天下制覇

 

I’ve heard more menacing battle cries.

Impressions:

Well, this episode ends with an announcement of a second season some six or more months later, but at least it was a relatively satisfying ending, even if the end result was a little silly “Okay, we got the big bad guy out of the way. Now that we’ve shown we can work together, it’s back to killing each other.”

Let’s get the bad out of the way first. After essentially beingthe main villain for the entire second half of the series and taking on Masamune AND Yukimura at the same time, Mitsuhide went down like a chump in a single attack. He tried to take archer-boy hostage, so Kojuro just smacked him against a wall, where he hung by one of his straps, ranting to be hit more until he burned to death. I’m also unhappy with Hondam being brought back from the dead just to be immediately killed again. How many times are they going to kill him exactly? And third, while I liked seeing the T&C surf pirate Motochika, I really think they would have been better served to have Kenshin and Shingen show up to save their tales instead of a bunch of previously unseen game cameos. Lastly, I still have no idea what the point of Oichi was. She was saved from Nouhime by random spirits, just to whine to Nobunaga about how the fighting has to end, before breaking down in tears and getting herself shot. Way to almost, but not quite be relevant.

It was still a pretty great episode and just about back to the first episode’s level of terrible terrible, but rather delicious cheese. I particularly enjoyed everybody’s fighting spirit coming together to form a magic rainbow that recharged Masamune and Yukimura. It was either fabulous, or really really fruity, I’m not sure which. I did expect Nobunaga to use his gun and sword a bit more instead of throwing his cape around like SF’s Rose, but he at least lived up to all the hype from the last 11 episodes, despite this being his first real battle. Taking out Hondam for good (hopefully, no offense) in the middle of the fight also bolstered that.

Mostly, given the inane number of series this season that are looking like they don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of a real ending, that somehow, the show ending with the announcement of a sequel, had one. Here’s to you, Basara.

Not Really Final Thoughts:

Well, I guess we’re not saying good-bye to Basara so much as au revoir. Its strength has always been the action, and every time it got away from its core principle of “dudes beating other dude’s heads in,” it starts to get a bit tiresome. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been grand fun to laugh at Hondam or the OYAKATA/YUKIMURA exchanges, but if that kind of stuff doesn’t amuse you, then there’s pretty much nothing in this show for you. Even if such things do entertain you, there are still long periods of total downtime, even entire episodes, where absolutely nothing interesting for anybody happened. I’m still scratching my head as to why they spent so much time on Oichi despite her never actually doing anything. They probably felt that they needed to make sure they used Noto just to appease the VA fanboys.

Still, I’m sure time will leave little other than the memories of Shingen riding straight up a wall on a pair of horses, or Hondam launching into space more than the soporific exposition. In that sense, the six month wait for more episodes (well, there will be a 13th DVD episode) is perhaps a blessing in disguise. There are still plenty of bizarre characters from the Basaraverse to cover, not limited to the cameos at the end of the episode, like Xavi, the robotic Christian monk. Assumably though, the new villain will be Hideyoshi, the last of the three great unifiers of the Sengoku period (Nobunaga and Ieyasu being the other two) who also has personal ties to Yukimura.

The final verdict though, is that I’m pretty sure I’ll have no qualms about watching the second season to completion as well, so as far as I’m concerned, that’s as much as you could ask for from your audience. It’s brainless and fun, so long as you keep your finger close to the fast-forward button whenever they start droning on about the future of Japan.