Wolverine – 02

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

The poisoned Logan manages to remove the now emptied dart from his back and launches an attack and launches an attack at Shigen, destroying the man’s boken.  However, before Logan can make the kill, the toxins within him prove too much and he falls unconscious.  Shigen sends his daughter out of the dojo and mildly chastises Hideki for his interference in the fight but hands Logan over to him to do with as he pleases.  Hideki pays a brief visit to Mariko in her room where he tells her that Logan is returning to America and he will personally see that Logan gets to the airport safely, after which Mariko can focus only on Hideki whether she wants to or not.

Asano and his police team see Logan being taken to a limo and dumped in the trunk. Asano doesn’t believe Logan is dead and tells the others he’s going after Logan but that the other cops should remain at their posts.  Tracking Hideki’s limo, Asano spots the car stopping on a lonely stretch of road where some yakuza place Logan’s body on nearby railroad tracks.  After pouring a bottle of liquor on him and then placing the bottle in Logan’s hands, Asano is ready to take on these yakuza but is knocked down instead.  His attacker kills the two yakuza and a frightened Hideki flees to the limo where it takes off.  Asano’s attacker grabs Logan just as a train came up, leaving Asano alone until the two cops from the surveillance van arrive to assist.  Hideki returns to Shigen and makes his report of Logan’s escape, which relieves Mariko.

Asano returns home and attempts to contact Logan via a mini computer device but fails.  Before he can do much else, he is assassinated.  Meanwhile, Logan’s rescuer has taken him to her apartment and notes his rapid healing. When he comes to, he briefly mistakes his savior for Mariko but is then immediately on his guard. After some explanations, the woman, Yukio, says they have a common goal — take down Shigen and his yakuza group. Yukio’s mother had been an assassin for Shigen and for failing in a single task had been slain by him.  As such, Yukio wants revenge. She gives Logan his mini-computing device to attempt to contact Asano. Failing to make contact, Logan asks Yukio to show him where the GPS location of Asano was.

Arriving at Asano’s apartment, Logan smells blood and breaks the lock on the door.  Logan soon spots Asano, sitting in his chair with a large stab wound in the chest.  As he rushes in to check on his friend, a couple of cops arrive, having been tipped off that Asano was murdered and Logan was the suspect.  Realizing the frame situation, Yukio and Logan take out the cops but are careful not to kill them.  When a large group of yakuza arrive, the claws come out and Yukio’s circle-bladed weapons.  They slaughter the yakuza with ease and quickly make their way out the building, leaping down to a parking lot below where Logan destroys a police car.  However, on the roof is a samurai assassin of Shigen’s named MIKAGE Kikyo, who extracts a katana from inside the palm of his hand.

Thoughts/Review:

I had wondered how the fight might go from episode 1.  I knew that honor was the scheme that Shigen used in the original comic book to bring down the poisoned Logan.  Here, Logan goes for the claws and destroys Shigen’s boken as well as coming very close to killing the man was an interesting change.  However, even more interesting to me was the fact that honor was still brought into the scene.  Shigen may be a deadly criminal, but he still has his own code of honor apparently, based on how he got onto Hideki for his interference and how he didn’t kill Logan when he had the chance.  So, now that Shigen knows that Logan is still alive, what will his next move be? Did he send Kikyo or was that Hideki attempting to rectify his previous mistake?

Speaking of Kikyo, he’s a new character.  If I had to guess, he will replace the Silver Samurai from the comic book, which if true, will be a bit of a disappointment.  In the comic, Silver Samurai is the half-brother of Mariko and that would have provided another element to the equation here, even if cliched (the protective brother over his sister).  On the other hand, despite Shigen being the head of the Kuzuryu, the anime isn’t playing this up as a family enterprise.  In the comic book, Shigen is the head of the Yashida Clan (protecting their current family name of Harada); Kuzuryu isn’t a clan.  Therefore, matters of the family aren’t coming into play which may be why Silver Samurai isn’t here.  However, I do hope he shows up before the series is over.

Yukio has changed some from the original comic.  When I was introduced to her in X-Men, she was a lighthearted thief/samurai-type who was an ally of Wolverine/Logan.  Indeed, it was Yukio who teamed up with Storm in Japan and who taught Storm to find joy in new areas, which lead to Storm having a mohawk hairdo for a long time afterward. As I understand it, in the Wolverine series, Yukio worked for Shigen but had a change of heart after failing in her mission to take down Wolverine. I don’t mind the changes here to have Yukio avenge her mother because it works to have her realistically team up with Logan.  Hopefully, her thief skills come into play.

BTW, what are those circle-bladed weapons she has?  I wasted WAY too much time looking for them as I’ve seen them before but alas, I couldn’t really come up with anything similar (other than apparently these were used in the new Tron movie).  I know I’ve seen them in other anime or manga before, but I can’t remember which titles.  Realistically, they don’t seem like proper weapons since the wielder should take major hand damage simply by using them.

So far, I’m really liking what I see and can’t wait to see more. ^_^