Tougen Anki: Nikko Kegon Falls Arc

I get why people are frustrated with Yaoroshi walking off but I kind of respect it. He watched Shiki get stronger and admitted to himself he's not there yet instead of pretending. That ending with him alone at dawn stuck with me

Kogasaki wanting to kill his own father right after Shiki talks about avenging his is a hell of a one-two. Everyone in this group is carrying something heavy and the show is not letting us forget it

The 5km blood shot debate on reddit is funny because who cares about physics when the sequence looked that good. Muden watching Shiki improve in real time said more than any speech could

Rokuro flickering into that flamboyant dancer persona mid-firefight is the dumbest funniest thing I've seen this season. A defense mechanism because he feels lame is such a specific character detail

Barefoot blood sled needs to be studied. Sliding down a mountain shoeless while being hunted should not look that cool but here we are

That whole snow and torii gate backdrop carried the episode for me. Sumire roaring behind Homare in that landscape was the shot of the week and the fact that the giant was her sister the whole time reframes every earlier scene

Sazanami got a lot less use once Rokuro transformed and the one-on-one with Inami basically froze her out. The back half is doing the heavy lifting here and the first fights feel like setup for it

I had Homare pegged as the flashy design character and nothing else. Episode 2 made me feel like an idiot for that. Her whole reason for not trusting her own strength ties right back to Sumire standing in front of her every single time

So the shivering kid who claimed he was sick was holding back the whole time? Rokuro just casually outpacing the guards after playing scared is a turn I did not see coming

Sumire slapping Homare and admitting she was the one who took her confidence away is such a wild direction to take a dead sister. Most shows would just make her a saint and call it a day

Homare's dad kicking her while she had a cold and then Sumire picking up that knife is the most I've been affected by a backstory in a long while. Nobody warned me this arc was going to go there

Shiki crying while Homare finally says out loud that she wants to save him got me more than the fight did. He just listened. No speech. That mattered

The sister reveal wrecked me. That giant thing that's been in the background the whole time was Sumire this entire time and I just sat there not knowing what to do with my face

That handshake thing with Nekosaki got me suspicious immediately and then they actually went there. Planting something on the kids before the mountain training is such a dirty move. Sets the whole arc up as not trusting anybody.

My favorite thing here was the forced isolation angle with Shiki. Strip away the support system and make him figure out his blood control alone in a blizzard. That is how you build a character without spelling it out for the audience

The yeeting the injured thing the students were doing during the mountain run had me laughing way harder than I should have. Dark and practical and I love that they actually committed to it

Mikado standing in front of those Momotaro elders pleading for a ceasefire and getting dismissed was painful to sit through. Man got demoted and still showed up to say his piece

I could not handle Yaoroshi just walking off to the Oni Brigade after all that. What is his problem. Shiki needs people around him not another person leaving

That instructor shaking everyone's hand at the start is a spy. No way he isn't. Nobody is that friendly on day one. His ability is touch activated I'm calling it now

Shiki turning his blood into a sniper rifle and nailing that shot from a distance in a blizzard had me rewinding three times. Didn't think blood powers could look that clean