Firefly Wedding ‒ Episode 3
But, as middling-to-weak as the dub may be, an interesting “what-if” popped in my head. Jubei says to Satoko, “I just want my daughter to be happy.” Not, “I just want you to be happy.” The assumption for us anime-onlies seems to have been that it's the stepmother who ordered Satoko's kidnapping, but could it have actually been Jubei? It's awfully suspicious that a sheltered young noble lady like Satoko was allowed to go out shopping with a single bodyguard, who was pulled away, giving her assassins a window of opportunity. Structurally speaking, the stepmother is too obvious a culprit; meanwhile, a character with no lines who isn't even named seems an unlikely candidate for the inciting incident of the plot. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Jubei will turn out to be the ultimate antagonist.
Don't tell me if I'm right, though! I want to find out on my own.
Enough about that! Let's talk about this week's episode.
With their plan now established, Goto takes Satoko to the lowest-class brothel in town, because it's the only place she can get work without a formal introduction. Wouldn't you know it, it's staffed by the girls who bullied Satoko the night before. Goto explains that she's going to serve the police superintendent's son, who's been banned from every brothel in town for being a mean drunk but is fine as long as he's sober. If she messes up with her first client, their plan is out the window, and the two will just have to live in hiding ever after on the island.
This episode has completely reaffirmed my love for Satoko. When Goto tells her the plan, she goes into strategizing overdrive, snapping at him when he interrupts her train of thought. She thinks through how she's going to win him over, what kind of background a young man like him would have, how best to appeal to him, and what kind of conversation would work. Of course, everything falls apart once she walks into the room; she doesn't have the kind of experience that would make these conversations easy, even if she's planned it out.
Just like in the first two episodes, Satoko moves through a cycle of planning, getting thrown off, and recovering. It's finely tuned to make it so that she's not so perfect that she gets past any obstacles with no effort, nor can she solve any problem herself with no assistance, but she still has agency. She and Goto exist in balance.
Goto as well is both a help and a hindrance. Obviously, Satoko would never have made it to this point alive without him, and his knowledge of Tennyo Island makes it possible for her to navigate the situation. But even when she's making polite conversation with Eishin, he appears on the beam over the room because he's decided that maybe he should just kill this guy instead. The push and pull is a delightful tension; it feels a bit like Satoko is holding a leash with a tiger at the other end.
Despite this, the episode's plot goes exactly how one would expect. Eishin turns out to be perfectly mild-mannered, though awkward, immediately falling hard for Satoko. He offers to marry her and take her back home, but just as she's entertaining his offer, he takes a sip of his drink and passes out. Thanks to Satoko's mean girl coworkers' scheming, who switched his water for sake, Chekov's mean drunk goes off. Only, he's not just a mean drunk: he has full-on dissociative identity disorder, and his alternate personality is a cruel rapist who forces Satoko down, strips her, and berates her for the large surgical scar on her chest.
It's cheap and stereotypical, when it would have been so easy for the story to handle it more deftly. Instead of relying on a borderline-supernatural contrivance, he could have just gotten drunk the normal way, with his personality shifting gradually to create a frog-boiling situation for the previously-sheltered Satoko. That kind of build-up would have offered much more tension than him taking a drink, collapsing, and then grinning with all his teeth drawn individually to show that he's evil now.
Setting the annoying twist aside, I have nothing but praise for how it was handled visually. The shot where Satoko sits in front of the door to the room is striking; the painted phoenix looming over her, larger than life, perfectly communicates how intimidated Satoko feels despite her earlier confidence. When Eishin's personality shifts, the animation style shifts to something rawer and more realistic, with thick lines almost like a woodblock print. Even when the story falls short, the production team makes artistic choices that keep me engrossed.
The episode ends with a showdown between Goto and Eishin: Eishin with a sliced arm and Goto with a bullet to the shoulder, and the brothel owners refusing to get involved. I don't know how this will resolve, but one thing is for certain: Goto's original plan probably isn't going to work out.
Rating:
Firefly Wedding is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
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