Review: Drifters Episode 11: “The Adventure of the Pistol Daimyo ~Bullet Counting Song~”

Hey yo, here I am, and here we go, life’s waiting to begin.

Spoilers Below

Immediately after the last episode, it’s easy to assume that they took Count Saint-Germain’s offer as he aids the Drifters and their army to “Trojan Horse” their way into the Orte Empire’s capital city using his pink frilly carriage.

Before they further put their plan into action, there’s a particularly interesting flashback with Saint Germain revealing that he was from a time period long after any of our main protagonists. It’s a fun juxtaposition to the Japanese warriors who have absolutely no clue who any of these other historical people were and, for them, it’s quite surreal to have a complete stranger stand in front of you who knows everything about your life, your accomplishments, and the historical impact you’ve made. Especially warriors as minor as Toyo & Yoichi.

The flashback ends and we cut back to the Orte Castle with Saint-Germain holding an emergency council meeting to the higher-ups of Orte. As anyone could imagine, telling everyone to surrender their land to the Drifters but predictably it’s not met without resistance.

Before Saint-Germain can spring the surprise, however, it’s briefly disrupted by Rasputin as his powers are revealed to be the ability to possess and influence people with magical psychic “puppet strings” and it’s eerily similar to the way Grima Wormtongue controlled people in “The Two Towers”. Rasputin proclaims to our three protagonists that the Black King also plans to seize the Orte Empire for his own campaign of human genocide.

This leads to another fun moment from the manga where they begin to psychologically dick with Rasputin and Toyo makes quick work towards a small group of the Black King’s Troops who quickly barge in and get decapitated very quickly by Toyo in a gory yet beautifully stylized action scene that ends with Toyo redecorating the castle walls with purple monster-blood. (Damn!)

After that random act of awesome, Toyo walks on the table and repeatedly kicks the face of the man that Rasputin is psychically possessing and brutally keeps going while ignoring his words which leaves Rasputin in a state of shock while Oda smiles to himself knowing that anything Rasputin says isn’t worth considering and Oda tells him “Whether you know it or not you have done us a real favor, we Drifters have to save Orte from the threat of the Ends now! Just like that, you legitimized our coup, Much Obliged!”

After being belittled and humiliated by Toyo & Oda, Rasputin retreats, and the Black King in retaliation sends Hijikata with some monster-troops to combat the Drifters in the capital, shifting their focus from seizing Orte to destroying it to prevent the Drifters from claiming their new land.

We cut back to our protagonists when Saint Germain provides further assistance with the ensuing battle by entrusting his personal army, “The Sacred Band of Thebes”, with Oda in charge as the army’s Musket Squad while Toyo & Yoichi lead the Dwarves & Elves, respectively, into the fray.

Olminu plays a large role as well by relaying communications between all three armies each using magical spheres to directly contact each one during battle. As the Black King’s troops show up, the Drifters successfully take out the Ends vanguard with Oda’s shirtless troops who are using the newly made musket rifles made by the Dwarves while the Elven Archers rain Arrows down and Toyo leading the charge with the Dwarves at his command who attack with Axes shredding & murdering whatever armor-clad purple-blooded creatures are left.

The episode ends with an angered Hijikata heading towards the battlefield with vengeance on his mind over the mere mention of Toyo’s last name “Shimazu” vowing that he die by his hand.

Overview.

The flashback within the episode when Saint Germain tells our 3 main protagonists about their history is a well-established scene and helps solidify the truce, but Oda is understandably apprehensive, and he’s not wrong. To put things in Oda’s perspective, You have a shady effeminate stranger who is gleefully willing to sell out an entire empire to you and normally in any scenario like this, it should raise some red flags on what kind of person you’re potentially dealing with and whether or not he’d betray you next if it’ll benefit him in some way.

The scene when the “Sacred Band of Thebes” are introduced is well-balanced with comedic moments but is well established that they were trained to hold the rifles weeks in advance using wooden sticks, also their portrayal is that they’re heavily muscular, bare-chested and have implied male-on-male relationships with one another and after researching the name, they’re not wrong.

I had to also research this but according to history, Toyo’s descendants have an unpleasant history with Hijikata and it’s kinda weird because most stories of people who have a grudge against a specific group of people usually stems from something their ancestors did but Hijikata’s grudge stems from what Toyo’s descendants did? It’s a bizarre dynamic that plays against cliche.

Now that they have gunpowder, musket rifles, and a sufficiently trained & diverse army at their command. Everything has seemingly fallen into place in what hopes to be an epic final battle of the season and we’re about to see it culminate in episode 12, let’s see how it ends