One of my very favourite episodes of this series so far, maybe the best. The fight scenes are extraordinarily beautiful, those slices through the rain have some of the best use of animation I have ever seen in anime. They are also wonderfully long which is strange for Champloo, whose fights are usually brief.
This episode also has a very interesting Lore, with perhaps Champloo's most intriguing and well-written characters, a really great fishing moment, and quite a devastating realisation towards the end. I also like how it doesn't entirely abandon comedy to preserve its sombre tone. It achieves aesthetic cohesion by having water as some part of nearly every scene - in nearly every form (the rain, the river, the thirst for it, the fish swimming).
This episode also has a very interesting Lore, with perhaps Champloo's most intriguing and well-written characters, a really great fishing moment, and quite a devastating realisation towards the end. I also like how it doesn't entirely abandon comedy to preserve its sombre tone. It achieves aesthetic cohesion by having water as some part of nearly every scene - in nearly every form (the rain, the river, the thirst for it, the fish swimming).
