The treeman tells it like it is this week.
So, this episode is, aside from the omnipresent character scenes (which are good, and a good thing to have be omnipresent), this episode is mostly dedicated to exposition. Team Ninjas comes across a little pink-haired girl and a big tree-man she seems to be associated with and tries to get some answers. At first she runs and he fights, but Gabimaru captures the girl (and Sagiri calms her down, an important task) while Yuzurina does her thing (off screen, wanting to keep her apparently liquid-based ninjustu a secret to the audience) to take down the tree. He gets up, though, when Sagiri and Gabimaru come back and offers to tell them about the island and the elixir if they’ll let him take care of the girl again.
It seems these two have long lived in the (seemingly ruined) village on the island. They show our party hospitality and explain a few things, like how the island consists of three bands, the Elixir is in the innermost one and certainly exists, but the island is protected by “perfect” immortal beings who will turn all intruders into flowers that ultimately nourish the Elixir.
Interspersed, we see the result of the Bandit King’s encounter. The beings take umbrage to being interrupted. The pink-haired one seems a little amused that humans made it that far in, but the blonde is wrathful, shifts into a masculine form, and declares intent to kill. We see that these beings are immortal in an indestructible sort of way, and the blonde overwhelms its foes and throws them into a “flowers and corpses” pit where the bandit king and his brother are still alive and active for now, but by the tree man’s report are doomed to be converted and consumed while still living unless something goes badly off script.
At the end of this episode, after another good talk with Sagiri and some good flashbacks to his wife, Gabimaru recalls his resolve in a threatening way: he’s got a lot to gain, a lot to lose, and not a lot of time to dawdle.
In terms of other exposition, the whole thing is pretty light. There’s more discussion of the Island’s contradictions and seemingly taoist roots, but little in the way of answers. The tree mana seems to have a more taoist regard for things, using terms from that philosophy, but Gabimaru and team aren’t sure what it means or where this would line up with their concept of the heavenly realm
Remaining for the future: what the other teams are up to, what if anything other than flower conversion will befall the bandit king team, and how our ninjas will combat or slip past the immortal guardians of the elixir to claim their prize and escape. Are we going to get there in five episodes? The pace doesn’t feel like it right now, more like this should go two cour, but we’ll see.