Yoroi-Shinden Samurai Troopers Episodes 13-24 Anime Series Review

A structural struggle of any "legacy" series is always going to be that it has to succeed, follow on from something that finished in one way or another in order to provide a place for a legacy. The previous characters or mantle or setting or what-have-you must have moved on in some way to clear the way for the new entry to inherit that element. The first half of Yoroi-Shinden Samurai Troopers had already chafed under this requirement, shunting the original heroes into the demon dimension with all the grace of Shin Sakura Wars' similar subplot—all the while introducing new concepts and complications not present in that original series into its gonzo, over-cramped run. This second cour of episodes thus similarly shies away from that previous series' legacy to concern itself with its own sense of legacy. The key problem in the resulting mess is that, as described, in order for something new to be born, a whole lot has to be destroyed to make room for it.

That is, the main trick that writer Shōgo Mutō has in Yoroi-Shinden, whether it's trying to elicit passing pathos or mechanically clearing the deck for new powers and team dynamics, is killing off cast members. A bunch of background extras from the first half of the series are resurrected, but the likes of Mirei, Shion's old team of Troopers, and Kaito's grandma all stay dead. Half of the Ten Warriors got offed so the remaining five can get a back-ported backstory and stick around as a sub-team before sacrificing themselves again. Ryusei returns from his previously obligatory sacrifice so Shion can trade deaths with him. Ramaga goes through like five more health bars and still manages to be alive by the end of this story.

Spoilers, I guess, but the fact is that Yoroi-Shinden Samurai Troopers is such a hurricane of sacrificial swerves that it's virtually impossible to talk about without addressing its shallow fixation on offing its cast. It's not like Muto's writing is incapable of playing it for proper drama: Shion's death is actually effectively built up, with the resolution being almost affectingly emotional. Maybe it helps that I liked Shion, but the fact is it rings a damn sight better than what happened to Mirei in the previous part of the anime. But then for comparison there's the previously dead "Last-name group" of the Ten Warriors, who resurface in Gai's mind palace to help out in their own way, only to be spiritually killed off again...and then have their presence yo-yoed around at the whims of spectacle. Credit where it's due, it turns out there is a purpose to that, but I necessarily have to save it for my appraisal of the series finale.

Until it arrives there, Yoroi-Shinden is a sequence of alignment shifts and fake-outs so consistently abrupt they certainly feel like they're being made up in real time. Just for one example: the 16th episode has Ryusei and Shion make a huge, structured point about communicating in an old nonverbal code they had from their training days. It's fundamental to several steps of the fight and incipient turnaround in that episode, playing off the idea that Ryusei can't directly communicate his intent with his new Divine World "allies" listening in. Only then, in the following 17th episode, does the narrative back up a second time and reveal that the Divine World couldn't actually hear him out there, and he and Shion verbally discussed their entire plan anyway! It's twists and intrigue for their own sake before they're cast aside to make room for the next pile of shifts that can shuffle this plot along—like the discarding of cast members.

That's an egregious example of Yoroi-Shinden retconning itself in real time, but so much of the storytelling in this show is at the behest of retroactive plot twists and doubled-back flashbacks. The new ostensible antagonist group from the Divine World is easily the most guilty of this. Everything about them was already a bizarrely unheard-of addition to the original Samurai Troopers mythos. Their plot quickly devolves into a mess of re-revealed origins and infighting based on gambits that are repeatedly sprung via that aforementioned flashbacking. Seriously, heavenly mean mommy Sagume has a moment of obscured plotting with her sultry subordinate Shimei which receives at least two clarifying flashbacks as the episodes go on—one revealing what she said, and then another adding extra context for why she said it. This happens constantly with this crew, even dragging Ryusei's new arc into it as it's revealed how aware he was of mind control or agreed-upon secret codes (not his secret code with Shion, a different secret code) to keep him on the same level as this ping-ponging plot.

Writing villains (or surprise not-villains) as airtight schemers can be an effective trick to sell their threat level and up the seeming complexity of the plot. But there's a line between making a bad guy a compelling chessmaster whom it's fun to see the heroes outplay in their own way, versus setting off a four-car pileup of futilely grasping gambits because you can't figure out genuine foreshadowing and satisfying payoffs. By the height of the Divine World denizens' poorly thought-out game of Villain Among Us, the Troopers themselves hardly seem to have presence or agency in their own story. They only really fight two of the structured mini-boss battles with the Beast Warriors—both utilize status ailments, and both feature Sasuke swooping in with his shuriken to save the day at a point—and the second one they don't even beat because she's under those aforementioned layers of table-flip-worthy fake-outs.

Even when the good guys do try to get in on the surprise plan-springing, like Sasuke activating a trap on Ramaga, the enemies just go "Nuh uh" and it amounts to nothing. There's barely any character communication at this point that isn't the heroes reacting to nonsensically shocking origin story reveals or more superfluous cast kill-offs. They can only fling themselves into death to stall enemies and lead up to the inevitable ultimate fight, while the "villains" are all affecting multi-layered 4D chess plans to align everything, and still not stop said ultimate fight from being what it was going to be in the first place!

That's the funny part, though—"funny" in the way you can only gawk at in bafflement that's the closest one gets to being impressed by this show. That big, final, ultimate battle really does seem to be what this was all intentionally leading to. For all the scrambling, retroactive characterization, and back-ported plots, once that last fight (in all its glorious multiple stages) kicks off, the pieces that were seemingly scattered to the wind somehow click into place. The spirits of the defeated Ten Warriors complement and assist the Troopers in battle. The shift in ownership of the Emperor Armor means the whole team gets to contribute against appreciably improbable odds. The Ten Warriors come back again to fulfill a promise and play the show's theme song over the final battle—diegetically! You simply don't see that all the time, and it's all rendered so lusciously it's almost forgivable how average the show looked through most of this season. More so, ignoring how the use of CGI characters somehow looked even worse than before.

It's enough to genuinely wonder if all this wasn't actually the result of Muto conceiving of this spectacle of a final battle and then desperately working backwards (as the plotting has been wont to do) to set it all up. Obviously any halfway competent story should be planned out to some degree, but this is a case where the ending is so cohesive while the lead-up to it is so half-formed that it's understandable why bits had to be tacked on in near real time. It begs the question of whether an ending can be so genuinely spectacular that it can almost get viewers to see the vision and positively appraise the whole series that led up to it.

But no, of course that doesn't work. Yoroi-Shinden Samurai Troopers is still a breathless experience where it's obvious how much was stripped out in arriving at the destination of this exhausting ride. Even the irreverent vibes that permeated the first chunk of the show (arguably problematically) feel missed when all that's left is retroactive explanations and characters getting murdered. Much of the once-definitional musical element has been put on the back burner, save for that roaring finale theme-song deployment and the shock of deploying THE BLUE HEARTS' "Linda Linda" in one episode (and even those still don't have subtitles for the lyrics). At least the show had texture before; now it's just the noise of a bad cover band.

Taken on that structure, Yoroi-Shinden Samurai Troopers is a victim of trying to live up to its own legacy. That finale is indeed grand, but everything that existed to take it there, from the sacrifices to the slipshod plotting to the hasty action, can't make it worth it in the end. The original Samurai Troopers are present but barely used. Other classic characters like Nasti and Jun, who at least had the potential for redemptive arcs to come around, don't do much either, though at the absolute least Jun has his shit together now in a way that feels effective. Gai has a functional heroic arc at his core, though in this section he's mostly cribbing from Muto's notes on his previous Kamen Rider Build, being swayed by the inherent self-affirming joys of heroism. The other leads all suppose that they surmounted something, anything, to arrive where they are in their arcs, but they simply weren't present enough to make that true beyond reacting to the show's choppy writing. By the very end, Yoroi-Shinden has the gall to honor the spirits of Shion and Mirei for their sacrifice, but it's an insultingly hollow gesture in this cheap and stupid show. Sacrifice is but another writing technique to get rid of characters the story is done with, and the institution of legacy is but an excuse to cram new toys into the frame that they might be thrown away too one day.