Komaki introduced herself to him as the two stood under the falling sakura blossoms. Daigo wakes up as Komaki comes running up to him, the corpse of Byakko behind him and dolls still exploding in the background.

The fight between Raito and evil swordsman apparently went badly for them, as they’re wiped out. He moves in for the finishing blow, but Kyouichi suddenly appears on the tree behind them and says that he’s a brand new person and ready for the fight this time.