English Dub Review: The Gymnastics Samurai “Samurai’s Decisive Battle”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
The day of the NHK Cup has arrived, with Jotaro, Minamoto, and even irrelevant side character Takizawa are competing. Minamoto is clearly off his game for whatever reason, but Takizawa manages to do well in his event and ask out that Ganguro girl who hangs out at Jotaro’s mom’s bar and who I’ve had no reason to mention before now because she serves no purpose. And Jotaro is doing quite well despite his recent injury. But even though Rei and her friends and family are cheering Jotaro on with all of their might, there’s one person who hasn’t shown up yet to show support: Leo, who seems to have left to rejoin ballet. However, one of his bodyguards brings Rei along to explain Leo’s situation and try and get him to watch Jotaro compete. She and Leo manage to meet, but he seems deadest on avoiding Jotaro for whatever reason. The competition continues and it may be make or break without Leo’s help.

OUR TAKE
Our penultimate episode finally brings us to the main event that Jotaro has been working towards to prove that he still has tricks up his sleeve. But in the background is the tension between Jotaro and Leo as they deal with their respective conflicts, with Jotaro facing the external conflict of this tournament while Leo faces internal conflict of his passion for dancing versus being at risk of getting crushed under the pressure of being a genius. Both of those things can afford to be stretched over the next episode, which is the finale. So part of this episode is about resolving other smaller plot threads, some of which I didn’t even realize were supposed to be plots. Takizawa has been such a background character with so little characterization that his crush on *checks notes* Ayu kinda just flies by, not to mention she is also barely a character and thus I care very little about her involvement. I have been noticing the subtle development of Rei’s friend slowly becoming more involved with things, starting as a bully, noticing her more, and now going to the match with her as a sign of a likely developing crush. It’s not much, but it’s certainly something I can track from scene to scene and so it feels a bit more rewarding to see it payoff in its own way.

Minamoto SEEMS to be on the verge of completing some sort of arc, but I’ve never been able to really pin him down as to what his deal is supposed to be. He first shows up (beyond some news reports at the start) as having a problem with Jotaro for putting off his retirement, apparently because he might bring mockery to the sport of gymnastics with his drama, but now it’s clear that he’s committed so Minamoto seems to no longer have much beef with him. But then that makes me wonder what his purpose in the series is since he hasn’t really functioned as a rival character, at least not in the traditional sense. We’ve seen him do a lot better in previous competitions, so seeing him screw up so much looks like it’s trying to drive up tension or something, but it all feels very disconnected. But them’s the breaks on writing these characters I suppose. Next time, the finale, where we will see if this series STICKS THE LANDING. Get it?