For some reason, the fact that Dragon can fly surprises me, even though this show has necromancy, anthropomorphic monkey martial arts masters, and a girl that can control birds.
This week’s episode was a focus on the Tatsumi Twins, Undead Snake and Dragon. They are a more interesting pair than I would have thought.
First of all, however, we open the episode with Rabbit monologuing to a dying Monkey, how much he loves having her as a new friend. I’m getting some vibes here that Rabbit is a lonely person in real life, and creates undead people that will be his friend and never leave him.
Throughout this episode, we see that Rabbit has sent Snake to kill the trapped Horse by fire (Rabbit somehow knew about this–how?) but mainly, he wants headless Snake to kill Rat and any other combatants he comes across. Monkey is sent to retrieve the jewel from the lifeless Horse (confirming he did asphyxiate in the last episode, RIP Horse). She also brings Horse’s body to Rabbit for some unspecified reason. In one of the more darkly humorous scenes, Rabbit quips, “I would have liked him more well done.”
For some reason, Rabbit will leave Horse’s body in the street. Perhaps he intends to re-animate Horse later, or Horse was not a good candidate. At any rate, I found it odd.
Now let’s get back to Snake and Dragon. In the flashback, we see that both of them are members of a joint Cult of Snake and Dragon. For generations, these two combatant lines have fought together in the Juuni Taisen, ostensibly as a ready-made team. Since the Tatsumi twins have that natural brotherly rapport, they are chosen.
Despite their rapport, it’s difficult to say if the brothers genuinely care about each other. They live their lives as thieves working together, but it is clear there is resentment on either side. The younger Snake feels like Dragon won’t let him work by himself, Dragon feels like Snake screws things up. Even so, Dragon seems upset at the idea he would have to kill his brother in the Juuni Taisen, something they had never been told. In fact, I wonder what this cult has told them, since it seems obvious to us that only one can survive.
We get some scenes of them doing some big heists, using their twinship to their advantage. Snake likes setting fire to stuff, especially stuff he messes up. Dragon literally has to swoop in and rescue him. And I do mean literally. He’s a fucking flying guy. Why does this keep surprising me?
Then we fast-forward slightly to the night of the Juuni Taisen. Both characters seem somewhat at peace (so to speak) with killing each other. They arrive together, and boy does Rabbit make an entrance. Let’s show a picture of that, why don’t we?
Rabbit acts like he’s never met people before and points out Snake’s flamethrower. Snake tells him he can’t handle such a weapon. Immediately, we get a peculiar scene where Snake sees gold concentric circles. Monkey is shown doing something to the wall. I really don’t know what this scene is about. Is Snake sensing Monkey underground, setting floor explosives? It may be that Snake has Earth abilities, sensing vibrations, and Dragon has flying abilities because of the Dragon being a Celestial being.
The distracted Snake gets immediately killed by Rabbit, who clearly longs for Snake to be his undead buddy with a flamethrower. Dragon is surprised, but contemptuously calls him a fool. Well, at least he doesn’t have to kill his brother, but he doesn’t seem that concerned.
Ox comes striding in like the boss that he is, and scolds the assembly for killing before the rules are heard. If you look carefully, Rabbit shakes his head “No”, denying he killed Snake.
After this scene, we fast forward to the present, to find bad-ass Tiger walking down the street with her new jewel she got from Sheep. She, of course, drunk. She finds a headless Snake just standing there. She hopes to get into a fight with him, but he stands still. She drinks his alcohol-loaded flamethrower and starts to leave in boredom.
We then see Ox. He is feeling the left-behind Horse’s vitals (he’s dead, Jim). He then finds undead Snake, and attempts to kill him, but sees Tiger. Tiger is furious. We don’t know why she is so angry with Ox, and neither does he, but square off. Well, they try to. Undead Snake chooses that moment to send his cut-off arms (one of which Ox has removed) to strangle Tiger and Ox.
This has caught Ox off-guard, and for once he is in in real trouble. He makes a pact with Tiger that he will fight a duel with her outside of the Juuni Taisen provided she help him escape the dead Snake. She accepts the challenge. Ox sends his sword flying to strike the ground and create flames. The flames catch the arm around Tiger. I suspect the idea is to destroy one arm so that Tiger can remove the one from Ox.
The scene ends with Dragon in the moonlit sky looking down from above at the scene his dead brother has caused. It seems that he approves of his brother for once.
Over all, this was one of the most entertaining episodes. Dragon and Snake somehow ended up being more interesting than Horse. Neither of them are likable, but I just find it interesting seeing how they sorta-care, sorta-don’t care about each other. There are moments where it seems like Dragon at least cared about his brother, but we are never really sure. And of course, Tiger and Ox were incredible. Love those two.
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