Introduction

In Ep. 26, the Asakura family began to make its move to get Yoh's crew stronger, particularly Ren, Chocolove, and Horohoro. Mikihisa, Yoh's father, found Ren's team and offered to teach them the Chō-Senjiryakketsu. However, out of pride, Ren refused Mikihisa's charity and challenged him to a fight only to be easily outmaneuvered.

In my review, I praised the animations as they felt fluid and punchy. There was actually a sense of space and direction as opposed to characters attacking with a generic background behind them. The wide color palettes were very pleasing to the eye and the sound design sounded convincing. Question is can Ep. 27 keep it up?

Episode Summary

This episode adapted Chapters 148 through 151 of the manga.

Leaving off where the previous episode concluded, Horohoro is about to intervene, but Ren calls him off. Refusing to wield, he manages to kick Mikihisa in the face for a clean, decisive strike. Impressed, Mikihisa praises Ren's tenacity and Yoh's father asks him if he wants to learn the Chō-Senjiryakketsu from him. In typical Ren fashion, he haughtily turns it down and proclaims that he will instead take it from Mikihisa before continuing the fight.

Ren successfully lands his first hit on Mikihisa.

The episode cuts ahead, revealing that Ren has lost. Meanwhile, Horohoro and Chocolove enjoy Mikihisa's barbecue. Out of curiosity, the two shaman asks Yoh's father that if he's so powerful, why is he leaving it to them to stop Hao. Mikihisa goes on a philosophical monologue about how adults metaphorically hit their ceiling and can no longer grow stronger, but children have vast amounts of untapped potential and stand the best chance.

Horohoro and Chocolove enjoy Mikihisa's barbecue as Ren reflects on his defeat.

Unfortunately, the barbecue ends when Patch tribe members, Magna and Nickrome, along with Hao's henchmen Zang-Ching, Mohamed, and Peyote crash the party. Apparently, they intend to kill Yoh's friends. In addition, they reveal that Mikihisa is also in the tournament along two other shamans named Redseb and Seyram, and that another team of Hao's henchmen are on their way to kill them to harvest their souls for the Spirit of Fire.

Ren and the others are found by Magna and Nichrome.

Mikihisa is caught in dilemma of helping Ren and his friends or leave them behind to save his teammates. However, Ren assures Mikihisa that he has learned his techniques and Yoh's father agrees to leave. Meanwhile, Hao's other team has found Redseb and Seyram and is about to kill them both before Anna, Tamao, and Jun intervene in the nick of time thanks to Silva's intel.

Hao's other team, Hana-Gumi, finds Redseb and Seyram.

Meanwhile, Ren is able to take on Zang-Ching and Mohamed solo. Ren easily knocks out the former and when the latter tries to blast him with a mana beam, Ren gets behind him and knocks him down. Able to sense their furyoku, Ren can "ride" the mana to easily dodge their attacks and counterattack, a technique called the Shamanic Oracle. However, the momentum quickly shifts the other way when Hao's henchmen mocks Ren's hesitancy to kill and how he was nothing like the person he was when he kill Chrom. At that moment, Ren learns that the Patch officiant he murdered is Nichrome's brother and lets his spirit waver. Peyote takes huge advantage of that opening and impales Ren with his giant calavera Over Soul, Grande Fantasma.

Ren easily gets behind Mohamed as he readies his counterattack.

Ren is impaled by Peyote's Over Soul, Grande Fantasma.

Horohoro and Chocolove see Ren's bloody body and initially think he was pulling a prank with a body double. However, Nichrome assures them that it's Ren's real body and he's as good as dead. Unwilling to accept the fact, Horohoro and Chocolove attack Hao's henchmen so that they can escape with Ren and get him medical attention from Faust. Unfortunately, their furyoku levels are way too low to even lay a scratch and the episode ends in a cliffhanger.

Horohoro and Chocolove easily swatted away by Peyote's Over Soul.

My Thoughts

I came away pretty impressed from the previous episode. This time, I was extremely impressed. In my opinion, this episode had the best fighting animation to date. I think Studio Bridge outdid itself with all of the different angles and special effects.

In a lot of the previous fights, Studio Bridge would heavily rely on generic backgrounds when characters prepare their attacks. The advantage of using generic backgrounds is it takes less time and money. However, it removes the sense of space and direction which brings down the dynamicism. Make no mistake, this episode still used plenty of those types of shots, but it also had plenty of angles where it shows exactly where the characters are throughout the battle. As a result, the times where you see the generic backgrounds do not take away from the experience.

When Mohamed executes his attack, there's a generic background. But the episode contextualizes where he's attacking from before and after.

I was also very impressed with the color palette for various effects. Mohamed's bright purple beam attack looked very nice and convincingly powerful. What really took the cake was when Ren executed the Shamanic Oracle technique. The yellow aura, high framerate (it had that 60 fps impression), and ghosting effect were a really cool way to show, not tell, how Shamanic Oracle works.

The low framerate doesn't do it justice, but in the native feed, the animation is super smooth.

It should not be forgotten that this episode was also very strong in the character development and voice acting departments. Ren's development, especially, has been substantial. He's still that arrogant warrior, but the way he humbles himself and takes everything in to further grow his skills is a huge departure from the beginning of the anime. As for the voice acting, my favorite part was when Horohoro and Chocolove were in the midst of processing Ren's demise and slowly realize that their friend was done. The entire escalation sounded very riveting and powerful.

All in all, this may be my favorite episode thus far. Just about everything was executed superbly from the animations to the music to the character development. While I'm not the type of person to give out perfect scores, I would say this episode is very close to hitting that mark.