So, the events at least ramp up here in what is a fairly decent episode, but it does leave something of the question “where do we go from here?”
The Shinsengumi prepares a raid on both suspect locations in order to stop the city-arson and emperor-snatching, with half the group ending up in each place. They all find something, more or less, though Ichibanboshi’s group is the one heading into an angry group of Ronin.
Said group also includes the crossdressing royalist lord, though he (not crossdressing this time) seems to be less than on board with the plan his fellows have of setting fire to Kyoto for the Masked Demons in order to snag the Emperor. When the Shinsengumi burst in, Akira ends up facing off against him, and plans to let him go. He takes the opportunity to steal a kiss and more or less propose before actually buggering off. Akira seems… oddly rather receptive to this.
It’s kind of funny. I actually like this guy, in that he seems fairly reasonable despite being on the opposite side of the historical material from the Shinsengumi. I also like the fact that they’re not going the lazy route of using Akira as a basic romatic interest for Ichibanboshi. Instead, her issues are coming out in her own sort of side arc while Ichibanboshi stays focused on family and responsibility without a non-germane romance. Despite rather respecting the components, though, I can’t quite say I feel like the interchange works too well. I guess we’ll see how they sell it going forward, since I sincerely doubt we’ve seen the last of him.
While the ronin are pretty firmly dealt with, the arson plan is not quite caught, as timed firebombs go off throughout the city, creating the death and mayhem that the Masked Demons crave and allowing Rashomaru to harvest a great number of souls. He faces down against Ichibanboshi, who offers him an olive branch but now with the conviction to threaten to put him down if it’s not taken. Rashomaru, however (at least with a recently soul-charged sword) can still out-fight Ichibanboshi, and Todo ends up jumping in to take a hit for the protege he oh so recently had imprisoned awaiting a death sentence. This buys enough time for everyone else to arrive, at which Rashomaru decides to exit stage left. Todo is placed in critical condition, but before he passes out he grants proper leadership of the Shinsengumi to Ichibanboshi.
Now, this is in an objective sense a fairly quick turn-around, but I will say that they at least set up what Todo goes on about here, that he was growing as a person by interacting with Ichibanboshi and the other substitutes. I’d guess that he’s going to be out for the rest of the show, given how things are coming to a head, but we’ll see.
Speaking of things coming to a head… yeah, the city is on fire. The Shinsengumi organizes some firefighting efforts, but when morning comes there’s still a large swath of Kyoto that’s a pile of ashes and rubble. Ichibanboshi insists that they’ll rebuild well enough, and that’s the note we leave on.
Which says nothing about the Masked Demons. For those keeping score at home, the emperor was not snatched, but the city was, in fact, burned and we have little reason to believe that the resulting harvest of souls did not go as planned. We now have no leads on where the Masked Demons are or what they’re planning to do with all the captured souls in their magic swords and weird soul reactor thing; whatever plan or plans we’re going to clash with in the last four episodes have not really been introduced, so unless the Shinsengumi manages to pull some clues out of the charred wreckage of Kyoto city center, we’re sort of waiting for the bad guys to make the first move again.
Hopefully, the leads will be able to take the initiative, as that’s somewhat more entertaining to watch by this point in the story, but really it is what it is, and the show remains to this point a fun but not particularly exceptional little action show.