Hozuki No Reitetsu
Episode 13 – Hell’s Bon Festival Of Lights/Idle Chat With The Great King Enma
Another week, another episode and I’m so glad because I cannot get enough of Hozuki No Reitetsu. Welcome back to another installment of Hozuki No Reitetsu Anime Impressions, I hope you’ve all been as excited about this new episode as I have! This week marks the release of Hozuki No Reitetsu episode thirteen: The final episode of the series and one that shows us Hell, much like the living world, enjoys a bit of rest, relaxation and a chance to party down. It’s been thirteen long weeks and Hozuki No Reitetsu has been there the whole way. Now, as we step out of the Winter season and into the Spring we leave behind the old series’ in anticipation for the next and the last one for me just so happens to be Hozuki No Reitetsu. It’s been fun, old friend.
Hell’s Bon Festival Of Lights:
What a great way to kick off the final episode of a series! Hell is having its annual “Bon Festival Of Lights” celebration wherein which the residents of hell take part in a heavy few days of solid festivities while the tortured souls of hell get some time off to go and haunt their family back in the mundane world or whatever it is that the dead do when they have some “free time”. This half of the episode is honestly just pure fun and celebration, there’s no real story so there’s no point taking you all through it scene by scene, it is just an episode that you have to watch and enjoy because it’s incredibly light-hearted and leads into a nice series end. Hozuki and the gang (Shiro, Nasubi, Karauri, etc) meet up to partake in the festivities as a group and, as you can imagine, “tomfoolery” ensues. What absolutely made “Hell’s Bon Festival Of Lights” for me was that every character in the series was shown to be somewhere enjoying the festivities and it was, somewhat, heartwarming especially for someone like myself who has been following the series the entire time, writing about it each and every week as it is released.
The series in general wasn’t that of a heavy one, characters weren’t constantly going up against real adversity, everything the audience saw was super silly and super fun, for the festival to be even more “chill”, so to speak, than the entire series itself was a good move by the showrunners. This festival had all the demons letting off a little steam, taking things slow and enjoying a well-deserved break, all of which came across perfectly as a positive vibe that I definitely picked up on. Hopefully the rest of the audience felt the same way. The half-episode ended with a huge “manhunt”, for lack of a better term, where Hell’s workers set off to find and capture all of the wayward sould who’ve yet to return to hell even after they’ve been told to. While “manhunt” sounds like such a harsh term to use, it really isn’t that harsh. It ends with the same playful vibe that was present throughout the episode so far and really rounded out the the festival storyline. Going out with a bang!
Idle Chat With The Great King Enma:
Now here’s something that people may not have entirely picked up on with the last half of this final episode; the series has, essentially, come full circle. Hozuki and King Enma finished off the very first episode of the series with a nice little chat, what I found to be fantastic was that they also did the same for the very last episode. Full circle. The second half of the episode takes place right after the ending of the “Bon Festival”, Hell has to return to its natural, serious state and so do the workers. The audience joins Hozuki and Enma as he judges the souls of the recently deceased. The episode basically takes place in Enma’s office as he condemns souls and Hozuki has a little fun with the old man before dropping a very sweet line that I hope everybody picked up the way King Enma did. Through talks, pranks and hilarity, the two are constantly in conversation much like that of the first episode, as I mentioned above. It was truly the cooldown the series needed.
This episode, the final episode, really did a good job at properly portraying something like a New Years Eve party; there’s the celebration, the drinking, the fun and the connection with the people around you but every party has a “next day” which is usually made up of cleaning, resting, recuperating and complaining. Episode thirteen did that perfectly. The festival ended and Hell’s minions were back to work for another year. The episode was full of Hozuki pulling one long prank on King Enma to which, by the end of the episode, he comments that Hozuki is constantly tricking him and looking down on him, that he would make a better king of hell. This is where the episode gets a little more serious and infinitely more sincere. Hozuki then explains that he enjoys his spot as the right hand man to Enma, he enjoys not having a fair bit of responsibility and he enjoys being able to orchestrate things “behind the curtains” but it’s his final lines for the series that really hit me: “We have been acquainted for quite a long time. I hope we will be acquainted for much longer.“…those were the final words for the series and, in my opinion, the perfect way to end it. Well done, Hozuki No Reitetsu, you proved yourself to be a brilliant series with great visuals, great characters and an even greater overall feeling. It has been a pleasure writing about you.
Check out more Hozuki No Reitetsu impressions HERE.
