Posted by Akahige on January 31, 2001 at 11:18 AM:
OH MY GOD, THEY KILLED IKEDA!!!! YOU *@!&%?#$!!!! Why'd Stan Sakai decide to do that?! At least Ikeda died a suitably heroic death, but still...So, what's his family going to do now? It's gonna be pretty tough for them, especially the kids. Man, this really bums me out. The fight with the Neko was good, especially with their popping-out-of-the-ground technique. Usagi and Kagemaru's fight was cool, too. Best of all was the epilogue with Chizu and Kimi (Glad to see she survived!). It was very touching to see Chizu writing memorial tablets and praying for her dead comrades. One thing bothers me, though: Kimi tells Chizu that runners have just been sent to recall Kagemaru and his band of Neko. I don't know how many days have passed between this issue and the previous one, but wouldn't that have been done sooner? More to the point, why didn't Chizu just head for Nagoya and tell Kagemaru herself that the mission was over? It doesn't seem likely that she'd procrastinate in recalling the others. And now that Kagemaru knows that Grasscutter has been delivered to the shrine, what next? Would he tell Chizu, or attempt to recover the sword himself, for his own purposes? When Chizu finds out, they'll probably have quite an argument over what to do next. An unsettling end to a great story.