Yaemon...
The Reaper's Request: Please watch this program in a bright room and at a safe distance from your TV.
You will die with me here.
Yaemon!
Too slow.
My sword has long reached
your head.
Gin-chan!
Gin-san!
Asaemon!
Asaemon,
neither this man nor the previous head
deserved to be protected by you.
"Innocent"?
Shall I tell you what sin that criminal the previous head let escape committed?
Gin-chan!
He's a sinner who killed your biological father.
Will I take his head first,
or will you take mine first?
Shall we see who's quicker on the draw?
Or, perhaps, will you take his head yourself?
That way, you can avenge your real father.
Ten years ago, your father, a Joi rebel, was killed in the Joi War,
and thus orphaned, you were adopted by the previous head.
That is what you were told, yes?
But that is not the truth.
your father survived the war, just like this man.
But once the Hitotsubashi began wiping out the survivors after the war,
he tried to ensure his own safety
by betraying his former comrades
and leaking their, and even their families', whereabouts
to aid the Hitotsubashi with their purge.
But, once he'd served his purpose,
he was fated to be killed himself.
P-Please!
Spare my life!
I know!
You can have my daughter as proof of my loyalty!
After all, she's just a leech some whore gave birth to and abandoned before the war!
Greetings.
Who am I, you ask?
Indeed, I am this idiot's daughter.
I don't recall ever fighting you Hitotsubashi,
but you can have this scum's and my, the White Yaksha's, head.
In return,
don't go after the others anymore.
But the former Yaemon let him live
and took your father's head.
Perhaps it was out of guilt that he adopted you.
Either way, the previous head and this man
are people you were meant to exact revenge upon.
There's only one head that needs to be taken here.
You don't want to send innocent heads rolling, now do you?
Asaemon,
remove his head.
Asaemon...
Please tell me just one thing...
Would you be kind enough to make me human again
with your sword?
Did he always intend to die by my hand?
Beats me.
But I'm pretty sure he was glad it turned out that way.
Just like me.
Say,
why have you been locked up here?
Did you do something bad?
Yeah.
I've done loads of things that'd make you piss your pants,
so I gotta lose my head.
Really?
Yeah.
Get lost. You're annoying me, you damn pipsqueak.
But the executioner was saying you weren't really a bad guy.
That all you did was protect a poor little girl.
But now you... It's so sad.
Oh, I know!
One day, when I become a great executioner,
I'll take your head for you.
Seriously?
Yep!
I'll cut it nice and good so it doesn't hurt!
I'll send you to heaven in peace!
So promise me.
Until I become a great executioner,
you can't die, okay?
That so?
In peace, huh?
Sounds good.
Okay, I promise.
Send me off in peace, okay?
Sure.
I won't mess up this time.
Never again!
Asaemon,
please don't think badly of me.
The Soul Cleansing technique is almost instantaneous.
The only way to fend it off
is by having it point elsewhere
and attacking its blind spot immediately after it's been executed.
Did you really think you, a criminal's child, had any right to punish sins?
Gin-san!
Asaemon-san!
You're right.
The only way to overcome the Soul Cleansing technique
is by attacking its blind spot!
Like I said already,
never again will I let
the heads of the people who saved me
fall to the ground!
Wh-What is this?
Who could've done such a thing?
Father...
I finally did it. I pulled off the Soul Cleansing technique.
Now I'm sure to be the next Yaemon, aren't I?
It'll get there.
My sword will get there first.
I've had my eyes fixed on his sword from closer than anyone else.
I've longed for his sword more ardently than anyone else.
It won't cut a thing.
Your sword is not capable of severing the sins of humans.
And yet, my sword...
As of this day,
I appoint Asaemon my successor as the Ikeda family head.
If you remain a prisoner of antiquated customs
that let outstanding talent go to waste,
your family is bound to die out someday.
You should just eliminate both Yaemons.
The one who will join me in carving a path to a new era with that sword
will be you, 18th.
My sword will reach him!
It's not gonna reach
anyone anymore.
I see.
By that time, my sword
was already long broken, huh?
F-Fire!
Shoot those fiends!
We're done here.
Feel free to carry on transporting your corpses or whatever.
Okita-san!
You bastard!
Don't let them leave alive!
Let's go!
The Mayonnaise Line is over there!
Over where?!
Boss, you should hurry up and run—
Gin-san, hurry—
H-Hang in there!
Don't let them escape!
Y-Yaemon?!
Hurry up and go.
Now that you've dragged me off the stage,
who's going to protect the Ikeda family?
Yaemon, you...
Let's protect the Ikeda family
and the things our father left behind
together, from the light and the shadows.
I was willing to kill my father
in order to protect the family of bakufu executioners he built.
And you were willing to kill me
in order to uphold his executioner's spirit.
But his sword...
We both loved his sword.
That is all.
Now go,
Ikeda Yaemon.
Good grief.
I never thought you'd relinquish the name
you killed your father to get your hands on.
I thought we vowed to carve open the path to a new era together.
What am I supposed to call you now?
Patricide,
serial killer,
or the fool who sullied the Hitotsubashi name.
Pick whichever you like.
Is that so?
Then...
how about "just a head"?
Yes...
That went pretty well for a first time.
Looks like I could act as the new government's executioner myself.
Surely you jest.
I'm not kidding.
That said, what I must behead is this antiquated country.
I, Hitotsubashi Nobunobu,
am without doubt this country's executioner.
My lord, what about the others?
Leave them be.
I'll grant his last wish.
All responsibility lay with him,
and sunk into the ocean along with his head.
But my lord!
Shigeshige's lapdogs...
They won't be able to do anything.
And thanks to them,
we got to see something amusing, did we not?
Don't you agree,
Takasugi-kun?
It wasn't my intention to steal your prey.
I heard there was an unusual corpse and had it transported,
but as it turned out, it was still alive...
That demon.
You won't be able to take
his head or mine.
We may have been bitter enemies in the past,
but I hold no resentment toward you people.
In fact, I find you fascinating.
You hold great power that yields not even to the nation,
be it as allies or enemies.
So long as you're taking on the bakufu,
I'm sure I'll stand by your side again.
But the moment you give up on that,
the one coming for your head
could be him
or me.
You never know.
I see.
So Yaemon...
We haven't found his body,
but it'd be safe to assume he was taken out by the Hitotsubashi.
No.
I was the one who killed him.
It may have been to protect the family,
but I took the former Yaemon's head,
and even his son's life.
Surely I have no right to call myself an Ikeda anymore.
You executioners might be fated to let your heads roll
in order to defend the Yaemon name.
In that case,
then I'm still one head short.
The bakufu executioner,
Ikeda Asaemon,
shall carry out her final duty.
Prisoner No. MI-32654,
come on out.
You guys, too.
Sorry to keep you waiting.
It's time for your execution.
Okita-san, what's the meaning of this?
Did you think you'd get off scot-free after what you did?
Either you guys
or Asaemon?
It's proving difficult to build a prosecutable case on all this.
Firstly, the fact that the serial killer victims
were all criminals who were supposed to be beheaded is complicating matters.
It's become a question of whether it's even a punishable offense.
But most of all, the murderer in question,
Ikeda Yaemon, has gone missing since then.
And while it's clear that
the Hitotsubashi were behind everything, including his involvement and disappearance,
we can't book them for it,
'cause they haven't outwardly dirtied their own hands at all.
If we try to do it anyway,
they might end up bringing the hammer down on us.
So in order to resolve this hopeless situation once and for all,
we gotta have you guys take all the blame and die.
Why?!
To close the book on a scandal, you need a scapegoat.
We're more like sacrificial lambs here!
Your deaths won't be pointless.
This will put the issue of our spat with the Hitotsubashi to rest,
and I'll escape a pay cut—
That's pretty much pointless!
We're not toilet paper for you bastards to wipe your asses with!
Besides, if you and Asaemon all die,
surely the bakufu will refrain from wiping out the entire Ikeda family.
Hey. What's that supposed to mean?
Oh, you didn't know?
Apparently Asaemon took responsibility for this entire uproar
by committing suicide.
By offering the two Yaemons' heads and her own up as sacrifice,
she protected the family.
How far she's come, considering she couldn't even kill herself a few days ago.
Why...
Why didn't you stop her?!
Stop her?
Wake up and listen to yourself, would you?
Even when you first met her,
didn't she want to sever her head
along with the sins she'd committed?
And you chopped it off for her
with your pale executioner's sword.
You're the one who killed her, Boss.
Now, if we just take your heads, everything will be settled.
In the past, bakufu executioner Ikeda Yaemon let a certain criminal escape.
So taking that criminal's head
to make amends for it all
is bakufu executioner
Ikeda Yaemon's duty, too.
Asaemon-san...
...is gone.
The Reaper no longer exists.
Didn't you help her commit suicide yourself?
Your sword reached her.
It was a pure swing that cleansed her soul without
letting her head fall to the ground.
You three are my precious executioners
who helped me remember the most important thing
and made me human again.
I shall waver no longer.
The woman before you is not a demon consumed by her sins,
nor a Reaper afraid to punish sins,
but a bakufu executioner,
the 19th Ikeda Yaemon.
You...
So, yeah.
We'll write Ikeda Asaemon off as having committed suicide.
We leave the rest to you, 19th.
Yaemon's sword needs no observers.
Should we ever run into some morons with heads still on their shoulders...
We can just consider them corpses with
their heads attached by one tiny bit of flesh, right?
Yes.
Yaemon's sword does not make mistakes.
There's no longer
a single criminal here
who must be punished.
When people sin and degenerate into demons,
the only beings capable of turning them human again
are humans.
That's why I have no right to cut you.
A demon has no right to cut a fellow demon.
You promised, did you not?
One day, when I become a great executioner,
I'll take your head for you.
So promise me.
Until I become a great executioner,
you can't die, okay?
Pops...
Think I've become a somewhat better person now?
Wait...
She took my damn nipple again!
Farewell, Reaper
A Phoenix Rises from the Ashes Over and Over
Next Episode: "A Phoenix Rises from the Ashes Over and Over."
The next episode is a summer vacation special,
where we'll run the traditional summer scary story.
Make sure not to
watch it alone...