Well, are you?!

Episode summary: Nobunaga needs to get the Regalia of wind back from Caesar. He is manly. So manly that women’s clothes fall off of them in front of him. With the power of their nakedness, Nobunaga gets the Regalia of wind back from Caesar. The end.

Notes:

• Oh, so that what’s Shingen was trying to do at the end of last week’s episode: “Defeated, Shingen tried to entrust the future of the East and his Regalia to Nobunaga…” Well, of course! So even though everyone’s been calling Nobunaga all sorts of names and insulting his intelligence over and over, I should’ve just known that Shingen would want to entrust the entire future of the East to Nobunaga through a single duel. Because, y’know, a single duel between two men is really a great judge of character. Nope, Shingen doesn’t have a single person to carry on with his legacy. Not a trusted second-in-command or even a son. It’s Nobunaga or nothing. Duh.

• Again, I have no idea why Shingen’s men are entrusting themselves to Caesar, whom they know nothing about. B-But their lord’s death! Our lord must be avenged! So please, just take over Takeda’s castle. No big deal.

• We get a new character:

Technically, we already saw him last week, but he gets a proper introduction this time around. Now, I refer to him as a male for now because his name is Uesugi Kenshin, but his voice actor is clearly a lady, and not only that, he’s got quite an effeminate appearance for such a manly show like The Fool. As a result, just hold onto your butts. I’m sure we’re going to get some juicy plot twist regarding this character’s gender.

• The War Council naturally wonders how Nobunaga can be so dead certain that Takeda wasn’t responsible for his brother’s death. Nobunaga nods and replies, “Before we fought, Lord Shingen and I discussed the matter, man-to-man. I know this with certainty because I have fought him. He was a warrior who would never lie.” Real men have honor! The honesty of real men lies within their fighting spirit! I fight. I real man. Rawr!

• How come no one suspects Nobunaga, though? Honestly, he’d have plenty of reasons to have Nobukatsu killed. The most obvious one is that there’d be no one to contest his ascendency. As the sole remaining male heir of the Oda clan, he gets to succeed his father by default. Oh, I forgot; he’s the Fool so we can just assume he’s too dumb to ever plan out an assassin. No wait, his warrior spirit means he can’t lie! Yeah, that’s it.

• Nobunaga advises, “For now, we should turn our gaze not inward, but outward.” I’m not sure you’ve ever turned your gaze inward, buddy. “Otherwise,” Nobunaga continues, the enemy will take advantage of our strife.” Right, right. Always in times of doubt and turmoil, our self-proclaimed leaders will tell us to just stop thinking, and entrust our lives to them. For the safety of our country, of course.

• AW FUCK:

Goddamn it, it’s the revenge of the creepy childbride. Man, you just can’t find good assassins these days. Apparently, Mitsuhide’s the only person on the entire Eastern Star who can put a bullet in its proper place. Do it, bro, do it. Kill Himiko too! It’ll, uh, inflame Nobunaga’s fighting spirit, and through his anger, he’ll unite the two stars or something amazing like that. Uh-huh.

• Himiko: “The grief of losing Nobuhide-sama and Nobukatsu-sama will never leave my heart. But there is no point in dwelling on what is past. What the Oda clan should do now is move forward.” Oh gosh, well, that sounds reasonable, but here comes the best part: “That is what my crystal says.” C’mon, she can’t even form her own thoughts and opinions. Just kill her.

• Since Nobunaga needs to retrieve the Regalia of wind from Caesar if he’s going to conquer the rest of the East, Himiko goes, “Use the resources of Yamatai to grant your heart’s desire.” I’m sure glad the people of Yamatai don’t give two fucks what they’re being used for. In fact, we have no clue what anyone outside of the elites thinks. It’s just a bunch of rich, pampered leaders playing war games when we know for a fact that it’s always the commoners who end up suffering the brunt of the consequences of their leaders’ actions.

• Nobunaga: “But, this requires more thought. [Caesar] is a foe who cannot be defeated by force alone.” Hehe, I guess this is going to be a surefire loss for Nobunaga.

• Nobunaga has to take a knee just to match his eye level with Himiko’s eye level. Yet, they are betrothed to one another. Ugh, I really shouldn’t watch anime before I eat. Now I’ve lost my appetite.

• Obviously, we’ve gone through too many episodes without a proper exposition dump, so here it comes. The anime’s been consuming a lot of fiber, so I hope y’all are ready to learn all about King Arthur, his intentions for sending Caesar to the East, the ley lines of the East, how Regalias and their wielders are important with regards to said ley lines, the phenomena of the ley lines, how the Regalias interact with the quantum fields from the ley lines, how willpower determines the power of a Regalia…” Blah blah blah blah. Are you not entertained? Is this not the most riveting topic ever?!

• Yeah, yeah. And he who controls the spice controls the universe. Tell me something I don’t already know, Leonardo da Vinci.

• Uguu, Jeanne has a Regalia of her own (read: her virginity) that she’ll one day entrust to Nobunaga… o-only if he takes responsibility. That baka.

• This is so stupid. Jeanne gets a vision of Caesar defeating Nobunaga in battle, so she’s all concerned and shit. She then calls out to him and asks if he’s really going to fight Caesar. Of course he will, so our manly hero wonders, “Why bring this up now?” And all Jeanne can do — literally all she can do — is look to the side and mutter, “But…” But… but what? Why don’t you just fucking say it? Why don’t you just tell him you have a bad omen? What is wrong with you?

• Ichihime: “But, I still have faith that my brother will get us through this predicament. So, I’d like you to have faith in Nobu, as well.” Welcome to the Star of the East… where warriors never lie, and Eastern girls have nothing but their utmost faith in the Savior-Pig. Welp, enough talking. Back to singing for you, Ichihime.

• But as she walks away from Nobunaga’s sister, Jeanne observes, “She has inner strength.” No, no Ichihime doesn’t. She’s just a caged bird who does nothing in this story. She doesn’t do a single damn thing in this story. She’s literally there to look pretty, belt out some crappy songs, and insist that Jeanne put her faith in her oaf of a brother. Wow, such inner strength!

• Basically, if you’ve ever heard of the Bechdel test, this anime would bomb it hard.

• So the night of the big battle finally arrives. Caesar jumps into his War Armor, which he then uses to jump into a War Armor… Bike?

Not to be outdone, Nobunaga removes parts of his War Armor to construct a War Armor Bike of his own:

Right. The kicker is that Nobunaga has no idea what he is even doing: “A wing-horse?!” It’s all thanks to his new Regalia of fire, you see. The powers of lightning and fire combine to create a mecha horse! My quanta are literally tingling at the sight of this heroism.

• Oh look, Caesar lands a critical strike on Nobunaga in the exact same way that Jeanne had envisioned. Boy, imagine if she had just told the Fool what she had seen! I agree, however, that it’s much better to look off to the side and mutter, “But…,” and let the Savior-Pig march off to his death.

• So to correct her error, Jeanne rides headfirst into the midst of battle with nothing but a white flag in one of her hands. The problem here is that both Nobunaga and Caesar are in their giant War Armors. Naturally, all Caesar has to do is to simply do anything within close proximity of Jeanne, and this action — whatever it is — would send her flying from her mount. Oh no no no no… she doesn’t just go flying. Her clothes literally fall off to reveal her bountiful breasts, I shit you not:

That poor mount, though. Just look at its face; it’s in pain! Somebody save it! But anyway… what were we talking about? Oh right, the sudden unraveling of Jeanne’s clothing. Y’see, only in this feminine state of undress is Jeanne able to entrust her Regalia (read: her virginity) to Nobunaga, thereby saving him:

Now, now… I’m sure you guys must be like, “Yo, E Minor, why do you keep referring to Jeanne’s Regalia as her virginity?” Because it just is, man! Lo and behold:

El-oh-el. Trust me, I had no evidence whatsoever that her Regalia would represent her virginity, but I just had a hunch, the sort of hunch you naturally get from watching this much shitty anime.

• And just like that, Nobunaga defeats Caesar.

• Here’s some brilliant lines of dialogue to close out this amazing episode:

Jeanne: “Nobunaga. I, Ranmaru, will protect you with my life!”
Nobunaga: *grunts* “It was inevitable.”

Yep, that about sums it up.