The “Bad Boys” are kind of bad at their job, when you think about it.
So, today’s mission? Protect the American Black Ship from the Masked Demons. Result? Ship sunk, Rashomaru still at large, and war brewing per the Demons’ agenda.
And I get it. You don’t have an exciting story if the villain is thwarted in stage one, before we get to really see their plan in action. But there’s a limit to how many times your heroes can fail utterly before it starts to look really bad that they haven’t even scored a minor win. I guess the major thrust in this one is that, after clashing with Ichibanboshi and ultimately being saved from drowning by him, Rashomaru’s faith in his path is wavering. But at the same time, he still refuses to turn by the end of the episode, when the episode opens with his wavering faith, so it feels like nothing was really accomplished.
There’s not even a lot of work with our secondary characters. They’re more or less in focus, I guess, but there’s no real movement with whatever arcs they might have. We’re more concerned with the action beats, like getting a prototype speedboat (it happens) and even ditching it into a probably-intended-to-be-funny fireball explosion. And since that doesn’t amount to very much, it feels kind of wasted.
I wish there was more to say, but in some senses I’m just done with this show. It has a very basic competence and little above that, so where it strikes problems, even minor ones, there’s not a lot of insulation against it becoming somewhat grating. That said, we’re almost at the end, one way or another.