English Dub Review: Katana Maidens: Toji no Miko “Slothful Person’s Honor”

Honor killing.

Overview (Possible Spoilers Below)

The episode begins with Kaoru enjoying a day of casual laziness at a hot-spring, but given that the longest running joke is her being unable to relax, it goes about as well as you’d expect when Kaoru is tasked with leading a squad of Toji to investigate sightings of an aradama in the forest, though she doesn’t take the assignment seriously as most characters would given how lazy she can get, not to mention she hasn’t had a break for a solid four months long after the events of episode 12.

To further help with the investigation, the semi-emotionless Sayaka temporarily joins the squad, and her skills quickly win over the affection of the other squad members, including Nene, much to Kaoru’s annoyance. We do get comedic scenes where Kaoru attempt to try and understand Sayaka, but ends up hanging up on Kanami who’s excitement becomes irritating to Kaoru’s ears and spends most of the episode having them challenge one another in a game of ping-pong. Later as they head out to search for the Aradama, it turns out to be in a harmless squirrel form. As Sayaka prepares to destroy it Kaoru stops her, citing how her family believes that Toji should only kill aradama when necessary, and not those that don’t pose a threat, asking Sayaka if she would indiscriminately kill Nene just for existing.

Sayaka then learns from Kaoru to think before she kills… Well, that’s until the squirrel aradama suddenly transforms into an even larger monstrosity, forcing Kaoru to destroy it. After Kaoru and Sayaka leave the scene to the Noro recovery team, it predictably this proves to be a mistake as the hooded-noro thief attacks and Maki intervenes, but cannot stop the Noro thief from escaping. But Kaoru and Sayaka had to pick the worst time to return just as the Noro thief escapes when they only see Maki fleeing the scene and mistakenly believe her to be noro thief, but that’s what happens when you end up wearing the same outfit as an unknown criminal stealing Noro. Despite the noro being stolen, the mission is considered successful since the aradama was destroyed with no casualties. The episode ends on a comedic note when Sayaka’s tendency to be overly honest gets Kaoru hilariously yelled at by her boss through her phone.

Our Take

Another unconventional pairing this week, but it’s good to see Kaoru and Sayaka get some character bonding moments with each other. Also, the comedic moments were great here and where it shined the most, especially with Kaoru trying to relax after working tirelessly on missions, much to her Bosses uncompromising demands. They say “comedy comes from some form of misery” and those scenes of Kaoru’s boss being a demanding bitch sometimes exemplified that while giving me a chuckle during the proceedings.

I also wasn’t really surprised with Maki being revealed as one of the cloaked figures, but it doesn’t appear as if the show was gonna stretch that mystery any longer on who the other cloaked lady possibly is, but I guess we’ll have to see how it’ll turn out in future episodes. While the mystery remains ongoing, it at least filled in some gaps of info left unanswered, such as the reveal that Yume really did pass away with a random scene were Yomi visits her Grave, but the heart of the episode taught Sayaka to learn that there is more to life than fighting and from a lazy person’s point of view, it was much-needed wisdom on Sayaka’s end.