Revenger

Episode 8

This episode is full of wonderful introspection on the nature of craft, killing, and the series' central conceit. Like all great introspective episodes, none of the questions raised is fully answered, but they serve to leave the audience and characters wondering what comes next.

The discussion of craft and killing makes up the first half of this week's entry. Raizou has a long conversation with Usui about art and leaving the Revengers, then later he has another conversation with the priest Sada regarding the nature of death and labor. Both questions circle around the fundamental question of what it is Raizou does and what he wants to be doing. Is any profession truly noble? Isn't paying for labor another form of exchanging coins for someone's life, albeit over a much longer period of time? Raizou is forced to come to terms with whether he can walk away from this life of killing, or if he's simply trading death by a single stroke for death by a thousand cuts.

If that wasn't enough, we also have the Revenger concept being pushed to its logical limits by forces beyond the team's control. There was really only one rule – the coin must be bitten in earnest to signify genuine intent. Well, now the Chapel is asking for a job to be done without a bite at all, and another group of Revengers is taking up jobs for the merest nibble. This is a tacit acknowledgment of how abusable a system like this would be, but it also illuminates how any system can be abused: throw enough coins at someone and suddenly a lot of technicalities wash away or get overlooked.

We don't have to look much farther than our own present reality to see how relevant that particular observation is.

Then of course there's the shocking twist of Liu getting sniped in the episode's final moments. Things are about to get very explosive very fast.

Rating:

Grant is the cohost on the Blade Licking Thieves podcast and Super Senpai Podcast.

Revenger is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.