Hypnosis Mic -Division Rap Battle- Rhyme Anima

Episode 4

I'm sitting here in awe because somehow Hypnosis Mic managed to put together a somewhat well-thought-out yakuza caper in 25 minutes. The last two Division-focused episodes were mostly ridiculous with the Buster Bros. bustin' up a bank robbery and Matenrō solving a jealousy-fueled murder set-up. Mad Trigger Crew plays it straight though, if you ignore some questionable cooking.

Samatoki is the right-hand man of the Katengumi, a Yokohama-based yakuza clan. As an aside, I'm tempted to ping Jake Adelstein for some yakuza insights into this show. My familiarity with Yokohama is pretty much limited to the Pikachu Invasion that happens every year and the Minato Mirai area (the skyline that's frequently shown in Hypnosis Mic). Apparently, it's also home to its own Chinatown and some cursory research shows that it's the largest such district of its kind in Japan.

Anyway, in the world of Hypnosis Mic, Yokohama's ports and Chinatown are all Katengumi turf and these yakuza just say no to drugs. A rival gang starts to push their influence and products into the area which infuriates Samatoki. Our favorite corrupt copper Jyuto also really hates drugs and has aligned himself with the Katengumi in order to pull off amazing arrests, jump up the ranks of the police, and eradicate drugs forever. If you're wondering where that leaves the third member of our Village People spin-off, it turns out Rio also has his own goal of boosting his former commander out of war criminal jail. Apparently when women took over Japan, they put all the former heads of the government and military into a futuristic-looking prison in Chuoku, a district at the center of Tokyo.

Mad Trigger Crew heads to a casino the rival gang is operating on Samatoki's turf. Not much happens here except for Rio establishing himself as the series' resident himbo. The drug trade-off that Mad Trigger Crew planned to foil ends up being a set-up, Rio recognizes some of the brawlers as former members of his unit, and Jyuto is pretty sure there's a leak within Katengumi itself. They decide to storm the rival gang's office and discover that one of Samatoki's henchmen was blackmailed into leaking info after his little sister was kidnapped and Rio's former henchmen thought aligning themselves with the yakuza would lead to freeing their commander.

The groups face off and we get a new song "RED ZONE (Don't test da Master)" which is an original anime track. It doesn't have the meme-ability of the chorus of the first episode's song "Gang, police, and navy All together, nah mean?" but it definitely shows off Shinichiro Kamio's abilities much better. The rhythm itself is pretty good, but the backbeats and chorus are a little uninspired. Does every one of their songs include a police siren?

Finally, it looks like Samatoki has a long-lost little sister out there, somewhere. I'm sure that definitely won't be relevant later.

Even though there is quite a bit to this individual episode's plot, the entire narrative felt pretty naturally-paced. I didn't feel like there was too much info-dumping disguised as casual conversations. Is it still silly? Yes, but I'm not sure anything can top the bank heist. I'm even starting to get used to antagonists pulling out microphones instead of standard weapons!

Rating:

Hypnosis Mic -Division Rap Battle- Rhyme Anima is currently streaming on Funimation.