REVIEW: ‘Black Torch Episode 4’ – “Two Is Not Enough”

Once again, Black Torch offers another episode that has become the best they’ve given audiences yet. Black Torch Episode 4 moves the story forward in a way that hasn’t happened in the first three episodes combined. Despite still being entirely too talkative, the dialogue is at least moving the narrative along instead of continuing to lay the groundwork.

Following the cliffhanger at the end of the last episode, Black Torch Episode 4, “Two Is Not Enough,” opens with Jiro (A.J. Beckles) and Reiji (Kyle McCarley) standing off to test Jiro’s mettle. It’s clear that the two teenage boys don’t like each other and that isn’t likely to change anytime soon, but Shiba (Ryan Colt Levy) feels that it’s important that they test their skills and be able to work together. He confesses to Usami (Julie Nathanson) later on that he doesn’t have much faith in the latter.

The fight isn’t really surprising. Reiji is too arrogant to see Jiro as a threat and vastly underestimates him. Likewise, Jiro is blind to how serious Reiji’s dislike for him is. At the end of it, neither has really won or lost, but they’ve both learned quite a bit about the other.

Black Torch Episode 4 finally starts moving the story forward after laying the groundwork.

It’s at that point that Shiba informs the Black Torch team that they’re going on their first mission. Jiro, Reiji, Shiba, and Ichika (Erin Yvette) make their way to a shrine that also acts as a base for the Bureau of Espionage. Below ground is a death obsidian seal that used to hold Rago (Keith Silverstein) before he was released. Reiji and Jiro are left with the seal to question Rago and find out what he can remember from his time before being sealed and whatever he remembers about being freed.

Meanwhile, Shiba and Ichika go look at the security feed to get a more objective look. They find that there’s a ten-minute window when the cameras were being interfered with, and it lines up with Rago’s release from the seal. It becomes clear that whoever released Rago knew what to expect.

Below ground, Rago explains that he can’t remember anything from before he was sealed in. While Jiro initially rejects the notion, Reiji takes a more measured approach and asks him for any small details about his release — what he saw, heard, smelled, felt, or anything else. Rago remembers seeing light and being surrounded by mononoke. A mononoke on a tablet talks to him about reclaiming their former glory. He makes promises of grandeur and taking out revenge on humanity and especially their mortal enemy, the Bureau of Espionage.

Black Torch continues to be dialogue-heavy.

Reiji, reading between the lines, realizes that there are three things to learn. Whoever freed him knew how to break a death obsidian seal. Next, whoever freed him, or at least whoever was on the tablet talking to him, must have known Rago before he was sealed in. Lastly, the mononoke are out for revenge. Jiro, still thinking with his fists, exclaims that he’ll just take anyone out who tries. Before Reiji or Rago has a real chance to respond, they’re interrupted by a mononoke.

Up on the surface, Shiba and Ichika realize that they’ve been sealed out of the entrance. Whatever happens inside the shrine will happen without them present. To further complicate things, a high-level bureaucrat from the Bureau has just arrived, and she doesn’t seem too pleased with Shiba.

This cliffhanger at the end of Black Torch Episode 4 is doing a lot of heavy lifting. While the action is still somewhat muted throughout the episode, the cliffhanger is making an explicit promise that the next episode is worth tuning in to. The danger is that Black Torch made this promise at the end of Episode 3, and it’s beginning to feel like the series is afraid that the content of each individual episode isn’t enough to entice viewers to come back for more.

The cliffhanger at the end of the episode promises more action in the future.

Still, despite its overly-talkative nature, Black Torch Episode 4 succeeds in ways that no episode before it has. The rivalry being seeded between Jiro and Reiji has all the hallmarks of good episodic writing. It would feel completely unrealistic to have someone as hard-headed as either Reiji or Jiro just get along from the beginning. Finding out why Black Torch was assembled and knowing that there’s a stake in it for both humanity and the mononoke does a lot to heal three episodes’ worth of set-up.

It’s worth noting, though, that one of the hallmarks of Black Torch hasn’t really made much difference since the first episode. In the first episode, Jiro talks to animals throughout. In the second episode, he talks to a flock of birds but otherwise doesn’t use his unique power. In both Episodes 3 and 4, he hasn’t talked to any animals aside from Rago, but Rago is simply a mononoke who looks like an animal. Everyone can talk to him.

Will we see Jiro use more of his animal talking powers in the future?

The only reason worth bringing this up is because in the first episode, a big deal is made out of it. Barely mentioning it in Episode 2 and not mentioning it at all in Episodes 3 and 4 makes it feel like a giant dropped thread. It begs two questions: Is it really that central to the plot? Also, will it be seen much in the future, or did it already serve its biggest narrative function?

The series is at its best when there’s real action happening, but it’s fair to say that at least the series has moved on from the setup and into the story in Black Torch Episode 4. That’s a great place to be because the series has been daring audiences to ask, “Why should I care?” for too long already. It’s great to finally have some kind of an answer.

Black Torch Episode 4 is out now on Crunchyroll. 

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