Friday: Today was the last day of Murder Team Five

This was the Mission to Kill (Hissatsu Shigotonin) 2009 series, and it's done now.  I've set up the DVR to re-record the Tuesday rerun episodes, so I can archive it.  There's a special double next week, and that's unfortunately the last time Old Murder Cop appears.

So what happens to the Murder Team?

Last week, there was a new gang of assassins, and they were killing a bunch of people, and claiming that they were the real Murder Team.  They had more than five members, so they clearly couldn't be the right ones.  Anyway, they stabbed a bunch of people, and generally caused trouble and caused a lot of people to be looking for assassins.

Plus, Murder Cop had to take part in his friend's seppuku, because he's a good friend, even though he didn't understand what his friend had done.  Nobody did, and I couldn't clearly figure out how it connected to the rest of the story, but I sometimes don't pay attention too closely.

In any case, MT5 goes to murder up some people, but it all goes wrong when Murder Woman has to escape, so Murder Dude is forced to switch from his heart stabby needle to a sword to fight off a bunch of bad guys.  It doesn't work, and he's totally captured, and the episode ended with the rest of the team looking concerned.

This week, the bad guys are obviously torturing MD, because that's what bad guys do.  Although, if we're being honest, the cops totally tortured an innocent dude a half dozen episodes ago, so it's like a really bad hobby that people had.  Anyway, it turns out that a newspaper guy is behind a bunch of stuff, so he could write stories and sell papers.  Except they're more like flyers than real newspapers, and I'm not sure I actually saw his people selling them.

But he's a bad guy, and he does something with newspaper like things.  That's all you need to know.  Also that he's friends with the "Chief Councillor," which is a big fancy job of some sort.

The bad guys have the people they'd abducted for being assassins identify MD, and they use that information to ransack his house and kidnap his girlfriend.  Except:

1. Those abducted people disappear after this scene.  They had so much murder to get through this week, they just off-screen murdered like a dozen people to make room.
2. She's not like a girlfriend-girlfriend, she's just this girl that lives at his house and they're friends.  She calls him "older brother," so maybe she's somebody they rescued before I started watching the show?  This is why I'm DVRing the reruns.  

Back to the story.  They've captured MD, kidnapped his girlfriend, off-screen murdered the extras, so it's obviously going to be kick ass rescue time, right?

First, CC summons the wife of the guy who had to kill himself last week, and offers her a pile of money to never tell anybody what her husband told her.  She's all "whatever, he never told me anything, and I'm insulted that you'd throw money at me like this, and I'm going to go live in a temple, because you made my husband kill himself.  Oh, BTW, any chance you'd be willing to tell me why you woke up one day and decided that you were going to ruin my life?"  Nope.  CC is a jerk.  She leaves, and a guy walks up and stabs her.  She's all "WTF, I didn't even fucking know anything, and I get murdered here?  This is bullshit, but this town has that sacred shrine where you can hire magical murders to avenge the fuck out of things, and I'm going to get in on that action before I die of this really bad stab wound that would have insta-killed pretty much any other character ever, and you know what?  I'm going to make sure I take so long that it goes from fucking noon to fucking night by the time I get to the shrine.  Because fuck your sword and your stab wound, I'm fucking hardcore."

Seriously, it goes from day to night, and the assassin stabbed her good.  She's fucking hardcore.

MW is there, because that's her job, and is about to be all, "we'll murder those fuckers.  We'll murder them good," when MC steps out.  The Widow Hardcore is like, "huh, you were my husband's friend, and he never told me you were one of the revenge assassins."  It's all touching, and he's sad that she's dying, but they still take the time to collect all the coins she scatters around, but that's just business.

Now we can do a kick ass rescue.

The team all prepares, and they do special "this is the last mission because we're all going to die" preparations.  The get to the castle, when it's suddenly attacked by the other assassin team, who are all wearing masks, because when you're not a professional Murder Team, you need to make sure people don't see your faces.  In any case, they seem to be out to murder the newspaper guy too.  For reasons.  The bad guy plots are often confusing.  The MT5 plans are simple:

1. Know somebody.
2. Watch them get killed.
3. Get paid to avenge them.
4. Murder everyone.

Anyway, fight, fight, fight.  One of the assassins taunts MC, who's pretty much just walking through bad guys like he's cutting grass, but new bad guys show up and the assassin get sliced and his mask falls off.  It's MC's patrol buddy!  He's been showing for ages being all "I'm basically like Barney Fife, but in an Edo-period magistrate officer guise," so I assumed he was just there so MC could make suspicious faces behind someone's back.  Nope.  He's been building up to this, where he tells MC that he just wanted to actually help people for once, because the cops never seem to catch bad guys, but MT5 makes sure they end up stabbed, and he really wanted to get in on the stabbing action.

Except he's bad at it, because now he's dead.  "You should have stayed a cop," MC says.

MC strolls through the castle, raining slashy slashy murder on everyone in his way, because it's the final episode, he's the main character, and there's really nothing stopping him.  Literally.  No one can possible stop him.

The rest of the team does the murders they need to:  OMC kills the dude from last week that survived and New Young Murder Dude kills the newspaper guy with a series of great taunts.  Also his impractical thread and needle strangling technique.  He's a tailor.  It's what he does (I don't think I've mentioned this before).

MC walks down to the basement where they've been torturing MD, and decides he's had enough murder for today, so he stabs the torturer through his stomach, pinning him to the wall.  Yep.  He then releases MD, and gives him his murder needle.  MD is kind of messed up, but he stumbles over to the torture dude, and does his thing.  He also gets a great taunt with, "wait for me in hell, so I can kill you there again."  MD is wonderful.

So everything's great and happy, right?

Nope, MC was kidding earlier when he was all out of murder.  He puts on the assassin mask his buddy had, and walks out to greet CC's palanquin. CC tells his guards it's not a big deal, and opens the door to greet who he thinks is one of the assassins, because I guess he'd ordered them to kill the rest of the crew?  Or so they'd get killed by the rest of the crew?  Maybe so both would end up all dead?  I really don't understand the bad guy plot this week.  CC says, "so the job's done?"

Crap.  OMC had a great pun taunt!  The guy he's supposed to kill thinks he's in the way, because he introduces himself as a cop.  "We didn't call the cops! Go away!"  OMC walks up, and is like, "sure, as soon as I do my job."  The bad guy pauses, his eyes go wide, and then OMC stabs him.  Luckily, the subtitles point out that he says "as soon as I do my shigoto," which is 仕事, "work", but also the first two characters of 仕事人, which is what they've been calling the assassins this week and last.  See?  Great pun.

But yeah, CC thinks everything's fine, MC pulls out his sword, murders all the guards, because fuck them for being there, and then kills CC.  My notes claim that MC then says, "Fuck you right in your fat ugly face, you're dead now.  Dick."  I suspect I may have exaggerated.

Now they do the great and happy endings, except MD is leaving with his girlfriend.  Probably for the best since somebody who saw him get captured might have escaped murder.  New-YMD's tailor shop is super busy, and his pet bird comes back, so that's nice.  MW goes to visit old-YMD's grave, so he gets a flashback.  MC brings OMC to his house, and we find out that OMC has a wife.  Who we haven't ever seen, I don't think, because I honestly thought he lived by himself in that police house.

Wink! from MC.

And it's over.

Until the special in a few weeks.

And I found that there's a tumblr tag.  Except that seems to be mostly just "YMD is super cute!"


On not MT5 related news, I found this in the big encyclopedia of mythology that I have.  It's like the "tl;dr myths" in book form.  I've blurred out the unrelated stuff, and the story that the authors thought was most important.  I disagree.  I want to know more about Arjuna and Krishna's Grand Adventure to Help Agni Get His Power Back Through Arson.

It's from the other myth, but: "Toot toot, motherfuckers!  We've got a forest to burn down!"

• Ok, Murder Dude's actor Matsuoka Masahiro is in a band and he plays drums.  That explains where he learned to do the fancy twirl thing he did with his murder needle.
• This made me laugh so hard I had to put my laptop down and remember how breathing worked.  It nearly happened again when I went to get the link.
• This is what I said yesterday.
• Skeleton teaches manners.
• Sure, everyone's heard the joke, and yes, it's been done, but this time it's live action with special effects.
• I saw this comic yesterday, but it didn't have any reference to the author, so I assumed I could just wait and it would appear in a popular internet source with all the information in the next few days.  It did.