English Dub Review: Saiyuki Reload Blast “Barrier”

Oh, I just realized all the battle scenes in the opening credits happened at this temple…

Overview (Spoilers)

The sacred bell that acted as a nexus point for the Kouten Barrier’s spell has been broken, and all hell has broken loose. Demons are attacking every village previously covered by the barriers, and Sharak’s soldiers run out to stop them, along with Goku, Gojou, and Hakkai. Just as Genjo suspects, this is just a ruse. The real attack comes on the temple, aimed at taking the Kouten Scripture. Heading this attack is Kougaji and Dokugakuji. Hamstrung by the lack of access to his Maten Scripture, Genjo takes on Kougaji mano-a-mano while Hassan blocks Dokugakuji’s access to Sharak. Will she erect the new barrier in time to save Genjo from his bloody smearing to come?

This didn’t feel like a half-hour episode. The amount of content they covered here was impressive, but face paced enough that I didn’t get bored at all. Hakkai spends a good amount of time concerned over Gojyo’s demon mark manifesting. Whether this is a result of getting closer to the source of the Minus Wave, or from killing so many demons, we aren’t sure. Remember, “bathe in the blood of a thousand demons…” and they’ve probably killed more than a thousand on this journey. His demon mark is an interesting shape. It’s far more refined than those of other demons we’ve seen, whose marks tend to be more simplistic and scar-like. The scenes of Hakkai going all mother-hen was funny. I loved how he put Gojyo’s jacket back on and explained it away as being “just too sexy.” This line only works coming from Hakkai, as anyone else would have made it goofy.

Another large facet of the episode is Dokugakuji’s past. This reveals that he is actually Sha Jien, Gojyo’s long-lost half brother. The two don’t seem to recognize each other. After murdering his own mother to protect the young Gojyo, he became disgusted with himself and left. Afterwards, he was taken in by Kougaji, and treats the demon prince as a surrogate brother from then on. Now, he is conflicted, as following Gyokumen Koushu’s orders is subverting both his and Kougaji’s moral compasses. You hope they fail, not only because you’re rooting for the Sanzo party, but because you don’t want these two to end up doing something they regret. This makes them great foils to the heroes. If they did what they wanted to, they’d be joining the good guys.

Our Take

Man, oh man. This episode was loaded with so much goodness. Excellent action all throughout, with a bit more animation than we normally get. The fight between Genjo and Kougaji is probably the best animation I’ve seen in the series thus far, with the characters actually moving instead of being in an action montage. They’ve improved the special effect of Kougaji’s fire friend summoning since the previous shows, and it looks impressive, even in its smaller forms. Most of the time, the footage of Sharak chanting the barrier spell was well done and actually synced with the audio. The first time it is shown, however, it does not and is merely a slightly-off loop. We also see the use of CG smoke in several places in this episode. The smoke looks rather good, and almost blends into the art style, but not quite. Still, it’s better than the flames from the last episode.

The voice acting was excellent. I’d list everything I liked, but I’d probably be re-summarizing the episode. Suffice to say, Micah Solusod’s Hakkai and Ian Sinclair’s Gojou delivered their lines with every ounce of the characters’ personalities. I love how awkward Hakkai was during their scenes. He’s genuinely worried but doesn’t want it to come out, afraid of how Gojyo might act. So many of his lines were hilarious because they weren’t over-the-top, but genuine and believable.

This episode also hints that these events are the start of something larger. The little demon girl that shows up in the beginning of the episode seems to have prophetic dreams and is following the Sanzo party’s progress. Seeing that after coming back from a flashback arc not long ago suggests we are finally going to get into the plot of the season. Yay! I’m eager to see how they plan to weave the recently escaped Nataku into this plot, but I’m excited.

With superior animation and voice acting, the plot and character development only seem that much more dramatic. I primarily only have some nitpicky stuff about the animation, so I feel really confident giving this episode nine broken bells out of ten.