English Dub Review: HAKYU HOSHIN ENGI “Bunchu”

“Me against the world!”

Overview (Possible Spoilers Below)

The pre-credits scene begins when Youzen along with the rest of Team-Konron are on their way to help Fugen & Taiko as they’re currently busy causing a distraction to stall Bunchu’s ass long enough for the rest of the team to arrive. Knowing that Fugen’s magical science ball didn’t work, the team uses all their powers combined in what I can only describe as this show’s equivalent to the “Knights of the Round” summon attack from Final Fantasy 7, only that was epic by JRPG video game standards.

While the episode does cut between flashbacks that almost serve no purpose, the episode’s title itself feels out of place since the episode before this one should’ve been called “Bunchu” due to his origin story being effectively told the way it was, in combination with his strong convictions in wanting to restore the decayed village of in to his former glory at least they make some sense in context and attempt to paint him as a villain with some level of Pathos.

Of course, Bunchu turns out to be on-par with Sephiroth in terms of “final boss” status, but the battle itself did make him start taking things seriously and decided to descend to a platform to take on two close-range fighters, Bunchu causally allows them to charge towards him at the same time. Taiko and Fugen attempt to shield the attackers, but given how powerful Bunchu turns out to be, it goes about as well as you’d expect… We do get a post-credits scene of a random scene with Taiko speaking to a mysterious green-haired individual with the ability to see the future, and the conversation itself is the closest to anything deep & philosophical the show has ever conveyed about the desire for a better future, but the scene is worth checking out for Taiko’s answer alone when asked about how he’d approach the situation.

Our Take

As a villain with strong convictions, Bunchu is pretty damn ballsy. While the last episode gave him a level of pathos that made him easy to understand, the proceedings that followed in this episode revealed a level of power & skill Bunchu has in terms of combat prowess. And if a fighting game based on this show was made, he’d most likely excel as a “Sub-Boss” or a “Final Boss” if Dakki or the mysterious “Jyoka” were ever capable of getting their hands dirty.

The battle itself is a grand-spectacle on both sides, however I can do without the random flashback sequences that I feel should’ve been part of the early episodes as it felt too much like it was done for padding, but at least they don’t spoil anything compared to later episodes that suffered from the unpardonable sin of revealing too much too early to the point that it made everything almost unwatchable.