Black Torch Ep.05 - Fuyou is the mascot character?! Ichika's past...

Episode 5 of Black Torch completes the first real battle against the enemy faction with the realization that all three members of the group (Ichika, Jirou, and Reiji) are way too immature to fight the monsters lurking in the background trying to snatch Ragou's powers. The power difference is huge to the point that Kouga didn't seem much troubled to fight two of them at once.

Lots of interesting information this time around, though, which adds weight to the motivation of each character. The first and most striking one is definitely Ichika's past; apparently, her mother was defeated by some mononoke and transformed into a stone statue. She's not dead, and the curse isn't going to be solved until she can find the mononoke that caused it.

She has that mesugaki face and I'm curious how her relationship with Jirou will be in the coming episodes. How old is she again?

Ichika remains my favorite character, looks, personality, figure. She's just the perfect heroine for the story even though I don't see romance happening here.

That alone makes it pretty clear that she's fighting to get her family back, and that explains why she's so obsessed with becoming strong. If she's to fight and defeat that mononoke, she needs to be at least stronger than her mother, or it wouldn't make sense at all. It only makes her even more endearing to me.

Reiji as well got some revelation about his motives with the cave and the cursed sword taking over the body of that guy. Jirou, instead, faced a huge dark monstrosity that doesn't seem to have any connection to his life. Apparently, Ragou seems to have some recollection of it, but isn't exactly sure due to his memory loss.

Kouga also revealed that the reason they're searching for Ragou is because he's the only mononoke that doesn't consume energy, but generates it. We don't know any other details, but that makes him a perfect eternal battery for the immortal mononoke hordes and, at the same time, the greatest risk for humanity.

There was also a mention of Jirou's father from Kouga, who was kind of amused at the knowledge of him being from the Azuma family. He didn't elaborate, but now it's making me wonder: Are we going to end up knowing that the final boss is actually Jirou's father? That would be hilariously cliché, wouldn't it? In a Darth Vader kind of way.

Poor Ichika, tragic past, but there's hope for the future if they manage to find the culprit that caused the petrification.

Touko looks good, I'm not a fan of this kind of adult character, but she is well designed. Haven't seen her in action though.

Honestly, Black Torch continues to be an entertaining anime series without ever being amazing. It clicks all the right levers to keep you attached to the characters, but the story never drifts off from the established clichés and patterns of action series. Nevertheless, I'm really curious to see where they'll lead Ichika and the others.