REVIEW: ‘Black Torch’ Episode 3 – “What’s My Name?”

With two fairly mediocre worldbuilding episodes behind us, Black Torch Episode 3 has to be ready to move on to the point, right? Right? Black Torch Episode 3, “What’s My Name?”, is a tale of two halves. In the first act, Black Torch remembers that it’s an action series. The adrenaline is in high gear for the first half of the story, before suddenly it’s not. While it’s a marked improvement over its predecessors, the series continues to lay a lot of groundwork rather than building on what’s already there.

The morning after nearly being killed by his grandfather, Jiro (A.J. Beckles) leaves with Ichika (Erin Yvette) to go back to the Bureau of Espionage. Due to severe mistrust of mononoke, Ichika puts Jiro into spectral energy-blocking cuffs. Then, the van carrying them gets ambushed by two mononoke.

After realizing the peril they’re in, Jiro pleads with Ichika to remove the cuffs so that he and Rago (Keith Silverstein) can help fight the mononoke. Ichika hesitates, and a flashback begins. The audience learns that Ichika comes from a shinobi clan, and when she was a little girl, her father, the head of the clan, was killed by a mononoke.

The action offers a refreshing break from all of the worldbuilding. 

Having explained her distrust of mononoke to the viewers, Jiro gets her attention and makes a convincing case for her to allow him to help. After being freed from his restraints, Jiro and Rago spring into action, and, along with Ichika, the three defeat the mononoke.

Meanwhile, Ichika’s superior, Shiba (Ryan Colt Levy), stands before masked bureaucrats making the case that Jiro should be allowed to join the Bureau of Espionage in a new task force he’s putting together called Black Torch. Despite some reservations, they agree, and Jiro is told he, along with two others he had yet to meet, is also joining.

He first meets Hana Usami (Julie Nathanson). The special agent assigned to Black Torch is confident but soft-spoken and extremely polite. She comes across as someone who can be easily manipulated or walked all over.

We learn the backstory of Ichika’s hatred for mononoke in Black Torch Episode 3. 

Then Jiro meets Reiji Kirihara (Kyle McCarley). Reiji’s dislike of mononoke pales in comparison to Ichika’s. The audience learns that the team is full of 17-year-olds, and, like many 17-year-old boys, both Jiro and Reiji are hot-heads who instantly don’t like each other. This leads to a fight — an outcome that Shiba had counted on as a test to see if Jiro is really up to the task, but the result of which will have to wait for Episode 4. 

The action of Black Torch Episode 3 takes up over half of the episode. The mid-show splash screen happens in the middle of the transport ambush, right before the flashback. It feels like the show knows it needs to do more and is trying to temper its desire for worldbuilding with some actual action, but the result still feels like a lot of talking.

That first act threads a conversation about how much Ichika hates the mononoke, and later gives us a flashback to justify that hate. While Ichika fights outside, Jiro and Rago argue about whether they should help her. While it was great to see more than just talking, even the big action scene is heavy with dialogue. The last ten minutes of the episode are all talking, and just when it seemed like there might be a fight…end credits.

There’s promise in “What’s My Name?” but the series is in dire need of acceleration. 

It’s incredibly frustrating because Black Torch is only listed for 12 episodes. With nearly a quarter of the show now complete, it’s hit a critical point where the series needs to get to the point and stop talking so much. At this point, it’s clear that Rago doesn’t trust humans, the bureau doesn’t trust the mononoke, and neither bureau nor mononoke is all that fond of Rago.

Aside from that, there has been no indication of exactly what the bureau intends to use Jiro and Rago for beyond simply hunting mononoke with Rago as bait. There’s clearly some tension between all members of the Black Torch team, and there are only 9 episodes left to sort out all of this.

Despite this, Black Torch Episode 3 is the best of the series to date. But it’s fair to say that enough foundation has been laid to build the Empire State Building on. With three episodes in the rear-view mirror, Black Torch needs to move on and get to the story they’re trying to tell. The first act of Black Torch Episode 3 proves definitively that they have all the ingredients for a truly fun action series if only they’d stop interrupting themselves to explain it all.

Black Torch Episode 3 is out now on Crunchyroll. 

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