Review: Drifters Episode 7: “Chaos Driver”

After all the build-up, we finally get two “Drifters” Vs “Ends” Battles But do they deliver?

Spoilers Below

Picking up from the previous episode, Joan of Arc, her loyal subordinate Gilles de Rais, and a cavalry of the Black King’s forces attack the Drifters’ camp where Toyo and the Elf village reside.

Their first order of business is to kill everyone and burn the crops with Gilles De Rais who in this rendition is depicted as a large but quiet brute with a large spear and can manipulate chains on his body to his will which he uses to also kill random Elves while Joan lays waste with her pyrokinesis.

After evacuating the elven women and children, Toyo confronts Joan, who he blindly and hilariously mistakes for a man, while Oda and Sharra gather some Elven archers to take out the Calvary without delay. At first, Yoichi is skeptical but Oda assures him that he’s usually good at destroying calvary and Yoichi faces off against the brute force of Gilles.

Joan attempts to trap Toyo in a wall of fire until Olminu jumps in with her magical pieces of paper creating stone walls to protect him as she was about to set him ablaze and the two quickly distance themselves to formulate a plan since Ominu has two magic papers left at the moment.

There’s a lot of great character moments in this scene, from Toyo expressing his gratitude to Ominu which makes her blush, to Toyo pointing out Joan’s primary flaw, in particular that she doesn’t really display any physical fighting prowess and is simply relying too much on her flame-based powers “chained to the trauma that made him an End” which makes Joan “irrational and easy to slay”.

Toyo tells Olminu to follow his lead on when to use the stone shield papers before Joan shows up while Yoichi struggles in his battle against Gilles due to the latter’s inhuman strength and durability as he continuously dodges his attacks while shooting multiple arrows at him like he’s fucking Legolas except it isn’t really working out the way he’d imagine. We even witness in the background Yoshisune (Yoichi’s former boss that he has personal issues with) mocking him to himself as he’s taking on this powerhouse.

After a great scene with Oda’s elf troops picking off the calvary in a forest, we finally cut back to Toyo Vs Joan as Olminu knows what to do on his lead. As Joan traps Toyo in an enclosed space of fire, Toyo gives the order to lay down the magic papers which rise up a stone wall propelling him upwards and the second paper turned at an angle launching him into Joan with a well-placed kick to her chest landing her in the castle well where her powers are temporarily nullified giving Toyo an Edge to actually defeat her.

As Joan sinks into the water, she starts to have flashbacks that lead up to how she became an “End” for Easy which gives a level of pathos for her as a villain. If you know anything about Joan of Arc’s history, this is a woman whom much like Mulan defied gender norms and fought for her people and country only to be disgraced but unlike Mulan, Joan was burned at the stake with the false accusation of witchcraft from the very people she saved. It’s also easy to figure out that Easy tends to play to their psychological weaknesses and only recruits “Ends” who are at their lowest.

When Toyo confronts Joan inside the well, He was about to deliver a killing blow but refuses out of samurai principle when he realizes that she really is a woman, He says to her “Begone. War is a Man’s work!” I mean how could he have known that she wasn’t a man? Her Haircut is as androgynous-looking as Ginnifer Goodwin’s hairstyle.

We cut back to Yoichi who is nearly killed. But just as all hope seems lost, Butch and the Sundance arrive at the scene, using Sundance’s Gatling gun which Mows most of Gilles’s body into rivulets of burning flesh, broken chains and bullet wounds to save Yoichi.

Gilles barely survives the brutal onslaught, much to the Drifters’ shock. And after a scene where Joan escapes by being rescued via dragon riders in the Back King’s army, Gilles dies with a smile and promises to wait for Joan to join her in the afterlife as he disintegrates into salt.

After reuniting with Olminu, Oda deduces that he’s a drifter himself and Abe decides to reveal his full name to be Abe no Haruakira the leader of the Octobrist Organization and a legendary figure in Japanese folklore.

Overview.

We finally get to see the Drifters actually go up against the Ends for the first time and damn, it knew how to deliver.  It’s an interesting contrast that the Ends almost appear to have a choice to “Join the Darkside” with Easy’s Ends to “raise hell” into this new world so to speak. While Joan’s flashbacks paint her with some understandable pathos, they also show that she almost had no choice but to accept.

Ironically, Easy as a dark influence still seems to allow more choice than Murasaki did with our main trio and the other drifters we’ve seen so far. I don’t know how much it matters, but it does show that the Ends have some degree of motivation behind their genocidal actions. We’re given a strong implication that they were all unjustly “wronged” in some way and have willingly chosen to take their revenge in the world they were thrust into, laying waste on this destructive path they tread upon.

Many interpretations of Joan often depict her as either a competently trained warrior who cross-dressed or someone who only excelled at boosting morale and rallying up troops before battle, but never actually partaking in physical combat. And given that we never actually see Joan strike someone with a sword and only use her flame powers, It seems to support the second interpretation in particular.

Toyo’s crazy tactic of using Olminu’s Octoberist papers to create a horizontal stonewall and propelling himself into Joan with a well-placed kick was awesome and kinda reminded me of Guy’s wall jump attack from final fight. Yoichi’s battle was also equally intense but understandably he was seriously unprepared due to how powerful their foe was.

As someone who’s actually read the Manga this show is based on, (and still reads it whenever new chapters are translated.) I’m shocked that this adaptation is consistently dead-on from its source material. Since the Manga is currently ongoing at the time of the review, we’ll see how close it progressively stays, since this show now has six more episodes to go within this season.