Yaiba: Samurai Legend

Episode 13

Looks like we're jumping straight into the second cour of Yaiba, and have a revised version of the opening song to go with it. I don't think I like it quite as much as the first OP since the second verse of the song isn't quite as good, and the direction of the visuals is a lot sloppier, but there's still plenty of zany animation stuffed into it, so I guess it still gets the job done. I like the new ED song. It's a goofy little dance number showing the POV of Onimaru's mooks, being beaten up by Yaiba every week, and always getting yelled at by their boss. It's fun, and reminds you how hard these poor guys have it.

Despite these new coats of paint, this episode is largely business as usual. After getting a map from Yamoto, Yaiba and the others take a trip to Lake Biwa in the hopes of finding the Dragon God Orb and granting Yaiba the power of flight. Meanwhile, after testing out his ship's new Death Star Laser "Onimaru Cannon," Onimaru sends a new villain of the week after Yaiba in the form of a warrior named Miyoshi Sekai Nyudo, who seems to be a mismash between a Sengoku era warrior named Miyoshi Sekai, and a bald ogre from Japanese mythology called the Mikoshi-Nyudo. That's a pretty interesting combination to go with, though more so in concept than execution, as despite leaning closer towards the ogre part of his namesake and asserting that he won't bow to Onimaru, it doesn't take much to get him to fall in line.

His presence results in one of the show's best visual showcases to date. As Yaiba and the others struggle to track down the orb, their search ends up taking them to the middle of the lake, where they're ambushed by Nyudo and Mr. Spider, who quickly sink their ship. With everyone else clinging to Kojiro's sword to keep from drowning, this leaves Yaiba to fend them off, and it leads to some spectacular results. The show's combination of high-energy action and cartoon slapstick has done wonders for its animation till now, but even with how gorgeous the rest of the show has looked, it's even more impressive to see all that being capitalized on for a fight that largely takes place on the water. Between the movement of the characters and the movement of the waves, there's a lot to consider from a technical front, but you couldn't tell by looking at it, because it all looks as bouncy and fluid as the rest of the show's animation. The fact that the team manages to do this while also having Yaiba trying to dart around Mr. Spider's silly little cartoon plane is a genuine testament to how skilled the animation team is at their craft. We even get an insanely detailed cut of Yaiba surfing on the waves in the middle of this fight, and the fact that something like this was pulled off on a TV animation production schedule might be one of the biggest animation flexes I've ever seen.

Cool as all this is, it wouldn't be an episode of Yaiba if there wasn't a sufficient level of wackiness layered on top of it, so it's only fitting that Nyudo turns into a giant squid midway through the fight. It's pretty out of left field, but it's hard to care when the ensuing cartoon violence sees Yaiba getting slapped around like he's rubber. In the middle of all this slapstick, Yaiba comes across the stone containing the orb he's been looking for when Nyobo tries to hit him with it, but rather than being an orb that grants flight, it shoots water, and not nearly enough to help Yaiba out of this jam. In the end, it's Sayaka who saves the day by convincing Kojiro's magic sword to ram into Squid-Nyudo and give Yaiba the opening he needs to win. While it would have been nice to see her make a more dramatic contribution after last week had her resolving to get stronger, it at least made for a fun way to close out this fight. The episode ends with Onimaru rolling out a band of new animal warriors to deal with Yaiba. Seems like we'll be back to the monster of the week formula for a while, and while they seem like they could be more entertaining than the last batch, I'm not particularly excited about seeing the show continue in this trajectory. If that is what it'll be doing for the foreseeable future, I can only hope we get more encounters as fun as this one, since it serves as a good example of how fun that formula can be when firing on all cylinders.

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Yaiba: Samurai Legend is currently streaming on Netflix and Hulu on Saturdays.