Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge - 09

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After a disappointing episode last week, Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge is back in good form.  Proving once and for all, that its best is when it's being a little disturbing.

Episode nine had a lot of tricks up its sleeves to keep us alert and attentive, as opposed to half-asleep from last week's sub-par offering.  Starting with the death of Seigi, the episode took the series back to its core strengths. Quite frankly, Crime Edge is at its best when it isn't trying to do the action series thing but rather when it does things in a slightly more unpredictable manner.

A death in a series like this shouldn't come as a surprise but it did.  The biggest reason for the surprise was the lack of deaths up till this point, which tends to be forgotten because of the atmosphere of Crime Edge.  It is a darker series, however we haven't seen any deaths just the befriending of defeated adversaries.  It's possible that with this death Crime Edge is signalling the true start of the Battle Royale aspect.  Add the explanation of the seemingly unimportant play and the proper introduction of the Violet Witch, and a new direction for the remaining four episodes seems more than likely.  That said, the episode did take us back to the original cornerstone of the series: the relationships.

Zenigata and Seigi's relationship was of course addressed.  Again we're reminded that the Authors lead tormented lives, which makes Seigi's death a sad event and not one to be happy about.  In the end, Seigi was nothing more than a victim of this ongoing game and the his Killing Good.  A point that was made evident with Zenigata expressing her own feelings of shortcoming when it came to saving a stray soul from the path of destruction.  Very poetic to say the least and another reason Crime Edge does so well with relationship dynamics and character depth.

Of course it all has to go back to our main coupling of Kiri x Iwai, and rest assured Crime Edge wasn't about to let another opportunity for bizarre romances with heavy fetish implications.  Thanks to an odd mixture of a soothing background track and Kiri final moments of restraint you can almost look past the hyper-sexual licking scene between him and Iwai.  You can even see some of the beauty in this romance of strangest circumstance, that is finally bearing fruit and making all shipping fans cry out with joy.  Don't get me wrong, it's still creepy.  Very creepy in fact.  Nevertheless, if you've made it this far into the series you must have the stomach for it and shouldn't be taken aback by it.

All in all, a good episode for the series.  A nice recovery from last week, with plenty of well executed and endearing moments to balance out the bizarre.  Crime Edge has slowly increased the boundaries of the fetish scenes and managed to avoid being too extreme by having more focus on the plot and other characters.  Next week we'll be getting one or two new character(s) and that'll hopefully start the final arc of the series.

Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge Episode 10 Preview

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