The episode begins with Mizu staring at Fowler's castle on Tanabe island, with a narrow strip of the sea separating the coastline she's standing on and the island. She takes a moment to pray for strength and a clear mind, but is briefly disturbed by sad and traumatic memories from both her recent and more distant past, showing the effect of those events and how they're weighing on her.
Mizu goes to find the secret tunnel that Madam Kaji told her about, which runs under the sea and will bring her beneath the castle. She's disturbed that the tunnel contains numerous human skeletons, and strangely, many of them could only be young children, even infants sometimes being held by the skeletons of adult women, presumably their mothers. At the end of the tunnel is a formidable wooden door, and when Mizu goes to pick the locks it springs a trap that floods the tunnel. Mizu manages to finish picking the locks and swim through before she drowns, emerging in a storeroom next to a courtyard. Despite Mizu's attempt to sneak past the guards, the alarm is almost immediately raised, alerting the rest of the castle to her presence.
Fowler, Heiji Shindo, and Lord Chiba are in a room on the top floor, conspiring about their efforts to assassinate the Shogun and seize control of Japan in the spring. Fowler gladly shows off one of the rifles he intends to arm their troops with, and Lord Chiba says that the men are trained and ready. This doesn't mean they agree on everything, however, as for example Lord Chiba balks at the thousands of deaths that Fowler predicts will be necessary, wondering if there isn't a way to accomplish their goals with fewer deaths. At that point a servant comes in to inform them about the intruder, and Shindo immediately knows that it's Mizu. He goes over to an elaborate device that allows him to view various part of the castle to watch Mizu's progress.
First Mizu sprints through a hallway where The Walls Are Closing In and blades spring out of all sides of the corridor, making it through despite taking a wound in the foot. Next, she manages to cross a narrow outdoor path that has several Pit Traps and fights a group of guards at the end. After passing through an area of the castle's kitchen (where the servants try to go about their business without doing anything to draw her ire), she comes to a strange area with an indoor zen garden. A monkey comes out from behind some scenery and holds out a flower to Mizu, then blows pollen from the flower into her face, which quickly sends her into a hallucinogenic state. Confused by her visions, Mizu sees a group of many more monkeys attacking her, but she eventually manages to progress.
Still going in and out of lucidity, Mizu reaches an area with prisoners in a dungeon. Okiyama, Heiji Shindo's giant enforcer with a club, sets the prisoners free and then destroys the only source of light in the room before leaving. Mizu has a vision of the prisoners as feral demonic beings attacking her in the darkness, and kills them. She's about to leave until her hallucinations bring her to a cell where the prisoner didn't attack, and it turns out to be Taigen, who is very badly injured, laying on the floor, and unconscious. Mizu manages to rouse him and takes him with her, somewhat to his chagrin when he realizes they're going up instead of down and fleeing the castle.
Next Mizu squares off with Okiyama, which is a difficult fight, especially with the hallucinatory effects still bothering her. Eventually she overcomes him, but has to set off an explosive to do so, temporarily knocking her out. When she comes to her head has cleared somewhat, but the room in the tower is severely damaged by the explosion, and Taigen is about to fall through a hole in the wall and to the ground below. Mizu grabs him, then begins climbing the castle on the outside, letting her bypass at least one and perhaps more floors and defenses. Finally, she bursts through the window of the room Fowler, Shindo, and Lord Chiba are in, demanding to know where Fowler is, and catches sight of the map Fowler has been using to plan his assault on the Shogun at his castle in Edo.
Lord Chiba briefly distracts Mizu by attacking her, but she easily defeats him and knocks out the man. Then she turns to see Fowler... who has grabbed the rifle he was showing off to his co-conspirators earlier, loaded it, and has it aimed at Mizu. He fires, breaking her sword and wounding Mizu in the shoulder. Mizu tries to fight anyway, but every time she tries to strike Fowler, he beats her with the rifle, his fists, or both. He mocks Mizu for trying to kill him, noting that as far as he knows he's accounted for all his bastards, referring to the skeletons Mizu saw in the tunnel. Fowler notices Mizu's tattoo and quickly deduces the purpose of it and that she was responsible for killing Violet, the white man Mizu successfully assassinated before the start of the show. Fowler says "For Violet," and then resumes beating her.
Taigen manages to gather some strength, grabs a sword out of Heiji Shindo's hand, and attacks Fowler, but is so weak and discombobulated that the attack doesn't even hurt Fowler, who turns his attention to Taigen. Realizing that she has no chance of defeating Fowler and Taigen is about to be beaten to death, Mizu manages to grab Taigen and makes a running leap out of the same window they came through. Together the two go past the cliff edge the window overlooked, and plunge into the icy water far below.
Mizu attempts to grab Taigen, swim up to the water's surface, and climb onto the ice to get away, but is unable to pull them onto the ice. They start to sink into the water, but just before she can black out she hears a bell ringing, and sees a figure that might be Ringo standing on the ice. The figure reaches towards her, but her vision goes black at that moment.
Tropes in this episode include:
- An Arm and a Leg: Mizu briefly uses the severed leg of a guard as a weapon against his friends, hitting several with it and apparently stabbing one with the side that had bone sticking out of it.
- Attack the Injury: At one point when Mizu tries to fight against him, Fowler responds by jabbing her in the bullet wound, putting her in agonizing pain.
- Big Damn Heroes: Mizu and Taigen are about to drown or sink into hypothermia in the icy waters when Ringo's silhouette appears to save her.
- Bookends: The episode begins with Mizu praying for strength and to be free of distractions, only to have a series of bad and traumatic memories for past flash on the screen that she attempts to repress. At the end she has a series of more positive thoughts and memories based on Ringo, embraces them, and tries to act in a positive way instead of thoughtlessly pushing forward with a doomed attempt at revenge. (She also has a series of positive memories and flashbacks in the middle of the episode, during a period when she had lost consciousness.)
- Call-Back: On seeing Okiyama again, Mizu just says: "Tea party..."
- Chekhov's Gun: After first getting inside the castle, Mizu takes a look at the various tools she has left. It includes two ancient versions of grenades, both of which she will use before the end of the episode.
- Climb, Slip, Hang, Climb: Done for Rule of Three
- Mizu leaps over a Trap Door with Spikes of Doom, and then another trapdoor opens to extend its length. She jams her sword into the wall and swings off it, but even so she's barely able to grab onto the edge.
- Mizu wakes from the explosion to see Taigen about to slide off a damaged floor into the ocean. She grabs his arm only to be pulled off herself, so again she jams her sword into the wall, is barely able to get Taigen's arms around her shoulders just when she's about to lose her grip on the sword, then she has to climb up the outside of the castle to Fowler's level. Which she enters by throwing Taigen through the window.
- Subverted when Mizu goes to grab onto the edge of the hole in the ice...and the ice breaks off under her weight.
- Color Motif:
- At times when Mizu is hallucinating, the blue of her eyes is heightened
◊, and/or the sclera of her eyes look blue as well to highlight her altered mental state. - By contrast, the things that she sees as antagonistic are usually red, including red eyes on both the monkeys and the prisoners, and a flame-like red aura surrounds Okiyama.
- At times when Mizu is hallucinating, the blue of her eyes is heightened
- Creator's Favorite: In-Universe, Fowler seems to feel this way about the level with the monkeys and the flowers. While Mizu is making her way through the castle, Fowler comments about how she'll have to deal with his flowers next, and when she reaches the top, he asks her what she thought of the monkeys.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Mizu and Taigen are both terribly injured and Mizu is exhausted by the time they reach Fowler. Their attempts to fight Fowler don't go well at all. By the time that Mizu bails and gets both herself and Taigen out of the castle, Fowler was probably no more than a minute away from beating Taigen to death, and Mizu would have suffered the same fate, unless Fowler decided to capture her alive and torture her first.
- Death Course: The tower version.
- Dented Iron: Taigen is a wreck after all the torture he had endured, and spends most of the episode unable to do anything except snark a little bit. The one action he tries to take turns out to be completely ineffective, as his attack on Fowler does nothing to Fowler at all.
- Diving Save: Taigen is about to be killed by Fowler when Mizu tackles him out the window so they fall into the Soft Water below.
- Dungeon Bypass: Mizu skips past at least one floor of the castle, maybe more, by scaling the wall on the outside instead of going floor by floor on the inside.
- Fingore: Taigen's torture included ripping out his fingernails, as Fowler mentions.
- The Gadfly: Fowler trolls his guests by serving them curd, knowing that they're too polite to refuse what to them is disguising Foreign Queasine.Lord Chiba: Milk...from a cow?
- Grenade Tag: Mizu has to stab Okiyama in the neck with a fuzed grenade to kill him.
- Know When to Fold Them: Mizu, despite being one of the most stubborn determinators in recent memory, eventually accepts that she is simply not going to defeat Fowler at this point and continuing to try is going to get her and Taigen killed in a matter of minutes, if not sooner. She opts to escape to (hopefully) fight another day and save Taigen's life as well.
- Hollywood Darkness: The Secret Underground Passage should have been pitch black after it flooded, extinguishing Mizu's torch.
- I Know You're Watching Me: Heiji freaks out when he looks through his periscope device and sees Mizu glaring back at him.
- Improvised Weapon: Mizu has to give up her sword to make the leap across the pit trap, only to find herself facing a large number of guards. She starts off throwing the guards into their own pit so they're impaled on the spikes, then uses their own swords and even their severed limbs against them. Then when it looks like she's going to blow herself up, she reattaches the fuse and uses her grenade as a bludgeon.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Lord Chiba and the other lord console themselves with the fact that nobody would dare attack them, as they're official representatives of the Shogun. The moment that the second lord agrees, Mizu impales him from behind and leaps through the window.
- Ludicrous Gibs: When stabbing Okiyama in the neck doesn't do the trick, Mizu sets off her second hand grenade right on top of him. We get a brief shot from Mizu's perspective of his body literally being blown to bits just before the blast makes her lose consciousness.
- Made of Iron: Mizu proves it all over again, although she gets beaten badly enough that she realizes she simply can't win and has to retreat, a first for the series. Okiyama also deserves mention, as he shrugs off several wound including (if Mizu's perspective can be believed, which is a big if under the circumstances), Mizu stabbing him through the neck with her blade so sticks all the way through his neck... and he simply pulls the sword out and tosses it aside.
- Man Bites Man: Mizu bites off Okiyama's nose to get out of a bear hug he had her in.
- Master of Unlocking: Using her lockpicking tools, Mizu is able to open the doors of the Secret Underground Passage even when they're flooded with water and she's about to drown.
- Mook Horror Show: One can't really help but feel sorry for the ordinary guards that Mizu fights, as the ease and ruthlessness with which she defeats them and her... creativity with some of her fighting/killing makes it a pretty terrifying spectacle. They have every right to be afraid.
- Mushroom Samba: Mizu spends a good chunk of the episode tripping as a result of whatever flower that was that the monkey had. As a result she has numerous visual and auditory hallucinations.
- My Greatest Failure: It seems as though the fact that she disappointed Ringo is Mizu's biggest regret, as scenes of him play multiple times in her thoughts, and it's clear that Mizu feels guilty. When she saves Taigen at the end of the episode, it's just after flashing back to Ringo saying that he wants to be a samurai like her, and Mizu replies "Okay, I'll show you how," before rescuing Taigen from Fowler.
- No, I Am Behind You: Mizu climbs up to a window and sees it full of guards facing the door they think she's going to come through. One of them hears something and turns around, but a Reveal Shot shows that Mizu has already climbed past the window.
- Offing the Offspring: The tiny skeletons Mizu saw turn out to be bastard biracial children of Fowler's, all killed shortly after their birth. Presumably uncooperative mothers were killed along with them.
- Properly Paranoid: Fowler wants to ignore Mizu and stick to talking about business. Shindo is much more worried about her and the threat she poses, insisting on keeping track of her progress and that the usual measures in the castle won't be enough to stop her. He's right to be worried.
- Rule of Symbolism: Fowler is on the ninth level of his castle, a possible Shout-Out to the nine circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno.
- Running Gagged: When Mizu and Taigen see Okiyama waiting for them, Taigen once again goes to say his line about how only he gets to kill Mizu. Mizu slaps him and knocks him out of the way before he can finish.
- Shell-Shock Silence: Mizu after her first grenade explodes. It blasts a hole in the floor that she falls through, so she just sticks her head in the icy bucket of water she used earlier to treat her foot.
- Ship Tease: Without seeming to realize it, Mizu smiles as soon as she sees Taigen.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: Some of the music used feels very off for the occasion. The cover of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is bombastic but at least mostly fits the aesthetic. The mostly upbeat rockabilly song "Jeanie Jeanie Jeanie" just comes out of nowhere and feels like a very odd choice for the scene where Mizu fights a bunch of mooks. In certain places the alternate version of the episode that Netflix released for free on YouTube (which is Deliberately Monochrome except for a Splash of Color here and there, and overall feels closer in tone to a black and white Japanese period film) changes some of the music.
- Sparing the Final Mook: One guard from among the group that Mizu fights after getting past the pit traps freezes in terror in the middle of the fight, and is still standing there in fear when she's finished off all the others. They silently work out a deal that if he helps her retrieve her sword, she'll spare him. She keeps her end, and he falls to his knees in relief and fear when she leaves.
- Starts Stealthily, Ends Loudly: Mizu tries to be stealthy after first getting into the castle, but her attempt is foiled almost right away, leading to her deciding So Much for Stealth and cutting her way through the rest of the castle.
- Stompy Mooks: Before they fight Okiyama hits his club against the ceiling, whereupon Mizu hears the sound of feet tramping across the room above, showing there are more men waiting to fight her even if she gets past him.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: After all the scenes in both this and prior episodes of Mizu being an unstoppable force of nature in a fight, when she faces Fowler while he's armed with a gun and ready for her, instead of accomplishing some action movie feat to beat him or level the playing field, she learns the hard way why you should Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight, as Fowler shoots her from across the room, snapping her sword and seriously wounding her. It's only due to dumb luck that the bullet hit Mizu's sword and then went into her shoulder instead of hitting her somewhere more lethal and killing her immediately. Things only get worse for her and Taigen from there, as her every attempt to attack Fowler with the broken sword is countered with contemptuous ease and leads to her getting a worse beating.
- Tempting Fate: Lord Chiba and another lord are conspiring with Fowler and Shindo. When Mizu is getting close to the top of the castle, the other lord says that maybe they should get to safety, but Lord Chiba responds that as lords who are emissaries of the Shogun and are there in the full formal dress of lords, nobody would dare to harm them, as it would be treated as an attack on the Shogun himself. The other lord is calmed by this... and is impaled by Mizu only a moment later as she bursts through the window.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Taigen has this reaction to things on multiple occasions, including shortly after the start of the fight with Okiyama, when he tells Mizu to just put him back in the dungeon.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: Mizu is drugged rather than insane, but the effect is much the same. She spends a large chunk of the episode having hallucinations means that anything she sees is of questionable authenticity at best. In one case we literally see exactly why, as the people imprisoned in the dungeon turn from ordinary if silent people to half naked, feral and aggressive demons who are attacking her in a moment or two from her perspective. How much of what she sees true and how much is her drugged mind playing tricks on her throughout certain sequences is an open question.
- Title Drop: Mizu's prayer before infiltrating Fowler's castle."My enemy is near. Give me the strength. Guide my hand to kill him, and return alive to kill those who remain. May all evil omens, the dire cry of birds, a malign conjunction of stars, all evil dreams and angry words... May they all be drained of power."
- Stop Motion Lighting: Mizu fighting the 'demons' by the light of a flickering candle.
- Villainous Friendship: Implied. Fowler guesses that Mizu is out to kill the four white men that were in Japan and she was responsible for Violet's death. Fowler seems to refer to Violet with a hint of affection and comments "For Violet," before he goes back to beating Mizu senseless.
- Villainous Valor: One thing nobody can call Fowler is a coward. When Mizu first makes her presence known by impaling the lord through the window, Lord Chiba is obviously terrified, Heiji Shindo is staring with his mouth open in dismay, but Fowler remains sitting at the table with a calm, determined look on his face. He then proceeds to beat Mizu within an inch of her life with the same calm, even cheerful demeanor.
- Wham Shot: Fowler shoots at Mizu, and we see the bullet heading towards her in slow motion. Then it hits her sword... and her sword shatters.
