Woman, please… can’t you see I’m busy watching my shows?

Episode summary: Nobunaga wants to get to the bottom of his brother’s death, so he decides to walk right up to Lord Shingen and ask if the enemy leader’s responsible for Nobukatsu’s assassination. Shingen denies it, which Nobunaga believes wholeheartedly, but in the end, they both do battle anyway. ‘Cause, uh, they just gotta. In the end, Nobunaga wins, but before Shingen can pass his Regalias onto our hero, Caesar strikes out of nowhere and finishes Shingen off. Nobunaga is forced to retreat, and Caesar takes control of Shingen’s men by blaming their lord’s death on the Fool.

Notes:

• “Is there no one here?!” Nobunaga screams as he holds his creepy childbride in his arms. Well, no… nobody’s here. They all died for your sake, man.

• Oh God… oh God nooooooooooooo:

Don’t you fucking tell me she survives this! Don’t you even do this to me, anime!

• For some reason, I’m surprised to see that they have this level of medical technology. Then I remember that everyone does battle in gigantic samurai mechas and thus balance is restored to the anime universe.

• Nobunaga gazes upon his brother’s corpse and mutters, “Why?” Gee, I don’t know. Maybe… just maybe everyone could’ve talked this out, and our heroes could’ve arrived at a suitable diplomatic resolution. But no, the Fool had to stomp around half naked, pissing people off left and right. It’s kinda hard to open up the channels of communication when half the party is missing-in-action. This sort of forced Nobukatsu’s hand, y’know. He kinda had to assume leadership because his brother was off to God knows what. But of course, Mitsuhide wasn’t gonna have any of that! And as expected from a fervent follower of the Fool, our would-be assassin had little to say to anyone before putting a bullet through Nobukatsu’s heart.

Now, I’m not saying diplomacy would’ve worked, but whatever the fuck Nobunaga opted to do instead certainly didn’t help alleviate the situation. I mean, if you wanna paint this tale as some sort of heart-wrenching tale of political intrigue within one of the most famous Japanese clans ever, you kinda have to at least go through the motions of pretending as though the characters have any sort of intelligence. Instead, you’ve got a macho ape creating a mess everywhere he goes until everyone dies around him, then all of a sudden, I’m supposed to feel sorry for the guy?

• Honestly, I think it would’ve been better if the show had followed history a little closer, and made Nobukatsu more of a threat to the Fool. I think that would’ve been a little more believable. Instead, Nobukatsu is just this sad caricature of a “beta male.” So then Nobunaga gets to blame himself, i.e. play the martyr, and reap the pity as the audience goes, “N-no way, man! You didn’t do anything wrong!” You’re right! He didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, he didn’t have to do anything. Everyone else is just so colossally incompetent that Nobunaga gets to win by default. And hey, everyone in his family but his prized bird of a sister is now dead! Woe is the Fool; how sorrow has gripped his heart!

• I suppose despite all that medical technology, which will somehow magically save creepy childbride’s life — just you wait!! — this same world doesn’t have any sort of ballistics analysis, does it? Ah well, of course not.

• Oh hey, did you notice Jeanne has returned? I thought she was dead set on leaving. Does she even have a good reason to return?

• Ichihime ruminates, “I don’t remember when, but Brother told me that he will bring an end to the chaos.” Yeah, his chaotic actions in the last few episodes will certainly help advance that cause. You could argue that a warrior must be forged from the fires of hardship or something stupid like that, but if that’s the case, then like I’ve said, the story should’ve done a better job than painting everyone as a dumbass just begging to be killed left and right.

• Jeanne whines, “If only I was stronger… Nobuhide and Nobukatsu might still be alive.” What does that even mean? Stronger in what sense? What could she have done to prevent any of these tragic developments? Was she gonna block Mitsuhide’s bullet? Was she supposed to climb into a War Armor and jump between Caesar and Nobuhide? I mean, what does this even mean? The fact of the matter is that it doesn’t mean anything. She’s just saying cliche shit that we’ve come to expect in stories like this.

• So the War Council convenes to discuss Nobukatsu’s untimely death. One guy blames the Takeda clan. Another guy accuses other clans of conspiring to instigate a full-blown conflict between the Oda and Takeda clans. Even better, another guy goes, “I believe the perpetrators have not gone far.” What’s so special about all of this is that not a single one of them have even a single shred of evidence to back up any of their claims. Basically, you’ve got a bunch of grown men sitting in a room, screaming assertions at one another. As the saying goes, “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

• Nobunaga then announces his bold plan to just ask Lord Shingen outright if the Takeda clan is responsible for the crimes: “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to start a fight. I’m just going to talk.” Oh, now you want to talk.

• Nobunaga decides to walk right up to Lord Shingen in his War Armor. But guys, he’s not going to start a fight! Just chillin’ in this cockpit with a hunk of meat jerky in one hand, and Jeanne behind his back. Just another day in the Fool’s manly life! But it’s okay, ’cause Shingen allows Nobunaga to do just that, i.e. walk right up to him. Even though the two clans have been openly hostile to each other, I guess we have too much honor to just eliminate the current leader of the rival clan right there and then. But of course he wouldn’t. It would be cowardly! Just as Nobunaga suspected, “It’s written all over [Shigen]’s face. He thinks he can crush Oda without such cowardly tactics.” Both manly men then begin to laugh. Hehehehehehehe.

Hahahahahahahahaha. Jeanne’s face basically says, “Shit, I’m surrounded by psychos.”

• And as manly men are wont to do, the Fool and Shingen will now engage in mortal combat anyway.

Jeanne, you’re just a girl. You wouldn’t understand. Even though Nobunaga’s the last male heir of his clan — even though dying here would mean leaving Ichihime to fend for herself against a shady War Council full of dubious aims — he’s just gotta put his life on the line right here and right now where there’s nobody to save his ass should things go wrong. He’s just gotta! It’s written in the code of manliness!

• Jeanne understandably argues, “You said you were only here to talk!”

“Heh!” replies Nobunaga, “How can I face such a warrior and leave without engaging him in battle?” Girl, please. This is a battlefield, not the kitchen. Even when I’m taking a piss at a urinal, if a warrior walks by, I gotta drop everything and put up my dukes.

• So this purple serpent-dragon thing flies right at Nobunaga, which causes his shirt to disappear. He then finds himself inside his War Armor ready to do battle.

I call it the mahou beefcake transformation scene.

• Shingen: “Don’t feel too bad about Nobuhide-dono. Such things happen in war-torn times!” Yeah c’mon, seeing your dad murdered right before your very eyes is just shit that happens, man. Jeez, don’t get your panties in a twist over it.

• Nobunaga, ever the man of infinite sensitivity, responds in kind: “It was inevitable! It was just his time!” Hah, crusty old man got what was coming to him.

• The raw manliness exuding from our two combatants is too much for Jeanne to handle. She can do nothing but mutter, “Sugoi~”

• Meanwhile, da Vinci is looking at some colored lights on a map and exclaims, “There’s no mistake! This is a massive shift in the ley line! The harmony of the universe will activate the Regalia and cause the very quanta to tremble!” Y-yeah… I know some of these words.

• Welp, Nobunaga wins. Shingen then tosses his Regalia to Nobunaga for some reason. What is this? A Pokemon gym battle? Here you go! The fire badge! But before Shingen can hand off the wind badge as well, Caesar strikes! Heh, those crazy Westerns! They have no goddamn honor like us manly men of the East! We’re so manly, we allow an entire war to be decided by a duel between the two clans’ leaders.

• And of course, Caesar uses this opportunity to tell Shingen’s men that Nobunaga was responsible for everything. Since we’ve already established that everyone’s amazingly stupid in this universe, Shingen’s men are so embroiled by the desire for revenge that they’ll follow some masked freak they’ve never seen before this very day.

Naturally.