English Dub Review: HAKYU HOSHIN ENGI “Mirror”

This is how you fuck up a recap episode.

Overview (Possible Spoilers Below)

The opening before the credits begins with a Twist that even I didn’t expect in regards to Taiko’s origin story, but It feels like it should’ve been revealed sooner. As somebody who hasn’t read the manga, I probably would’ve given a shit about it if I was ever a longtime fan of this series, to begin with. But after the Intro, Taiko gets into a conversation with Ohtenkun with him talking about the tragic events in his life that lead up to meeting his Senin Master from Konron Mountain “Genshitenson” as a child, to his time with Fugen, but the back and forth between the two starts to become a major framing device of these stories as the episode progresses. Ohtenkun even gets to the point by immediately explaining that Taiko’s Master is the real monster he should be fighting, and then tells Taiko his origin story.

According to Ohtenkun, He was once a being called “Oh-Eki” with the ability to split in two, and Taiko’s Master took interest in this to the point that during his tragic origin story where Dakki found him, His soul was transferred to a Yokai Body which became the Ohtenkun we know right now. While a good portion of the episode feels like a clip-show with a series of flashbacks of Taiko interacting with various characters from previous episodes, I’m left wondering what does this have to do with what’s going on now? In the last episode, Fugen blew somebody to hell with a magic science ball of nuclear energy, and now it’s just random flashbacks?

While the episode somewhat ends with Taiko explaining to Ohtenkun how he’s always accomplished his goals by doing things his way, there’s a large post-credit scene when we finally see Dakki oncemore who explains to Shinhyokyo about a creature she holds in high regard named “Jyoka”. During a flashback, It’s revealed that Jyoka made a deal with Dakki that if Jyoka gave her power that would surpass a Sennin, Dakki would help Jyoka help find it’s physical body which eventually leads to the chain of events that have taken place throughout the show where Dakki plunged The Yin Kingdom into chaos & self-destruction. But the episode finally ends with one more flashback, but this one takes place 2,000 years ago where two unknown beings meet Genshitenson for the first time.

Our Take

So where do I even begin with this? At first, it felt like your by-the-numbers obligatory recap episode, but it tries to be clever by making it essential to the plot with a series of big-reveals we the audience didn’t even know about that were possibly big twists in the Manga this show is based on. Sometimes the show excels in places when it’s coherent, but when it keeps flash-forwarding to scenes that haven’t lead up to these specific plot-points, It ruins the surprise and destroys any emotional investment or impact you had for the story & characters when they finally do happen. This is where the show frequently shoots itself in the foot for me.

When you do a recap episode, it’s supposed to make sense of what’s already happened, but they felt the need to drag us into very specific places the show itself most likely hasn’t even gotten to yet. It’s still heading to that point, but you know this show is bad when even the bland recap episode of Katana Maiden’s did a better job by comparison.