Peacemaker Kurogane: Friend

The end of an era is approaching.  Has the time of the Shinsengumi arrived along with it?  The answer to that question will be determined as Toshizo Hijikata leads his men to fight in the Battle of Toba Fushimi.  Elsewhere, Tetsunosuke Ichimura races to find the woman he loves and make her his own.  Unbeknownst to him, a former friend turned enemy waits for him to settle an old score.  Though he swore never to kill and has overcome much since his first days as a Shinsengumi Page, nothing can prepare Tetsunosuke for the greatest battle of his life.

Ah dammit.  Despite the stumble with the opening of Belief, I could’ve sworn Peacemaker Kurogane really had this one.  And the sad thing is, Friend works well in several respects in terms of closing out some character relationships and hyping up the dread factor for the inevitable end of the Shinsengumi.  However, this is Part 2 of a 2 Part project…and the story is left unfinished.  Wait what?  How could this project have been greenlit if there wasn’t any intent to bring the story to a wholly and truly satisfying conclusion?  Is a third and final part still possible?  Ok, ok, let’s do this right, I can come back and complain about this later.

All of the good we saw in Belief continues on in Friend.  The character arcs of Tetsu, Tatsu, Susumu and the other Shinsengumi continue on strongly and everyone get thrown through the ringer in one way or another.  For Toshi and his remaining men, they witness the truly overpowering force of the modern era and the harsh truth that they’ve been left behind to die for a cause long dead.  It’s really hard to see characters you’ve come to care about suffer so much.  However, being a historical action drama, the harsher truth is if Peacemaker Kurogane was going to continue, it would always come to this point, when things went to hell for the guys who were so good at sending people to Hell.  Meanwhile Tetsu confronts the fact that he screwed up waiting so long to be with Saya and man it sucks seeing this new and incredible Tetsu in such a sad state.  As for Susumu, man.  He’s actually on the receiving end of one of my biggest pros and cons of the movie.  Susumu’s storyline from the TV Series is revisited with the new animation and not only does it look great but the emotional beats are still intact.  The loss of his sister and the bond he forged with Tetsu through it all was the high point of the original series and plays a very important, emotional factor in Friend.  However, there in lies the con.  This is Part 2 of a (so far) two part project.  If the movie wasn’t going to close out Peacemaker Kurogane overall, was it wise to spend a good third of the film revisiting this memory?  I don’t know if 15-20 minutes could have tied anything up anyway but the other side plot with Suzu’s return could have been furthered instead.  Oh and as for Tatsunosuke…well he doesn’t get to do too much but he does get the most bad ass moment of the whole film, where the heck has this Tatsu been all along?

All in all, Friend has some really good character drama that only makes the added action and chaos of the opening Battle of Toba Fushimi such a great scene.  At the very least, it opens the film on a much stronger note than Belief, you know cause we had an entire film (THAT ACTUALLY EXISTED!!!! to build up to this battle.  There are a couple of big action scenes to make up for the shortage of them in the bulk of belief and they all stand head and shoulders above anything in the TV Series.  It makes me almost wish we could see the TV Anime redone in this artstyle with more bloody swordplay and maybe trimming some unnecessary fat.  And yet it all feels like everything is building to a climax we may or may never get.  Suzu makes his much anticipated return and has completely ripped off the hairstyle of Merrik from Yu Gi Oh in the process.  He hasn’t gotten any better mentally since we last saw him at the conclusion of the TV Series, I dare say he’s gotten worse.  Suzu’s got a grand plan to make Tetsu suffer for “killing his master” (which mind you Tetsu never did just FYI) and some of that plan does get enacted, giving us a very Empire Strikes Back conclusion to Friend.  But again, this whole affair makes Friend seem like the middle half of an unfinished trilogy.  And really, I wouldn’t be complaining so much about that aspect if a third film was greenlit and forthcoming (Belief and Friend were released a few months apart or so which would have put a third films release around early 2019 or so).  But the build up and continued dramatic successes falter a bit because there is no resolution to tie it all together (or a proper beginning, seriously this should have been a 4 film series instead of 2 or just a whole other TV Anime altogether).

This really is a tough one to grade.  I really liked a lot of Friend and this two part continuation of Peacemaker Kurogane more than I ever thought that I would.  We end things on a very emotional and heart tugging note and even get a brief teaser of…something.  It could be a glimpse of a possible final chapter or it’s just a final montage haphazardly thrown in like the very beginning of Belief.  Either way, when Friend works as Part 2 of 3, it works wonders and is all of the good Peacemaker Kurogane should have been doing during it’s entire TV run instead of only part of it.  As a “conclusion” to the overall story, it leaves a heckuvalot to be desired.  Ok, judgement call time.  I’m going to give Peacemaker Kurogane: Friend…an 8.5/10 I’ll say this though, I would be giving  a 9 if this were continuing and if we ever do get a last part I WILL come back and raise the score cause this was a damn good flick for an Anime that didn’t deserve it but got it anyway.