Seiji growing his hair out still has. A chokehold on my psyche.
Like all right look I've always been weak for a long-haired bishonen type. And fictional blond men. Lightning-related abilities when applicable. Seiji's batting 3 for 3 on the fixation scale and now I have the worldy experience and applicable skill to write him into a highly problematic and messy situation, and that's not even counting the demon invasion.
I feel like whoever signed off on that design decision has the mandate of heaven. Tbh.
Thoughts on 鎧真伝サムライトルーパー | Yoroi Shinden Samurai Troopers, Episode 9: Outbreak (it was pretty fun :D):
The new OP with Shion and Jun was also posted on YouTube:
Having their chests be projectors is funny lol
Was Nasti, who made a deal with nationalists and training child soldiers, also evil this whole time??? -dramatic gasp-
And we learn at last what at least some of Yoshie's issues were. And who "sent" the Sword of Domination to Shion? Also Ramaga? Why?
Okay, so Ryo was on a quest around the orphanage for the Mirror of Supremacy. But why did he leave Byakuen with Jun lol This still doesn't make sense to me. He's going to a forest, Byakuen would be happy there. Jun did not need a giant white tiger. Maybe animals aren't allowed in forests in this series.
Seiji, Touma, Shuu, and Shin were captured, too T-T I mean it makes sense, but T-T So worried about them T-T And yes, Ramaga canonically lies about stuff, so who knows! Just hoping they're not dead like Shion's team...
I'm glad we get to see more of this random pseudo Tenku armor that Shion wielded while Ryusei was in the green one.
How did you wield this, Shion? Did your virtue change? Was this the Hardsuit before YSST's main story? Like this, it looks a lot like Touma's armor, which makes sense, as the other armors are spoken for by his teammates, but they why is he wearing the green armor now? Why is his virtue grace, like Seiji's, when Touma's was wisdom?
And we get to see more of Ryusei and Shion's old team :D And I guess maybe the one woman ever allowed to be a Trooper. Died and zombified before we even really knew her, RIP Sieun.
I really love the animation in the sequence where Gai walks over and takes the Jewel of Conquest from Nasti. It's really smooth.
People have commented that shows like this know to keep the fujoshi happy, and really, they do.
It's good to remember that female fans have always been integral to Sunrise properties and they are very aware of that, as explicitly emphasized multiple times over the years by Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino.
The pan-up for Sasuke, which is something almost always reserved for female characters being objectified in visual media, is a thing of pure beauty.
And so we get more explanation about the origin for Youja here. At least the members of the Last Name Group were originally human. If they "sinned" to become demons, then what did First Namers do? And if First Namers are considered superior for some reason, why doesn't Gai have a last name? Because only the first matters?
Kaito's half-hearted archery lol
I like this pouty Shion shot that uses the 2D animation and looks quite pretty.
Again, I wish they stuck to the 2D all the time. It looks really nice.
Poor Shion, wondering what, if anything, he did to his teammates while he was blacked out. Nasti not only sacrificed them to the Youjakai, she also potentially - and actually - made Shion a murderer.
And so we see confirmation that Gai was not a baby as of about three years prior to the story. So presumably, unless some timey wimey stuff happened between Ryo's capture and Shion's team showing up in the Youjakai, it seems unlikely Ramaga used Ryo's body to create Gai. But I guess we'll see.
Poor Shion T-T Angsty bean. And Ryusei presumably saw at least some of this and said nothing about it, too. Likely to protect Shion.
So the Braves also have power bracelets. Where did Shion get the idea for them? Was that also from Ramaga?
Seeing Kakei and Mochizuki punished is likely a reference to the lava pit Arago would send the Mashou to in order to discipline/strengthen them.
The "Shion's teammates trapped in crystal" thing seems to be a callback to when Seiji was trapped in crystal in Episode 5 of Yoroiden Samurai Troopers. Ryo was the one who helped free him, too. It makes sense that Gai, wearing the red armor here and the heir to Ryo's power, is helping Shion, who's wearing the green armor and the heir to Seiji's power.
Oh? Would Byakuen be useful in the Youjakai? Then why didn't Ryo take him last time????
I respect Yamato's willingness to be Mirei's bottom and/or sub.
What a lovely 2D animated shot:
I mean, it's not the best for Yamato's weapon (and we do get a lot of nice shots of it for whatever reason, versus the weapons of everyone else, which is kind of fascinating... Someone on the team clearly liked that axe more than anything other than maybe Gai's scabbards), but it's nice in general. If only they did this all the time, and no, I will not stop harping on this. I like that we have these shots, but it also makes the ugliness of the 3D worse.
3D Byakuen isn't the worst, exactly. Don't love it, either.
Mmm yes. I see I see XD Sunrise returning to their roots. Yes, I know, Sunrise, I was in the middle of a full rewatch of your 1994 anime, G Gundam, I'll get back to it at some point. People thinking YSST is goofy have not seen any of Sunrise's other media. Certainly not G Gundam (or SD Gundam, which the bad 3D in YSST keeps reminding me of, which I admit I watched very little of and don't mean any offense to, but it's what I think of every time the 3D pops up on-screen). At least the Troopers aren't screaming The East is Burning Red!!!!! dramatically. And hey, weird as the writing occasionally gets in this show, it's not Escaflowne weird. I really need to get more into their actual good things and stop falling for all their messy weirdness. Though to be fair, the Escaflowne movie made Allen so beautiful. I was thinking of him in that movie a lot in this Shion-centric episode.
This is a rather nice shot of puppet Kuroda Seiun (I was looking at where Shion was looking at in the shot for names but w/e):
I'm not a fan of how they tried to make her The Woman and had her midsection skinnier than the others while emphasizing that she had boobs.
Like okay, Sunrise, please stop Sunrising. We get it, you miss nekke Rain.
We also got character sheets for Shimazu Shun and Kato Tadayoshi:
This is a pretty shot:
I think a lot of this is also maybe Gai trying to tell himself this. That what he did to Ryusei wasn't his fault: that he did his best with what he had, not knowing it was a manipulation by Ramaga and would hurt Ryusei. It wasn't Gai's fault he didn't have all the information and Ramaga was manipulating him (and Nasti was keeping information from him). He is, after all, only 15. Or at least I hope Gai is thinking of that. Sometimes it's a "for you and not for me" situation.
The "Shion's teammates trapped in crystal" thing seems to be a callback to when Seiji was trapped in crystal in Episode 5 of Yoroiden Samurai Troopers. Ryo was the one who helped free him, too. It makes sense that Gai, wearing the red armor here and the heir to Ryo's power, is helping Shion, who's wearing the green armor and the heir to Seiji's power (as far as we know anyway given whatever happened with him and the pseudo-Tenku armor in the past).
In a way, Gai is also trying to get Shion to wake up to the truth: that his friends were already dead and puppets, and he was allowing his feelings to interfere with logic. And that Shion was not responsible for this: Ramaga and the sword took hold and killed Shion's friends.
But Seiji was also the one who restored Ryo's eyesight. Like Gai is relying on Shion's aid in the fight, to clear his eyesight of the sword's possession. And the choice to save Gai rather than kill him is Shion's, just like Seiji was the one who came up with the idea to attempt to restore Ryo's eyesight.
Kakei and Mochizuki care about their nakama T-T Also, random side note, I like that their bombs vaguely resemble pumpkins.
Gai T-T He loves his nakama T-T The Braves weren't his nakama: but Shion, Musashi, Kaito, and Yamato are T-T The feels T-T He already hurt Ryusei. He doesn't want more of that.
Sayonara Mochizuki and Kakei. I wonder if Saizo plans to save you somehow O.o Or just threaten Gai into complying with Ramaga's plans. I do get the criticism that the Braves are being wiped out too quickly, especially before we can really explore them as characters. While we are getting a lot of fun stuff with the fourth gen Troopers and their backstories, we have extremely little for any of the Braves other than Nezu, who taught Gai for some time and was close with Anayama. We see moments between the Braves, of them having fun eating together, bathing together, and seemingly being content to hang out without getting into fights mostly involving them fighting over hierarchies. And clearly there are bonds of camaradarie that the Masho never had. But other than Kakei's comment about them being "sinners", we know painfully little about them as people. What sins did Kakei commit to end up as a demon? What did the the First Namers do to become demons? How old are any of them? Although the Masho had relatively little backstory and character exploration as well, they had something in the main series: we learned that Arago recruited powerful humans lusting for even more power, and they were all, from what I remember, military leaders of some sort, from past eras of human history. We largely lacked any connection with them in their day to day other than training, brooding, and arguing, and it's nice that we get more from the Braves on that front at least. But I'd like to know who the Braves really are in the same way we know a ton of stuff about the fourth gen Troopers. Because quick moments where you see they care about each other - like Mochizuki coming to Kakei's rescue - are great, but frustrating in the long run when you have such a large cast of cannon fodder.
I'm glad we're back to in-episode proper previews! That's nice!
Overall it was a pretty decent episode. We got more answers to things, had some neat bonding moments between the characters, and there was some nice animation. Looking forward to Episode 10: Sacrifice, which is not at all an ominous title.
