The episode begins with Ringo knocking on the door of a hut, having brought Mizu and Taigen there in the back of a cart. He is pleading with the owner to open up and help him tend to Mizu and Taigen, hoping they can still be saved. At that point Mizu's sword falls off the cart and makes its distinctive clanging sound, which causes Master Eiji/Swordfather to immediately open the door. Master Eiji has Ringo bring Mizu and Taigen inside so they can be cared for.
Sometime later, as winter is passing into spring, Fowler and Heiji Shindo leave the castle at Tanabe Island, with Fowler hoping it's the last time he'll ever see the place. The two are making a springtime trip to Edo for the Sannō Matsuri, a major Shinto festival, during which they will launch their coup. Shindo is worried because the guns haven't arrived yet, and their plans and coup will never succeed without them. Fowler tells him not to worry and the two begin a trip to Edo filled with debauchery and pleasures of the flesh.
During a night at Madam Kaji's brothel while being pleasured by the girls, Fowler speaks of details of the plan and tells Shindo that the guns will be smuggled in by boat in two days. Shindo immediately writes a letter to Lord Chiba, urging him to intercept the guns at all costs, as Shindo believes there can be no sharing power with Fowler and Fowler will be a disaster for Japan. Lord Chiba and his men search all the boats coming into the country, but can find no sign of the guns that Fowler promised, only random Western goods, leading him to wonder if Fowler is deceiving them and cannot actually supply the guns he claimed that he could.
Back at Master Eiji's house, Mizu finally comes to, but finds that Ringo is still angry with her. Taigen also wakes up after Mizu, and thanks her for saving his life. Master Eiji says he cannot mend Mizu's broken sword and will not make or give her a new sword, because of how out of control the flame of vengeance is within her, so Mizu decides that she must remake her blade herself. Her attempts don't go well, however, as the steel stubbornly stays in its shape and won't melt so she can reforge it.
The next day she speaks with Taigen, and Taigen tries to snap her out of her morose attitude and encourage her that she can defeat Fowler with whatever weapon she wants. The two have a friendly wrestling session, but the mood changes when Mizu tells Taigen about Akemi's engagement to the Shogun's son Takayoshi, how Mizu allowed Akemi to be taken away by her father's samurai, and Fowler's plot against the Shogun. Taigen is incredulous that Mizu has known all this and not told him about any of it and furthermore hasn't told anyone else about the plot against the Shogun or taken action against it. He leaves to warn the Shogun of the danger, and angrily tells Mizu he'll come looking for her for a duel afterward.
Meanwhile, Akemi's marriage to Takayoshi is scheduled for when the lords arrive for the festival and to pay deference to the Shogun. Akemi still chafes at the arrangement and wishes for freedom, but her father pleads with her to trust him. Among the many gifts and treasures that will be hers, she finds a lovely and colorful bird, and sets it free to fly outside while she admires the bird's beauty. Suddenly an arrow fired by her husband to be kills the bird, and he refuses to speak to Akemi when she furiously reprimands him. Later in the day (intimidated by stories told by her ladies-in-waiting of how Takayoshi never speaks to women and is ruthlessness inside the bedroom as well as in martial arts), Akemi considers suicide by leaping from her window until Seki walks into her quarters. Seki tries to point out that Akemi has all the knowledge, toughness, and learning needed to not just survive but thrive even in an environment as dangerous as the Shogun's court, but Akemi doesn't want to hear it.
The following day she is out on a trip around Edo in her palanquin with her ladies-in-waiting when she spots Madam Kaji and her girls, who have come to Edo since between the festival and Akemi's marriage, all the clients seem to be in Edo. Akemi seeks advice from Madam Kaji, only to find her advice is not very different from Seki's, albeit with a few more observations about how the men who seem most beastly and brutal are often also the weakest and most prone to manipulation, which she encourages Akemi to take advantage of. Akemi leaves, still uncertain and troubled. Ise, knowing Fowler's plans from having heard him speak them while he and Shindo were in Madam Kaji's brothel, pities Akemi, believing that Fowler is going to kill her during the coup.
Later that day the Shogun, his family, Akemi, and the lords all eat together and celebrate the marriage of Akemi and Takayoshi. Lady Ito, the Shogun's wife, says that Akemi's meal has been made specifically for her. It turns out to be a series of dishes meant to disgust or humiliate her, with the last dish being especially cruel; the bird that Akemi had admired and Takayoshi shot. Akemi forces herself to remain impassive and not betray any weakness or give an excuse for the Shogun and company to take offense, but she fumes inwardly. When she gets a present of two more birds that night and her ladies-in-waiting titter about how perhaps they will be breakfast and lunch, a furious Akemi storms into Takayoshi's quarters, slaps him, and demands an explanation for his behavior. To her shock, Takayoshi has difficulty speaking, but eventually manages to stutter out that the birds were meant as an apology for the way that his mother is treating Akemi. Akemi quickly realizes from Takayoshi's sad and gentle words and expressions that his fearsome reputation and silence is a cover to hide his stutter, and furthermore, that it's his mother Lady Ito who is behind Akemi's misery. Akemi immediately accepts his stuttering and the two begin to bond, and eventually to make love.
Back at Master Eiji's house, Mizu continues to find herself troubled and unsure how to go on. She has a talk with Master Eiji, who tells her that she has been focusing too much on the demon inside her and neglecting everything else, when she should be trying to put all of herself into her art and the things she does, whether that's creating something or getting revenge. With Ringo's help, Mizu performs a ceremony to try to find balance, then tries once more to melt the steel to reforge her sword. This time the steel melts so it can be reshaped, but Mizu instead gives it as a gift to Master Eiji and sets off for Edo with Ringo.
Fowler brings Heiji Shindo to a place where he can demonstrate their guns, much to Shindo's confusion since as far as he knows the guns haven't arrived. Fowler reveals that they have... disguised as parts of other Western goods, and he assembles one from various bits and pieces of innocent items that were brought into the country. After demonstrating the superior range of the guns against a bow, Fowler has Lord Chiba executed for having tried to intercept the guns, saying Shindo will have to take Chiba's place during the coup. Shindo has little choice but to accept as he and Fowler overlook the small army recruited to take Edo castle and destroy the Shogun.
Akemi rises early and dismisses her ladies-in-waiting and attendants from her service, realizing they are spies and catspaws for Lady Ito, then summons Madam Kaji and her girls. Akemi offers to buy out all their contracts with the brothel, then makes clear that while everyone is free to go, they also have an open offer to work for her there in the palace, as she desperately needs people she can trust around her, especially worldly people. Madam Kaji and the girls are glad to accept, and Ise in particular is overwhelmed by Akemi's generosity, considering she was less than kind to Akemi in the brothel. Ise tells Akemi about Fowler's plot to overthrow the Shogunate, and Akemi goes to her father, bringing Ise with her to tell the story. Lord Daichi listens, thanks Ise... and then throws her over the same railing where Akemi was considering suicide earlier. He then reveals that he is part of the plot with Fowler and Shindo, and has his soldiers put Akemi in a cell where she will be safe and out of the way while the coup happens.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Breather Episode: The episode is much slower paced and much more dialog heavy/character focused than the past few episodes, which had much more action. Arguably subverted near the end of the episode, as the episode closes with a big twist and we know that the coup against the shogun is almost ready to start.
- Call-Back:
- One of the lords at the Shogun's dinner is Watari "the Walrus", Akemi's only client from Madam Kaji's brothel. He's startled when he gets a look at Akemi, and she is amused to see him and his reaction.
- When Taigen brings Mizu some fish dumplings from Kohama which he declares was the only good part of growing up in Kohama, Mizus replies that she wouldn't know, quoting Taigen about how she was just a "stray dog" eating unwanted trash rather than good food.
- Madam Kaji was correct when she believed that Fowler had once tasted human flesh.
- Character Death: Lord Chiba is killed by Fowler and his men due to Chiba's attempt to seize the guns.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Early in the episode, Akemi contemplates the large window in her quarters and the low railing that someone could throw themselves over in order to kill themself. At the end of the episode, her father easily pushes Ise over the railing to silence her.
- Fowler mentions the Puppet King they have lined up to take the shogun's place. Turns out it's none other than Akemi's father, Lord Daichi.
- Chekhov's Lecture: Seki advises Akemi, while playing Go, to expand her territory and exploit the vulnerabilities of her opponents. Madam Kaji says that powerful men are often weak and if she gains control of their weakness she can become powerful in turn. Akemi puts this into action after realising Takayoshi is putting up a Jerkass Façade, offering empathy and attraction instead of mockery, thereby gaining his trust. She then removes his mother-in-law's spies and replaces them with people whose loyalty will be to her. Her father's betrayal catches her off guard, but she's off to a good start.
- The Chessmaster: Akemi and Seki stopped playing the strategy game Go when Akemi was 12 because by that point Akemi was winning every game. Seki tries to encourage her to approach her position at court like a Go game that she absolutely must win, to use all the same strategies she employed in the game to secure her place and the power she needs to find independence. Akemi finally starts at the end of the episode, realizing her true enemy is her mother-in-law Lady Ito, that her attendants are just spies and servants for Lady Ito, and she must surround herself with people who will be loyal to her.
- Combat Pragmatist: Taigen challenges Mizu to spar with a weapon, then acts like he's hurt too badly to spar. When Mizu lowers her guard he tackles her.
- Commonality Connection: Master Eiji finds Ringo annoying, but they end up bonding over how they've both overcome their disabilities.
- Contemplate Our Navels: Mizu spends a decent chunk of the episode doing this, feeling the weight of past choices and mistakes.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Played with. Heiji Shindo is an extremely nasty piece of work, but he's desperate to find a way to cut Fowler out of the coup, fearing that Fowler having a position of such power over Japan will be a disaster for the entire nation. That said, once Fowler outsmarts and outmaneuvers Shindo so he cannot be cut out of the coup, Shindo simply goes along with it rather than try to stop the coup.
- Evil Matriarch: Lady Ito sees Akemi as a rival for influence over her son and a threat to Lady Ito's power, and as such is absolutely determined to humiliate and break Akemi.
- Foe Romance Subtext: Once again Mizu has a moment with Taigen that combines this and the Interplay of Sex and Violence, as they both seem to get aroused after wrestling together. (Taigen has a visible hard-on, much to his confusion and chagrin, while Mizu's mount of him and eye contact looks suspiciously sexual, and very reminiscent of how she wound up on top of Mikio and then kissed him in her flashbacks. One gets the feeling that if Taigen had given her another second or two she would have leaned down and kissed him.)
- Freudian Excuse: Fowler exposits to Shindo about growing up in the middle of war and a famine that destroyed his entire family when he was still a child, and it's clear that those experiences played quite a large role in shaping Fowler into the man he grew up to be.
- Friendly Rivalry: Mizu and Taigen are briefly this, as Taigen is positively cheerful when they're wrestling. When she gives him some bad news the mood quickly changes.
- Gilded Cage: A Literal Metaphor when Akemi finds a songbird in a gold cage amongst her wedding presents. The joy she experiences letting it fly free is brought to an abrupt halt (along with the music) when Takayoshi puts an arrow through the bird.
- Have You Told Anyone Else?: Akemi's father does this with Ise when she reveals the plot, and promptly throws her out a castle window to her death when she says no.
- Heel Realization: Taigen is ashamed of himself when he walks the streets of Kohama, where he and Mizu grew up, and remembers chasing Mizu and throwing rocks at her when she was a child.
- Interrupted Suicide: Played with. When Seki sees Akemi leaning out over the ledge he calls her out and immediately forces her away from it, but Akemi tells him she wouldn't have been able to go through with it. Not yet, anyway.
- Ironic Echo: Madam Kaji tells Akemi that she has to "decide what you want for your fucking self," and Akemi repeats those words near the end of the episode when she offers the women positions as her attendants at court.Akemi: It seems I've decided what I want for my-fucking-self.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Neither Seki or Madam Kaji are nice when they tell Akemi off, but they're not wrong either. Akemi is of course correct that women should be treated better than they are in Edo era Japan, but she is refusing to accept that at some point she has to try to navigate the society she lives in instead of just wishing for change, and since real life doesn't always present Third Options, that means making the most out of the choices that are in front of her.
- Just Between You and Me: At Madam Kaji's brothel, Fowler not only tells Shindo how he's bringing the guns into Japan, he also monologues about his plans for taking over the shogunate, which Shindo already knows. He also does this in front of Madam Kaji's prostitutes to boot, just to add onto things. Somewhat played with in that Fowler leaves out critical details from what he tells Shindo about the guns, but this does nothing to mitigate the fact that the prostitutes who overhear his scheme are now potential loose ends who could tell others about it. (This could be a Call-Back to when Mizu said "Men like him like to talk so much they eventually tell you how to destroy them" about Heiji Shindo. Fowler, for all his cunning, seems to have fallen victim to the same tendency, but is fortunate that when word does get out, it gets told directly to a member of the conspiracy.)
- Hard-Work Montage: Mizu building a forge to melt down her sword.
- Human Notepad: Mizu has to purify her soul before forging a new sword, so she strips naked and paints the Heart Sutra all over her body. She has to have Ringo paint the words on her back, which he does as a gesture of reconciliation between the two.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Seki claims to have been this, saying he was not especially good at any of the roles he played throughout his life. It's possible that he's being more humble than honest in that moment.
- Make an Example of Them: Fowler hints to Shindo that he killed Lord Chiba in part to be an example to Shindo. Fowler needs somebody on the inside of the Shogun's palace to make sure the coup goes smoothly, and he likely knows that Shindo and Chiba conspired together. Since Chiba is the one who got caught doing it, Fowler kills him and puts it on Shindo to play the role of the inside man, while giving Shindo a warning about what will happen to him if he betrays Fowler again.
- Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Takayoshi turns out to be a kind young man with a stutter who hides it behind a cold silence. Most of the rest of his bad reputation seems to be his mother's doing, as she deliberately spreads rumors that give him a fearsome reputation to keep people from talking to him and exposing his speech impediment.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: Lady Ito, Akemi's mother-in-law, sees Akemi as a potential rival for control over the Shogun's court, and is determined to fight over that power.
- Out-Gambitted: Heiji Shindo tries to surreptitiously get details about how Fowler is bringing the guns into Japan so that he can have Lord Chiba seize the guns for themselves. At that point they'd be able to kill Fowler and carry on with the coup without him. Unfortunately, Fowler was a step ahead of them, having disguised the guns as harmless goods, so Lord Chiba misses them entirely.
- Reduced to Ratburgers: When Fowler tells about the steps he and his sister took to try to survive the Ulster Famine, eating rats was actually a relatively pleasant step before things got truly desperate later, when Fowler talks about feeding his sister his own blood to try to keep her alive, and when she eventually died, eating her kidneys to sustain himself.
- Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: Taigen scoffs at Mizu's insistence that the sword is the soul of the samurai, and that she needs her sword. He responds by essentially saying that the sword is just a tool, and what matters is how the person can use the tool. It's a very natural contrast between their perspectives shaped from their past: Mizu was an apprentice to a master sword maker who insisted on personalizing his swords for his clients and always striving to create the perfect work, or at least the work that was perfect for his client. For Taigen the sword was a method for advancement, and he's had plenty of time to shake off any romantic illusions about the nature of samurai and what goes into being a swordsman over the course of the years that he has been around swordsmen and grown up in the dojos.
- Shout-Out: Shindo and Fowler are shown watching a prostitute do a live recreation of The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife.
- Stealth Mentor: Seki tells about having made sure that not only would Akemi learn the tools she would need to navigate the world, but that she would want to do so, and because of that she would be prepared for the world in her adulthood.Seki: I've always known this day would come. Since your mother died, I tried with the time I had to ready for the world that is, not the world you'd have it be. Without your father knowing... often without you knowing. You think you sneaked into the library to read all those years? Why do you think you wanted to? Know it or not, you are equipped to do more than survive here... but succeed.
- Stutter Stop: Akemi coaxes Takayoshi into relaxing with her, making it clear she doesn't despise him for his Speech Impediment. He's later shown making love to her while reciting erotic poetry, his stutter gone.
- Sympathy for the Devil: Heiji Shindo is no angel himself and he absolutely despises Fowler, but when Fowler tells about his childhood and living through the suffering that was part of the Nine Year's War
and the Ulster Famine, even Shindo seems taken aback and sympathetic. - Sympathy for the Hero: Ise shakes her head in pity and concern for Akemi after Akemi runs into Madam Kaji and company on the streets, believing that Akemi is doomed due to the upcoming coup.
- Tell Him I'm Not Speaking to Him: Despite dragging his former master all the way to Master Eiji's house, Ringo makes a point of refusing to speak to her directly while loudly voicing his disapproval in her earshot.
- Tested on Humans: One of the condemned prisoners is given a bow and arrow and encouraged to take a shot at Fowler. When the arrow falls short, Fowler uses his rifle's superior range to kill him. A squad of riflemen then gun down the other prisoners, one of whom is revealed to be Lord Chiba after his hood is removed.
- This Is Reality: Both Seki and Madam Kaji are exasperated by Akemi's insistence on talking about how the world should be while completely refusing to deal with the world as it exists.
- Travel Montage: The map version is used to show Fowler and Shindo traveling to Edo, intercut with the decadent and sadistic pleasures that Shindo has arranged at every stop.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- Taigen is furious and incredulous that Mizu didn't tell him sooner about Akemi's engagement and hasn't told anyone or done anything about the plot against the Shogun, and tells her off for it.
- Swordfather does a fairly soft version but pointed version of this. When Mizu says that she's not the child he knew, he agrees, and tells her that child would have run away in fear from adult Mizu thanks to her ruthlessness and bloodlust.
- You Talk Too Much!: Ringo of course.Master Eiji: You can help me by providing silence.
