Katana Maidens ~ Toji No Miko - Episode 6 (Review)

By: ThunderheavyarmLeading straight from last weeks events, Ellen is captured at the mountain base of the Elite Guard. She’s lightly questioned about her connection to the launch of the S equipment and Konohana mentions her grandfather, a core member of Mokusa. Ellen feigns ignorance, trying to deflect the question with word play but Konohana doesn’t believe her. Kanami and Hiyori meet back up with Kaoru and Nene, with the latter physically attempting to drag the others back to Ellen.Shidou and Konohana hear reports of the girls in the mountains and assemble their squads to give chase. Ellen, while locked in one of the armored vehicles escapes and regains her sword. Using some form of monitoring equipment, she is able to spy on Satsuki injecting herself with Noro. Which in a previous scene, we see vast vats swirling with Yukari standing over them. Ellen is confronted by Satsuki when she steals an ampule of the Noro. Proving from the previous fight, Satsuki isn’t as skilled with a sword, she injects herself with more, causing a horn like appendage to sprout from her right eye.Ellen is overpowered but is rescued by her friends, having returned after Kaoru explained her fight from last night. Satsuki doesn’t hesitate, and injects massive amounts of Noro into herself. The horn opens up to be an eye stalk, and judging by the look in her human eye, has lost control. With this power, she overpowers the four girls. Only being saved at the last moment, as the Noro explodes in a geyser of light. With Satsuki unconcious, the girls escape in a military submarine from Mokusa.I’m definetly pleased with where the series has finally arrived. Where before, most of the combat seemed stale like in the tournament, the fights against the guards, while definitely short have been interesting. I also find it funny that someone seems to have realized that this series was supposed to be action based. This has unbalanced the series a little bit, trading in its drama for action, but it only feels that way on an episode to episode basis. Binge watching the series, I have no doubt that the flow would feel smoother.I know that some watching the episode, and reading this review, will notice that I didn’t say the girls captured Satsuki. This action may seem ridiculous, after all Satsuki is clearly high enough within the Sword Administration that she would have invaluable information. Not to mention, be used as a rallying cry as using Noro outside of equipment is very clearly taboo. But there is something that needs to be considered, simply disarming her may not stop her from using her abilities. After all, only a few episodes ago we saw a Toji using her abilities without generating their aura. So it’s not a very large leap to assume that Satsuki, even captured would still pose a massive threat that wouldn’t outweigh the information they might be able to glean from her.Speaking of the Noro, I'm going to call a prediction here as well. Thus far, all of the protagonists have witnessed the power up that injecting it into a human can give them. While they don't need to go quite as overboard as Satsuki did, it only takes a little bit for them to gain an edge. Ellen also has an ampule that she stole while she was in the camp as well. While I doubt that Kanami will use it, Hiyori seems like the most likely person to take it. She's out for revenge, and she's keenly aware of the power gap between her and Yukari. Which will be great drama afterwards as the team recovers from the event. So here's hoping for some heavy drug analogy happening in this show.The next episode is going to be most welcome, as I feel that its going to forgo fighting. Which is probably needed at this point. There’s been a lot of pieces of backstory that have been dropped throughout the last five episodes. While I’m all for continued action, I’m growing more interested in the actions that have happened before the start of the series. Also, how the rebellion got started as well, since it doesn’t seem anyone beyond Kanami and Hiyori are aware of the greater secrets of  Yukari. I’m excited for the answers, and can’t wait for the next episode.