This episode is again a very needed beat in the story, serving as the hero’s darkest moment before turning things around at the climax, and it comes at the exact right time, with two episodes left for everything to go crazy and resolve.
The meat of this episode once again has two lines, one spent in the present with Kakeru and company and the other spent putting together all the pieces of Ibara’s flashback. To resolve the flashback first, we see the ritual interrupted by the masked warlord who tried to get the shrine maiden in the first flashback (which turns out to be chronologically late), who has been using Oni to create empowered soldiers. The shrine maiden refuses to be saved (much like Oka) and her father tries to protect the ritual… only to be cut down by the warlord himself after getting through the goons.
However, the shrine maiden’s father wills his body to Ibara with a final wish to protect his daughter. Ibara takes possession, and we get the conflict we saw before, in which the warlord is defeated and his mask shattered, this time revealing that the warlord has the same face as the wormy black team guy. At the conclusion of the ritual, Ibara interferes however, and rather than letting the shrine maiden close the gates and be lost on the other side, does it himself. He leaves his gem with her, though, which is presumably both why he’s an amnesiac (having been mostly vanished) and why he’s still around (since his gem wasn’t taken).
This, essentially, gives us a lot of how things have to go down in the last episodes. The wormy guy/ancient warlord is going to try to mess with the ritual, Kakeru is going to be a hero, and while somebody needs to seal the way it doesn’t have to be a human sacrifice of the shrine maiden herself, meaning that like her presumable ancestor, Oka can be saved.
On the mortal plane, the episode actually starts with the conversation between the wormy guy and Haruka, in which he rather aggressively recruits her to help him out, given that she has something that matters more to her than the fate of the world that he’s able to use both as carrot and stick to gain her compliance. We also see how she first became a power-suit user, with oni taunting her and ultimately living inside her over her desire to be someone like Kaede, a wish that as has been stated in the previous episode couldn’t really be granted. She’s not exactly a willing conspirator, though, so she’ll be something of an X-Factor.
With Kakeru, he wakes up late into the night as Benio arrives. They confront each other on the beach, and he talks about his resolve to not see Oka sacrificed for the sake of the world. The question of whether you take the mercenary approach where the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few versus whether you stick to ideals and deny that the world should be predicated on something so cruel is addressed only briefly here, but it’s a good old classic. As Benio challenges him to literally fight for what he believes in, he manages to manifest a white power suit from his own force of will, which impresses Benio. His results with it, however, are far less impressive, causing her to break down in frustration as she wanted to lose, to find someone stronger than her who could really protect Oka and save her, and let herself hope that Kakeru might be that somebody. Well, she’s not getting her wish this episode. Our wormy guy arrives to pick Oka up at the same time, and she goes to her presumable doom.
The next morning when Kakeru wakes up from being owned, he finds a few things. One is a note from Oka, saying goodbye and that she had a dream of him all grown up, which was apparently important enough to her to mention. Another is the old drunk guy who runs the place, who clues Kakeru in on the fact that things are going pretty crazy, with mysterious explosions and crystals and the cell network and internet being down everywhere. He also proves more insightful than you might guess, having surmised from his many years of Hospitality experience that Oka was suicidal, with the belief that Kakeru talked her out of it. Kakeru laments that he didn’t manage (though I personally think he may have won the struggle for getting her heart in the right place to accept survival), though the guy says it’s not too late and offers to drive Kakeru wherever he needs to go before remembering he’s already dead drunk and shouldn’t. Luckily, Kippei arrives on a motorcycle, and gets Kakeru moving.
While those two are together, they see more on the news (including Ryo being dragged off screen as a crazy while he raves about the mysterious crystals being dangerous and oni and the netherworld) and also talk about their feelings. Kakeru is obviously down in the dumps, essentially destroyed by the fact that he feels he couldn’t do anything for Oka. Kippei relates more of the background of their relationship, and how Kakeru is already a hero for saving him from loneliness and isolation, a very earnest pep talk that ends with convincing Kakeru to listen to his heart and tear off to see Oka one more time. This is sure to be difficult and dramatic, though, as the post-credits moment shows that the ritual has already begun.
Shikizakura is, essentially, doing everything it needs to do for its goal as a heroic action-drama with a definitive beginning and end (rather than a monster-of-the-week action show as I mistook it for at the beginning), and even going above and beyond in a few places. The animation is a little janky, including I believe blending CGI and traditional, even if cleverly enough that you don’t automatically notice when something is off, but everything else is either standard or actually markedly nice.
This episode in particular, I liked the conflict that Haruka experienced, between what’s obviously her deep desire and her strong morals that know what’s right and wrong. I liked the battle between Kakeru and Benio, particularly Benio’s side where we see more of what it means for her to be torn between her duty and her love of her family. I even liked Kakeru’s low time; it didn’t go on too long (maybe the last third of the episode) and Kippei’s way and reasoning of bringing him out of it was solid. I even especially liked drunk innkeeper guy. Yeah, he’s a one-scene wonder here, but it was easy to accept the idea that he could see the subtle tells in Oka about what she was thinking, that that might have been why he was fairly accomodating of Kakeru and Oka, and that he both offers to help (though he’s unable) and even at the end tells Kakeru to bring Oka back some time, indicating a lot of faith in the boy’s ability to save her from her troubles. Yet he doesn’t really seem too wise or sagey for his portrayal, he seems like just a guy who’s probably known enough troubled people briefly (renting out a room by the sea as he does) to have a good sense about the topic, and making him this kind of crazy-voiced drinker also makes his screen presence amusing in its own right, rather than just a vehicle for emotional exposition.
In a broader scope, the story has enough twists to continue evolving, but not so many that it doesn’t feel legitimate or well-constructed. The characters started slow, but they do all get dimension. The action? Well, Shikizakura has been lighter on that than it might have been (lending weight to the idea that maybe it should have been traditionally animated), but most of what shows up is pretty good, goomba-stomping aside. And I do think it’s stronger for being lighter on the action than a full monster of the week, because that’s given us time to have real emotional arcs and legitimate chemistry between the various characters, especially the chemistry between Kakeru and Oka.
All in all, I’m actually quite pleased with Shikizakura, and looking forward to how it wraps up with its last two episodes.