The Elusive Samurai

Episode 6

I came into this week's episode of The Elusive Samurai expecting a lot of things, but I was in no way prepared for Genba to give my psychic whiplash with the sheer force of the Lonely Island nostalgia flashbacks he induced with his, er, "antics".

For now, we'll just have to table the issue of whether Genba will need to register certain appendages as deadly weapons (or be put on a sex offender registry).

Instead, let's talk about how great this show was! The title of this episode is “Steal the Imperial Command from Ogasawara's Residence in the Night”, and The Elusive Samurai is as committed as ever to delivering exactly what it promises on the tin. Picking up right where we left off last time, this chapter of the story is all about Tokiyuki and Genba nabbing that pesky royal decree from Sadamune—which means we get a whole mess of evasion and thievery-induced shenanigans from our heroes as they attempt to outwit and outmaneuver the baddies. I couldn't be more pleased with this focus considering that the show doubles down on the abstract and impressionistic animation that makes its action-adventure scenes such a joy to behold. Genba's abilities especially lend themselves well to being enhanced by the show's bold artistic flourishes (and I'm talking about the cool ninja subterfuge stuff, not the helicopter-dick stuff).

We also get another Certified Body-Horror Freak to add to the roster of weirdo baddies that our gang has to deal with, because ol' Bug-Eyes Sadamune teams up with Ichikawa “The Bastard Offspring of Alfred E. Newman and That Gross Alien-Thing from Parasyte” Sukefusa. I acknowledge that it makes sense to have a dude with super-hearing show up to complement Sadamune's peeping prowess but I don't know if I've ever witnessed anything as deranged as the bit where Ichikawa's disgusting earlobe mouths get to chatting with Sadamune's wriggling eyeballs. It's so stupid and off-putting that I cannot help but respect Yūsei Matsui for his commitment to designing antagonists whose buffoonery is rivaled only by their ability to make viewers wish they hadn't tried to eat lunch and watch The Elusive Samurai at the same time.

This episode also brings back the jarring contrast between its vibrant art style and the shocking amounts of ultra-violence that its characters get up to. Granted, when Yorishige tells Tokiyuki near the end of the episode that Ashikaga Takauiji simply “cannot be assassinated”, it stands to reason that the show will have to demonstrate that dubious claim so that the audience won't constantly ask why our superpowered kiddos don't just go straight for him. That is why I won't say that I was surprised, exactly, when we proceeded to watch Ashikaga barely lift a finger to decapitate and then obliterate the corpses of, like, so many guys. If anything, I would have been disappointed if the main villain of this story was not a deliriously overpowered murder god with a bottomless thirst for slaughter.

At this point, I imagine most viewers are just used to how casually unhinged The Elusive Samurai is with marrying gorgeously animated sequences of Hard-R-rated carnage and jokes about little sex-pests whose genital gymnastics terrify the poor shrine maidens. It's the most lowbrow kind of high art on the market right now, I reckon, and I'm loving every second of it*.

(*Except for the crappy CGI horses.)

Rating:

The Elusive Samurai is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.