astrochris: Mission to Kill: 2010 Special

This took way longer than I expected. I also wasn't expecting to take nearly five hundred screenshots. And then using 250 of them, plus more to make gifs. That makes something like 15MB of images. Oops.

I also discovered that there was an official webpage for the series (due to this page), which makes sense. It was made five years ago.

Anyway, 2010 special of ~~Mission to Kill~~ Murder Team Five!

This is the only time we see Old Murder Cop. The actor died before this was made.

We join the team in the middle of one of their standard Party Murders.

The tailor is double killing this guy and his friend.

But he donks up, and somebody sees him. He gives chase, but

"Huh. Somebody else murdered him for me. That's helpful."

It's the "samurai assassin." Not an assassin who is also a samurai, but an assassin who solely targets samurai. If it was the first one, Murder Cop would have locked up that title before now.

See, throughout the entire series, OMC kept trying to get people to have his grilled sardines, but they would never try them. Now he's gone, and they realize that they've missed out.

Oh, yeah. He's gone. Murder Woman has heard the news before MC, which is odd, because OMC and MC should have had their daily mission briefing with the rest of the cops.

See?

They find this note at OMC's house, and then MC and MW have a spout poetry for a bit.

Like this.

They hear a noise, and after checking:

Confide about his up-donkery.

There's a noise outside, and because Edo is busy, OMC's house already has new owners/tenants/whatever. I think tenant, because the new guy is a cop.

And his entire fucking family.

New House Cop guy is a dumbass. Anyway, the team goes and has a quick conversation.

MC is less than pleased.

This is an odd sentence structure.

The suggestion they have for NYMD is "get the fuck out of town." He's not happy about this plan, which I suspect is only here because NYMD's actor had prior arrangements that made it difficult for him to do a lot of shooting.

In any case, let's get to the plot.

In this show, if you get a name card, you should keep an eye out for getting murdered.

Seriously. It's like "hey, so you know, this character is important. We're not saying they end up murdered, but you should keep them in mind."

The auditor there is stopping all the projects that the chief elder guy had previously started.

All of the projects.

You'll note that these are generally construction things.

So, you can probably guess how this guy's feeling.

Everybody who is important goes to a private room to argue about the job shutdown.

This guy gets a name card later, but I didn't remember that. He's important too. Even I'm doing it now.

"Sloppy accounting," is how you say, "you're fucking skimming off the top," in polite company.

The construction guy has a rebuttal to the accusation that he's corrupt:

Wait, what?

Has the corrupt guy been reading Paul Krugman? This isn't exactly the babysitter coop problem, but it's not that far off.

To recap then, our important characters are a useless chief elder (he's wandering in the background), a Keynesian construction guy who's stealing money, some guy who sells wood (there are no sheep in this episode, which sucks, because I spent the whole time trying to come up with a Settlers of Catan joke), and an auditor who is ruining the country in his anti-corruption battle. That's...an odd mix.

Construction guy reads the news, and kind of throws this out as a threat.

I should have giffed this, as he does a silly wiggle with his head. He's not serious about this "running the government" business.

And then we meet Lady Richington.

She's...let's start with rich. First off, "chief elder" is an important job, but he's not really the boss. That'd be the shogun, who doesn't appear in the show. If I understand correctly, Lady Richington works for the shogun's wife, as part of her entourage? The important points are that she's rich and powerful.

And she's pissed that she's not getting all her shit.

"Not that I really care, I'm kind of just floating though this cushy government job."

LR suggests that everyone would have more money if the people making coins just made more coins. Blammo. Problem solved forever!

But then the auditor launches into a discussion of inflation and currency debasement.

I had to look to see, but Abenomics didn't come out until 2012, which would have been after this came out. This was during the recession, but it's odd to see such obvious economic allegories popping up in my samurai murder drama.

Anyway,

"LOL! Don't care! Do it anyway!"

"Deliberate means never do anything, right? I'll go do the laziest option."

Cut to the lumber guy.

"There's my name and job down there, isn't there. Well, let's roll the dice on this."

He hands out a bunch of money to the people who show up. So he's a good guy?

He also is not a fan of the auditor.

Whatever happened to Murder Dude?

Just being homeless and stealing food from people in the countryside.

People in the countryside aren't fans of food thieves, and chase after him. He cuts through a house, and sees a little girl digging in the dirt.

"Huh. Whatcha doin'?"

There's a squeak.

"Yikes. That's three more dead people than I was expecting to find."

But he's got to escape from people, so he takes off. This however leads those people to find the girl and deal with things. The little girl? Oh, she's dealing with things her own way.

"Getting the money..."

"Summoning the Murder Demons of Vengence!"

You are now one of my favorite characters in the show, little girl. Your family all commits suicide, and you think. "Well, time to hire assassins to murder the fuck out of the guy who is ruining the economy, causing my family to become depressed and lose hope. I still have hope though. Hope you get stabbed in your stupid face."

Still, she can't really expect that to work, right? There'd have to be a vengeful assassin sitting around, way out in the middle of nowhere.

Oh, that's right.

MG is a bit sad to have to start up murdering again, but he can't not.

Wait, didn't he leave town with his sister? Where's she?

The little girl left a note with details on the hit.

Back in Edo:

MW gets accosted by a flashmob.

Murder Team 5 2 sits down to have a chat:

"Since I don't actually kill anyone, and you're just one guy. I mean, don't let the amount of ass you kicked in that final episode to go to your head."

"I can murder ten times as many people as anyone else!"

In any case, he's grumpy because he's best friends with murder, and MW thinks that's not healthy.

He goes out on patrol, only to be hassled by Office Dumbass:

Pregnant?

That was my question.

OD's wife stopped off at MC's house, and they gave her some potatoes.

But MC's wife got sick and ran off.

Therefore: pregnant. This is why we force people to go to medical school before they give out advice.

MC's equally plausible explanation. "She's just got potato-itis." That claim is exactly why I linked to this yesterday.

He runs home, and asks the sane question:

The answer is no, but she'll do that tomorrow.

MC thinks that if it is true, maybe this would be a good reason to give up the murder game. Raise a kid, not run out every week to stabbity-slash bad guys to death. You know, standard "growing up" stuff.

MG goes to the NYMD's tailor shop, but no one's there, because he's skipped town.

Somebody else gets murdered:

MT2 is disappointed, as this samurai assassin is ruining their monopoly on murder.

There's a big jurisdictional issue, since investigating temples would technically fall under the temple magistrate, not the cop magistrate, but they got clearance ahead of time from the (let's say) magistrate magistrate to get a waiver to allow the cops to investigate temples. In any case, they're talking about this guy.

They get their mission from the boss, and then

Oh, for fuck's sake, Officer Dumbass.

My notes here: "I hope he dies."

"I mean, you can't even get my name right, dick."

Fuck this cop shit, MC heads home to check on the doctor appointment.

"I mean, right?"

She's a bit pissed.

But not the grandma-to-be.

Um...

She's really into this.

"Fuck."

MG is back in town, he's all cleaned up, and he's sitting outside a big fancy mansion smelling things.

This is where I messed up the screen grabs.

Which is why this is confusing here.

What trick?

So he was following the auditor's palanquin from his mansion. It goes around a corner, a different one passes back past MG, and when he chases the original one, he doesn't smell the smell, so he starts to follow the second one, because the auditor has swapped them.

But this guy shows up to look suspicious.

MC and his dumbass partner are out investigating temples, and find one that's having a party.

I guess that's enough to keep all the poor people alive.

How is the temple able to afford the party cookouts?

This guy, who's introduced as a hatamoto, funds everything.

Also, hold the question you now have if you're paying attention, because we have to do some more names.

"He doesn't make cool murder toys or anything."

"Who I'm sure has a wonderfully long and fulfilling life ahead of her!"

"How am I friends with commoners? No clue. But I totally am."

MC has a job to do, and that's to check for any temples of Acalanthe.

In the laziest way possible.

The crowd immediately gets angry, which isn't suspicious. At. All.

Mr. Nobody Important calms everyone down, and MC apologizes for asking a question.

And then a leaf slowly falls in front of MC, and he grabs it from the air and crushes it.

Officer Dumbass comes back from his search on the other side of the temple, and it's been five fucking minutes, and he's already smashed.

He is totally that suspicious guy from the previous scene with MG.

MC helps his friend home, and they leave. But, before completely leaving, MC picked up a pebble and launches it at a tree.

"Whatever, I caught it."

MG continues his tree-spying, when.

Hey! It's his sister! I'd assumed she wasn't in this.

"If she'd just not returned, she wouldn't have to worry about getting killed!"

He grabs her, and drags her down to the river.

So that's answered now.

"Because this is Murder Town. Get out of Murder Town, because I don't want you murdered!"

She doesn't listen, because then she'd just have a weird little cameo.

Ryoji is MG's name.

I guess she's staying with the younger sister.

Who's pregnant, but no one knows it yet.

Duh. She was introduced along with her brother and another dude.

MG is busy spying on the brother and the other dude.

Are they planning a war?

Against the government?

A communist revolution?

This hatamoto dude has totally been reading Marx.

But his buddy's all, "Yeah! Plus murder!" Murder Town never changes.

MG is listening to this, when suddenly:

"Who the fuck throws Karuta cards?"

Multiple Karuta cards!

Who haven't we seen recently, and who's description in my notes is "obviously suspicious guy"?

Oh! I see! It was obviously suspicious guy.

MG escapes, and when he gets outside, someone approaches with a sword:

I don't know. I can't find a good translation of Sanbansuji. I know it's what they say when they refer to the Vengence Shrine, and the kanji (三番筋) translates as "three wheel muscle," reading the second character as wheel instead of "turn," which doesn't make much sense there. Anyway, here's the production company's page.

But it's just MC, being a jerk because being a jerk is funny.

See?

MW is there too, so it's like a party.

"I didn't come see you before now, because I assumed something like this would happen."

"Yeah, he donked up."

WHAT?!

HOW DID I NOT NOTICE THAT IMMEDIATELY! HE WAS SO WELL DISGUISED! LIKE, HE'S WEARING A DIFFERENT SHIRT! A DIFFERENT SHIRT!

But yeah, that was immediately obvious when they introduced the hatamoto. That's the question you weren't supposed to ask, because I'm guessing you figured it out too. I guess this works fine because it's not like "Which Jackass Auditor is the Enemy of the People?" clickbait doesn't exist in the Edo period, so as much as everyone might hate him, no one knows what he looks like. "Probably a jackass."

"You're not the ninja you think you are, buddy."

"Whatever. I'm not going to bother until there's money involved."

In some other part of town, a samurai reads a piece of paper.

"Who am I? What am I doing here?"

It's Murder Town, so, well

You're a set piece. You're here to get murdered by the samurai assassin gang, which is led by the friend/brother/craftsman/the Stalin of the revolution.

Which makes sense. What doesn't make sense is some of the details of this next bit.