Itto Ogami, formerly the shogun's decapitator, now a wanderer pushing his young son Daigoro in a wooden baby cart from place to place, saunters toward the camera through a snowstorm, like a ghost out of white mist. Suddenly gunfire erupts. The silhouette of an old man falls in the snow & a young woman crying out falls atop him. As the gunners see Itto & his baby cart appearing through the haze of snowfall, they flee, assuming they have killed the old man & his daughter.
In fact they missed the young woman, Mine, & even Taura is still breathing. Itto helps them to the shelter of a woodland prayer shrine, & tries to save Taura by cutting the bullet out of his body, but he only lasts the night.
 So begins Lone Wolf & Cub 5: The Lowly Maid. The murder was undertaken for the sake of a corrupt retainer in line for the old man's position as an Edo official. Itto himself has all this while been fighting off a fever, but now falls ill in the shared shelter. "I'm all right," he tells Daigoro weakly. "I must sleep."
Daigoro sets out alone for the village where he finds a physician & convinces him to part with medicine for fever. But on the way back to the countryside's prayer hall, he becomes lost. Asking a passing group to point him toward the prayer hall, a cruel dealer in human flesh, with three young women in tow, mistreats the boy & tries to run him off, saying "I hate children!" The youngest of the young women falls behind the group in order to stop Daigoro from chucking a rock at the guy, since it'd only make him madder.
Meanwhile a "young master" child of a wealthy household is flying a kite, accompanied by family retainers. When the kid runs up to Daigoro who is holding the fallen kite, the kid rudely charges the littler child with theft & begins to hit & berate him. Daigoro in indignant self-defense pulls the young lord's shortsword from his attacker's obi belt, cuts him, then takes his father's famous sword-stance. The horrified retainers disarm him & take him captive.
A doctor pronounces the wound Daigoro gave the kid to be a minor scratch. But young master's whole family is as skanky & appalling as their spoiled child, so they want vengeance against the five-year-old & his parents too whoever they might be. But one of the chief retainers has guessed, from Daigoro's stance when he grabbed the sword, that this is the son of the ex-shogun decapitator, Assassin with child. This is Takizawa, the same guy who wanted old Taura gunned down in order to claim his government position.
Taura tried, before he died, to hire Ogami Itto as his avenger. But Itto always requires payment beforehand, of 500 ryo, & Taura cannot meet this condition in his current circumstances. When he dies, Mine tries again to convince Itto, but between being himself feverish as well as unwilling to be hired with only a promise of payment, he continues to refuse.
Into the appalling household where Daigoro is captive, one of the three girls Daigoro met on the road has been newly indentured as a lowly maid. This is better than being sold to a brothel no doubt, but she couldn't have been left with crueler people. Her name is Osue & as sometimes happens when young women become protective of Daigoro, he begins to call her "Big Sister" which title leads the wealthy Edo family to believe Ogami Itto also has a daughter, Osue by name. Now they can threaten & torture both his children to bait Itto into the open!
The episode focuses mainly on Daigoro & I always like his separate adventures. Daigoro never cries out when he is abused. A retainer observes, "He shows no fear & he doesn't cry. He's spooky!" The evil granny threatens to gouge out Daigoro's always calmly gazing eyes. In general the old matriarch & her entire family & her retainers are a bit over-the-top as villains eager to torment a child. Such overstatement is typical of children's programs, but it's rare that this "quietly" violent series overdoes it.
One overwritten bit really works though. When the chief retainer Takizawa looks in Daigoro's eyes, he's awfully perceptive for a villain. He opines, "Those eyes! They have seen countless deaths. He has walked between life & death. Those clear eyes, there is no evil in them, yet they are the eyes of an assassin. Scary."
 The gorgeous final woodland fight in snow to save the lowly maid & Daigoro, & incidently to avenge Taura, is pure poetry in motion. Afterward Itto & Daigoro walk from the carnage, with Daigoro's "Big Sister" riding in the cart because of her torture injuries. Ah! Ogami Itto is my favorite hero on earth!
The sixth first season episode Lone Wolf & Cub: Amya & Amena starts off with two encounters with Yagyu spies dressed as monks. In the first encounter, little Daigoro actually helps his father kill one of the Yagyu. In the second encounter, a Yagyu sword breaks against Ogami Itto's sword, & the tip goes flying into Onui, an innocent bystander.
Before she dies, Onui asks Itto to take the six ryo she earned as a harlot & deliver it to her father. Itto completes this minor commision without telling the old man that his daughter is dead, & this tragic vignette is complete in itself.
A girl met along the way has befriended Daigoro, who starts to think of her as his big sister. She's newly indentured into prostitution & has a tragic demeanor. She kills her pimp while being raped by biting off his tongue, & becomes a hunted woman in consequence.
Itto & Daigoro help her evade the law but then Itto sends her on her way, to Daigoro's dissatisfaction. Daigoro is never willful with his father & obeys him always, but this time, for the first time, he has to intervene for the sake of Big Sister. If his father won't protect her, Daigoro will, & he sets off to bring her back, & Itto respecting his son's decision takes the girl into his protection after all.
Kioroshi, a woman yakuza boss with pistol & sword, is a notorious dealer in flesh. She owns the young girl's contract for prostitution. "Please turn her over to me," Kioroshi asks with cold politeness & Itto says, "I refuse." Kioroshi says, "You're wagering your life for a harlot?"
There is no honor in killing yakuza who have legally indentured a young woman. So Itto volunteers to be tortured in her stead, then she can be set free. As he submits to severe torture, Kioroshi increasingly admires him. The action thickens when Yagyu spies try to take advantage of Itto's momentary predicament & kill him as he hangs tied upside-down for the yakuza to mistreat.
Ultimately the young girl's indenture papers are burned by Kioroshi, & little Daigoro gives the departing young woman flowers as she heads home. The woman yakuza Kioroshi has in the meantime become convinced that Itto is in her territory because someone has hired his services as an assassin. She may regret that the target is herself, yet she faces Itto without wavering, ready to die. But his final act with sword's edge turns out to be deeply humane & a lot more surprising than one more mere killing.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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