How do you rate episode 10 of
Bucchigiri?! ? Community score: 4.1
© 「ぶっちぎり?!」製作委員会
“Why isn't this working for me?”
That's the main question running through my head for most of this episode. Overall, there's nothing exactly wrong about Matakara's descent into fear and violence in this episode. His actions make sense both emotionally and logically, even when we as the audience know that he is making serious mistakes. The rest of the cast behaves as you would expect and there are even some solid moments for supporting characters who don't get much screen time. There were no major, obvious problems with anything in this episode, so why did I spend most of my time checking the runtime bar at the bottom of the screen?
Maybe it's the production values. While this episode isn't quite as difficult as the wrestling game, that classic end-game MAPPA struggle plays out in small but important ways. There are plenty of fight scenes meant to show Matakara's growing desperation as Ichiya manipulates him, and while none of it looks terrible, it also never lands. There were the occasional flowery cuts or isolated looks that looked good, but almost none of the hits made much of an impact, relying solely on cuts and sound effects to sell themselves. This is especially evident with Matakara's rematch with Jabashiri as we take their confrontation from episode two for comparison. The choreography, direction and overall quality of the action is clearly a step down and it's distracting overall, especially when this is supposed to detail a worsening emotional state Currency of Matakara. When the violence he commits feels significantly less brutal than the previous ones, it undermines the entire endeavor.
Then again, I've seen shows with worse action that still moved me, especially when a character I cared about was going through something difficult. I like Matakara more than anyone else on this show, so in every way, a story done right will win me over. Perhaps the disconnect comes from how vague his motivations are. He is driven by a terrible fear of the as yet unexplained black Karensma, to the point that Ichiya's mere mention of it could cause Matakara to act against all his principles. However, we still don't know exactly what that black mist is, and it's only introduced at the beginning of this arc for Matakara. Combined with his brother's strangely uncertain fate, getting inside Matakara's head becomes much more difficult. I understand that he is scared and confused, but I try to sympathize with that fear when it is so abstract.
Mostly, though, I think it has to do with the problems that plagued Bucchigiri?! long ago: it missed the opportunity to develop the foundation this story needed, but still spent too much time on each plot beat. Arajin has now spent two entire episodes doing nothing on the sidelines, waiting for Matakara or Senya to find him and explain things without ever taking the initiative. Matakara spends so much time in this episode doing the same thing over and over again–I lost count of how many times other characters said “this isn't like you” to him and never got a response. As the audience, we know that this is because Arajin is the only one who can reach him, but their lack of meaningful interactions before this story arc makes it less believable more emotionally reliable. So we have to wait for an inevitable confrontation that we already know will not go as planned.
Without the right setup to allow these characters and their relationships to have impact, familiar ideas can only be executed well to a certain extent. Much like this episode's production difficulties, the series fell into mediocrity thanks to poor decisions made earlier, and Bucchigiri?! incapable of packing a real punch.
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Bucchigiri?! currently streaming on Crunchyroll.