Another week, another episode adapting two chapters. If this adaptation is going to blow through the rest of the Kyoto Arc in the next 17 weeks it’s yet to show any indication of the pacing that would be required. The overwhelming majority of the cast hasn’t even made an appearance yet, though we’re starting to make inroads in that department (at exactly the same rate it happened in the manga). It’s obvious where everyone is going to end up – Kyoto – but their journeys are a major component of the story.
Picking favorites among this cast of legends (for a good reason) is brutal – another quality this arc shares with Chimera Ant. But Yukyuuzan Anji (Hatano Wataru) is one that made a huge impression on me from the first viewing of the 1996 series and has stayed with me. As Sanosuke wanders lost through the woods who knows where (actually Shimosuwa, but he doesn’t know that) he gets ever hungrier and more pissed off. A strange noise from the forest causes him to drop his last morsel of food, a manju bun, Investigating, he sees a huge monk chanting in the forest, performing some kind of ritual.
Sano assumes this to be some sort of houriki – a nebulous and mysterious form of quasi-magical power monks of strong Buddhist faith were sometimes said to possess. But Anji – who feeds Sano a frog as payment for his dropped bun – is quick to refute the notion. Houriki probably isn’t real, he says – at least if it is, he’s never seen it. Anji is a a hakaisou (literally, one who has broken the precepts), a fallen monk. But while he gave up his faith, he didn’t give up his hope for salvation – he simply decided that it was something that could only be achieved in this world.
To save, Anji reasons, one must possess power. To this end he learned the Futae no Kiwami (Mastery of Two Layers), a technique to lay waste to anything in the material world. One blow destroys an objects natural resistance, and another mere milliseconds laters pulverizes it. In a sense it seems like a logical technique for Sano to study, given his propensity for straight-ahead bashing. But Futae no Kiwami defies the brute force approach, and Sanosuke has given himself only a week to learn what Anji took a month to master. If not, the monk says, he will kill him (though during Sano’s struggles Anji makes multiple entreaties for him to abandon the challenge).
Everything about Anji’s presence screams “backstory” but for now he’s mostly here as a catalyst. Motivation is never a problem for Sano, who never seems more productive than when he’s on the brink of disaster. We never do find out exactly how he masters the technique – he does get a visit from his late beloved commander, Sagara, but no wisdom is passed along there. But master it he does, on the last night of his allotted week and with his body (and hand) stretched to the absolute limit. And just after he takes his leave from Anji and heads back onto the Nakasendo, Anji receives a visitor whose presence tells us who the monk really is.
What else does that final scene tell us besides who Anji’s master is? Well, for one thing we never saw him with a sword here, which calls into question whether the “Juppongatana” label is meant to be taken literally. What we saw from Anji here raises other interesting questions about what sort of man Shishio truly is, and what this army he’s put together really stands for. All in good time they’ll be answered – though the question of just how much good time remains the biggest one facing this adaptation.
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