Bucchigiri?!

Episode 10

“Why isn't this working for me?”

That was the main question running through my head for most of this episode. On the whole, there's nothing exactly wrong with anything about Matakara's descent into fear and violence across this episode. His actions make sense both emotionally and logically, even if we know as the audience that he's making huge mistakes. The rest of the cast behave exactly as you'd expect, and there are even some solid moments for the supporting characters who haven't had much screen time to work with. There's no big, glaring problem with anything in this episode, so why did I spend most of it checking the runtime bar at the bottom of the screen?

Maybe it's the production values. While this episode doesn't dip quite as hard as the wrestling diversion, that classic MAPPA late-game struggle rears its head in small but critical ways. There's a lot of fighting, meant to demonstrate Matakara's increasing desperation as Ichiya manipulates him, and while none of it looks terrible, it never quite lands either. There's the occasional flourish or isolated cut that looks good, but almost none of the hits deliver much impact, relying on cuts and sound effects to sell themselves. This is especially obvious with Matakara's rematch against Jabashiri since we have their face-off from episode two as a point of comparison. The choreography, direction, and overall quality of the action is an obvious step-down, and that gets distracting in the aggregate, especially when this is supposed to detail Matakara's worsening emotional state. When the violence he's enacting feels significantly less brutal than his earlier bouts, it undermines the whole endeavor.

Then again, I've seen shows with worse action still manage to tug at my heartstrings, especially when a character I care about is going through something rough. I like Matakara as much or more than anyone else in this show, so by all rights, a properly executed story should get me. Perhaps the disconnect comes from how nebulous his motivation is. He's spurred on by a terrible fear of that black miasma that's yet to be explained, to the point that Ichiya just mentioning it can push Matakara to act against all his principles. Yet we still don't know what exactly that dark fog is, and it was only introduced at the start of this arc for Matakara. Combined with the odd limbo of his brother's fate, it becomes a lot more difficult to get inside Matakara's head. I understand that he's scared and rattled, but I struggle to sympathize with that fear when it's so abstract.

Mostly, though, I think it comes down to the problems that have plagued Bucchigiri?! for ages: it flubbed its chance to develop the foundation this story needed, yet still spends too long on each plot beat. Arajin has now spent two full episodes doing nothing on the sidelines, waiting for either Matakara or Senya to seek him out and explain things without ever taking the initiative. Matakara spends far too much of this episode doing the same thing over and over – I lost count of how many times other characters said “this isn't like you” to him, without ever getting a response. We know, as the audience, that this is because Arajin's the only one who will be able to break through to him, yet their dearth of meaningful interactions before this story arc makes that way less emotionally believable. So we're left waiting for an inevitable confrontation that we already know won't land how it's supposed to.

Without the proper set-up to allow these characters and their relationships to have an impact, there's only so much decent execution of familiar ideas can accomplish. Much like the production struggles of this episode, the drama is doomed to mediocrity thanks to poor decisions made well before now, and Bucchigiri?! is left incapable of packing a real punch.

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Bucchigiri?! is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.