Recap: Hazama continues his crusade against minor offenses.

I think whether or not you’ll enjoy Samurai Flamenco depends on something very simple: can you believe in Hazama’s philosophy or not? I actually am a bit of a moral absolutist, so his ideology of not allowing any crimes, no matter how small, really spoke to me. I think his ideas are perfectly encapsulated by the stolen umbrella concept. There are many things in this world that people allow simply because they seem too small to matter, but that doesn’t make them right. I even find myself falling into this sometimes, and I can’t say it makes me a better person for it. Isn’t it possible that by teaching people to not do wrong things in small ways, it will better prevent them from doing wrong things in greater ways?

Of course, this doesn’t mean Hazama is totally in the right. I think there is a big difference between putting your trash out early and stealing someone’s possessions. I still think it’s stupid that the japanese system doesn’t just use garbage cans, thus mostly eliminating the wild animal issue, but the way Hazama went around this one was too much. It was better when he was legitimately trying to prevent or correct crimes, like trying to stop those kids from being a nuisance and breaking curfew. Yelling at grandmas only hurts his case in my view.

As to where the story will go from there, it’s hard to say. While the idol star is obviously going to become more relevant to the plot, I don’t get how she’d fit in with the whole story. Will she be inspired by Samurai Flamenco and try to do her own sentai heroics? I hope this doesn’t turn as some people predicted and become about an actual sentai show. I feel a lot of the magic in this show is how Hazama takes his philosophy to the streets. Having that incorporated into a sentai show would take away the impact because he wouldn’t be personally affecting change anymore.