While Mugen and Jin take their sweet time finding food, Fuu waits in an abandoned cabin and encounters a runaway woman named Yuri. Yuri is being chased by gun-toting thugs, and so Fuu hides her. After the danger has passed, they get to talking and Yuri points out that in the eyes of Fuu’s skull amulet are “Golgotha’s Cross” and the skull is a symbol of the Hidden Christians that hide on Ikitsuki Island (a small island in Nagasaki). Yuri has a little bit of information about the Sunflower Samurai; it seems that Kasumi Seizou is the Sunflower Samurai’s real name. Before Yuri can get to the juicy bits, however, the thugs come back and carry her off.
When Jin and Mugen finally return, the three set off to find Yuri, but everyone at the village denies that anything happened. Fuu, however, watches them at night and sees the villagers entering a secret cave… and then gets captured. The villagers have been swayed by a charismatic cultic leader, the same crazy man that Jin and Mugen encountered while looking for food. He claims to be Francisco Xavier III, but he has manipulated the villagers into crafting inexpensive firearms. By selling the guns to the Daimyou at a lower price than the Europeans, Xavier has become quite rich and wants Yuri to be his wife. While imprisoned, Yuri tells Fuu of how Ikitsuki was the last sanctuary of the Hidden Christians before their village was attacked a few years ago. Yuri and her father escaped, while Kasumi stayed behind. However, when Yuri’s father (a gunsmith) found out the truth behind Xavier, Xavier had him executed. Yuri and Fuu are in a real pinchu, but at the last moment Jin and Mugen come to the rescue. Xavier is exposed as a fraud, and when he tries to kill Yuri his gun backfires, killing him instantly. At the end, Fuu officially reveals that the Sunflower Samurai is her father… not like we didn’t realize this after the first episode. Jin and Mugen are still surprised, though.
The eyecatches in this episode were really neat, using stained glass to show traditional Japanese style paintings. Xavier was quite the villain with his fake nose and facial hair, bizarre engro-itario-japanese, and weird eyes, but his story was very bold. Heaven is overpopulated and running out of land? That’s a story that could really fly in Japan where real estate is hard to find, even in the afterlife! I kept hoping that Fujita from Gallery Fake would make an appearance, but it never happened. Overall a pretty good story, with some overdue plot development on Fuu’s story.
One Comment
You might want to note that Xavier’s gun doesn’t JUST backfire - the shot that “missed him” went into the gun.