Drifters

Episode 11

Man, Drifters did not get off to a good start this week at all. I mentioned last week how much this show's tired gay panic humor irritated me, and this week we have to begin the episode with a weirdly elongated scene of Nobunaga explaining how “androgynous people” like Saint Germi are naturally duplicitous and underhanded, abnormal “on the inside and on the outside”. Now, you can chalk this up to Nobunaga being from the past and so on and so forth, but much as was the case with Shimazu's dismissal of Joan of Arc a few weeks back, it's still more off-putting than anything.

While Shimazu's hangups were at least pointed out as being trivially rooted in an archaic sense of chivalry and gender norms, pretty much everyone in Drifters seems to share innate disgust toward characters like Saint Germi for being cartoonishly homosexual. These sentiments have nothing to do with the overall plot, so they just come across as frat-boyish jokes that fall completely flat. Even the historically gay band of warriors, the Sacred Band of Thebes, can't escape the episode without the characters freaking out and apparently getting physically ill at the thought of their homosexuality. While they are spared the indignity of being depicted as flamboyant clowns, I still take issue with most of the so-called “comedy” in this episode. I understand that Japan is nowhere near as progressive when it comes to LGBTQ acceptance as the United States, but I found a good bit of the humor and commentary being espoused this week unusually distasteful, so take that as you will

Despite the show's treatment of Saint Germi and the Band of Thebes leaving a bad taste in my mouth, the rest of this episode wasn't bad. We got the usual politicking as Germi and the Drifters staged a coup on the Orte Government, which ran afoul of The Black King's own plans, though much of the episode was dedicated to the Drifters finally getting their rifles to display on the battlefield. Much of what I enjoyed in this episode came in the last eight minutes or so. This third act was not only a tense and well-constructed action scene, in keeping with most of Drifters' past endeavors, but it also managed to offer one of the few story payoffs we've gotten so far in the show.

With so much of the last eleven episodes feeling like protracted setup, I've started to burn out on Drifters a little bit. Moment-to-moment scenes tend to work really well, but as the season has gone on, we haven't seen enough of a cohesive whole forming from the different narrative threads being spun out every week. This is fine for a long-running show, but in order for that kind of sustained storytelling to work, you have to work in smaller stories that can be satisfyingly resolved in the meantime. The seize of the Orte castle was one such development, and the construction of the army's rifles this week was another. This plot was introduced weeks ago, and since then we've repeatedly picked back up on the progress of the guns' development, finally resulting in the fruits of the Dwarves labor this week. The moment where the Band of Thebes first fires the weapons is great, because it has weeks of buildup and weight behind it to give it that extra bit of oomph. If Drifters gets a second cour, it really needs to buckle down on these types of smaller narratives, or else the show will devolve into a series of loosely connected entertaining battle sequences. That isn't necessarily a terrible thing, but it isn't a great thing either.

I've enjoyed covering Drifters, and I hope it returns after the end of the cour next week, but I am wondering how satisfying of a conclusion we'll even be able to get at this point. We've only just gotten to know this show's large cast of characters, and new Drifters and Ends are still being introduced. Much of this first season has felt like prologue to a much larger story, and I'm afraid that Drifters will end up feeling somewhat slight because of that. We'll have to see how everything turns out next week, as the season comes to a head and the Drifters continue their bloody and ruthless campaign.

Rating: B-

Drifters is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is an English teacher who has loved anime his entire life, and he spends way too much time on Twitter and his blog.