Kurozuka 05: Illusions and Experimentations

IN A NUTSHELL: While Kuro goes to meet Saniwa, the Red Emperor's Army is busy experimenting on humans with the use of Kuromitsu's blood.
EPISODE 05: Saniwa
A lone 3-D tower rendered in CG pierces the orange sky as a helicopter flies towards it. Inside the tower, a white-haired man wearing some sort of optical device is busy pushing buttons on a mechanical contraption amid emaciated prisoners bound to metal chains.


It turns out the machine is used to transfuse Kuromitsu's blood into the prisoners to make "superior" creatures out of them. However, the experiment is not always successful. With M. Bison (no, that's not his real name) quietly observing the process, the white-haired dude launches into a droning monologue about bacteria and the whole evolutionary process while he puts prisoner after prisoner under the machine.
It seems that M. Bison himself is a product of this experimentation -- one of the few successful ones. And white-haired dude aims to create another him. And when he runs out of prisoners, he turns to M. Bison and orders him to either get him more prisoners or more of Kuromitsu's blood.





Later, M. Bison finds himself the subject of criticism from Kuromazu, an old man who wears a turtle shell on his back. Yet, despite Kuromazu's pointed insults, M. Bison remains nonplussed. Kagetsu, a woman with pink hair, finally decides to intervene and puts an end to the bickering, though she belittles M. Bison while she does. It appears that M. Bison is not well liked among his comrades.

Meanwhile, the white-haired dude, who is named Hasegawa, reports to an unseen voice that an order to destroy Haniwa and seize the miitsu has been given. The voice wants to know if Kuromitsu is there and Hasegawa more or less affirms this. The owner of the voice is then revealed and he is none other than The Face Only A Mother Can Love (TM). He's been waiting for a thousand years for this opportunity....



One thousand years before, Kuro and Kuromitsu are enjoying a quiet moment together amid a bed of flowers at sunset. When evening comes, they see the flowers start to glow as if lit up from inside. The folks around the place call these the "dancing flowers" but Kuromitsu has taken to calling them by another name. Before she can say the name though, Kuro wakes up from his dream to find himself back in Asuka.
Rai later brings Kuro to where Karuta is waiting for them. Security at Saniwa's hideout is so strict that Karuta has to take away Kuro's sword and blindfold him on the way there. Once they arrive at the place, however, Karuta leaves him in a room by himself.



Meanwhile, back in Asuka, Rai questions Izana's decision to let Kuro see Saniwa. It appears that she still does not trust Kuro. But Izana only says that they need not test Kuro's power nor skill but his heart, and only Saniwa can do that. He then adds that he will stay in that room to protect the miitsu. At the mention of this, Rai's eyes are drawn to a container, inside of which is a small glass ball filled with blood.
Back in Saniwa's hideout, Kuro is still in that room where Karuta left him. He has removed his blindfold. In front of him stands a statue of a headless rearing horse and behind it plastered on the wall are numerous clocks. After staring at them for so long, Kuro's vision changes as everything start to overlap and invisible hands start reaching out for him.



The hallucination ends just as Karuta arrives. He brings Kuro to a large hall. But instead of a hall, all that Kuro sees is a flowerbed, not unlike the one in his dream, and Kuromitsu herself is there standing only a few feet away from him. She says that she isn't real but that she comes to warn him of people that are trying to force them apart.
After saying this, Kuromitsu turns around and starts walking away. Kuro tries calling after her to no avail. He can only watch helplessly as her figure, along with the flowerbed and the flowers, fades away.


Once Kuro realizes where he really is, Kuon shoots him with a gun. Kuro, however, hears the shot and manages to get out of the way. Kuon relentlessly attacks, forcing Kuro to go on the defensive. As Kuro grabs the other man's arm and the latter tries to overpower him, Saniwa finally comes and stops the fight. Saniwa reveals that she knows Kuromitsu and that she wants Kuro to finally see her.





But even as Saniwa says this, M. Bison and the rest of the Red Emperor's Army are on the move. They first attack Izana's hideout where the miitsu is hidden and set the whole place on fire. While Izana and Rai are busy defending the place, more of the Red Emperor's Army also arrive at Saniwa's hideout. Watching the scene, Kuro asks Karuta for his sword and the latter gives it to him without question.

COMMENTS:

Yes, yes, finally! It's fleshing out. The whole story is finally revealing itself. Sure, I still have a lot of question, not least of which is: Why are Kuromazu and Kagetsu so hostile towards M. Bison (I think he's Benkei)? Maybe they're jealous because maybe M. Bison is the first among them, which makes him kind of special.

Does Saniwa really know where Kuromitsu is? It looks to me like the miitsu might actually be Kuromitsu's blood, which leads me to conclude that perhaps Saniwa does not have Kuromitsu. Why else would they treasure such a small amount of her blood?

That said, the Red Emperor's Army does not have Kuromitsu either. Otherwise, Hasegawa would never have given M. Bison that order to get more of her blood or get more "dolls" for him to play with.

Speaking of which, something about the first scene with Hasegawa experimenting away with Kuromitsu's blood reminds me of the movie, Sweeney Todd. The contraption looks like the barber's chair, including even the foot-lever to open the trapdoor at the bottom.

That Kuon has problems. I don't get him randomly shooting Kuro like that. I mean, I can understand distrusting an outsider. Even Rai does that. But shooting them on the excuse that he wanted to test their power? Dude! Kuro is a vampire. Get it? Immortal. You think a bullet can hold him down?

I think that for the past one thousand years, Kuro and Kuromitsu were pretty much inseparable. Yes, they were chased around by the Red Emperor's Army's predecessors, but until now, they have never been apart for very long. Maybe that explains how Kuro reacts so much to the vision of Kuromitsu falling to her "death."

The storytelling approach is becoming linear now, which makes everything easier to understand. But I worry that if they continue it this way, Kurozuka will lose some of its uniqueness. When you get right down to it, the series is a love story with a vampirical twist. Generic, in other words. The nonlinear storytelling approach is what makes it appealing because it heightens the mystery, adds dimension to characters, and makes the whole thing simply click.