The episode begins with a bunch of soldiers talking about how they built a giant wall to keep the Octoberists out of their land. You know what, the political jokes write themselves with this scene, so I’m just going to move on to the rest of the episode. After seeing how Shimazu and the rest of the drifters handled the situation in the last episode, some of the soldiers are considering getting the two Drifters they found in the last episode to help, but the other soldiers are hesitant about their fighting abilities, since one of them is senile. When they mock the oldest Drifter for pissing himself (yes, that really happened), the younger Drifter is upset at the soldiers because the elder was a feared warrior named Hannibal. Hey, NBC has to rub salt in the wound somehow, even if it is in a foreign property. The Part 8 Kira look-alike then breaks up the fight and tells them to prepare for the battle against the Octoberists, but before they can get ready, the Black King, the leader of the Ends, shows up with his army to battle. He even brought some historical warriors of his own with him, one of them being Joan of Arc. And he brought some World War 2 fighter pilots with him too. Definitely an interesting combination.
After a little bit of fighting, one of the guys breaks down a part of the wall and lets more of the Ends in to absolutely annihilate the army and burn down the entire city. The World War 2 bomber sees the destruction being caused by the Ends, which triggers a flashback of the destruction he caused in his time period, causing him to feel disgust and fly away from the scene. After the city has been left in ruin, the soldiers ask the two drifters if they can assist them in defeating the Black King, and they accept the offer. They get in a horse carriage and engage in what is probably one of the coolest action scenes in the entire series so far, and as the leave the burning city, they vow to get revenge on the Black King for what he’s done. The episode then comes to a close with the Black King telling his bird thing to exterminate every last Drifter. After the credits, we get back to our main trio as they find one of the Octoberist spies, and they engage in some interrogation via unfunny comedy. The lady then tells them that the Octoberists are supposed to spy on the Drifters and make sure that they’re all coming together so that they can defeat the Ends, but they don’t believe her, making this whole post-credits thing very pointless. It makes me think that this was just some dumb bonus chapter in the manga, but since I haven’t read the manga, I have no clue.
While there wasn’t a ton of story progression in this episode, it certainly delivered in the action department as always. It was pretty cool to see other Drifters besides the main trio make an appearance and actually do stuff, and I can’t wait to see more of these guys in the future, especially if they’ll be interacting with the main trio. Outside of the beginning and end of the episode, there was a surprising lack of awkward comedy, which worked well in the show’s favor, since the pacing actually flows much better without the comedy interruptions. This show just keeps getting more and more enjoyable for me, and at the rate things are going, this could be the most fun I’ve had watching a seasonal since Spring.
Drifters can be watched every Friday at 10:30AM EST on Crunchyroll.