It’s episode 25, and Nagasarete Airantou is now in the home stretch as Ikuto and Suzu must go and pray to the Dragon God of the Sea in order for Ikuto to get off the island. But first the two must retrieve the key that will allow them to enter the cave where the Dragon God lives, but to do that, Ikuto and Suzu must defeat their biggest challenge yet.
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Obaba tells Suzu and Ikuto that they must travel to the island of the Dragon God, just off of Airantou to see the Dragon God of the Sea. However, they need the key to open the shrine, and she gives the pair a map to find the key - showing that the key is located on the top of Mt. Fuji on Airantou. She also tells them that whomever wishes to find the key must face a serious of dangerous trials along the way. Ikuto thinks he’ll pass, but Obaba says that he won’t allow Ikuto to leave the island without first receiving the Dragon God’s blessing.
Suzu and Ikuto start their journey, but Rin, Chikane, and Yukino have other plans. Soon, Suzu finds a trail of Mame Daifuku, and, ever defenseless against them, follows the trail with Ikuto in tow until they find themselves…lost in the middle of a giant maze that Chikage designed and Rin built. However, things aren’t as bad as they seem as, conveniently, there are signs pointing towards the exit. Upon seeing this, Chikane gets angry at Rin, but Rin says she didn’t want Ikuto to get lost.
Chikane decides to execute her own plan, launching a giant ball into the maze to run down Ikuto and Suzu. Meanwhile, Akane meets Ikuto and Suzu at the maze’s exit, but the two just ignore her as Ayane gets run down by the giant ball. Ikuto and Suzu are about to get caught when Tiger hits the ball away. Ikuto and Suzu thanks him, as they’re on their way to get the key, when Tiger tells them it’s his responsibility as a lord of the island to protect the key and the Dragon God and starts attacking Ikuto and Suzu.
Ikuto and Suzu wants to know why he’s attacking, and he tells them that it is the duty of all four of the island’s lords to protect the Dragon God. Tiger starts another attack, but Mei-Mei, who is out looking for Ikuto and Suzu, runs out and trips, and Tiger trips over her and goes flying. Tiger is about to attack again, but Mei-Mei says that she’ll fight Tiger instead with Tohno. When Tiger takes out his claws, Mei-Mei runs away and climbs a tree in fright, but ends up dropping rather sharp-looking fruit onto Tiger while Tohno uses his Kappa-Emperor Palpatine lighting to zap Tiger, letting Suzu and Ikuto pass.
Next, Ikuto and Suzu run into Pandaro, who has been bribed by Machi to take time out of eating to stop the pair. Suzu throws Ikuto a thick stick and he starts battling the East Lord. Meanwhile, Shinobu is out looking for Ikuto as well. In the battle, Pandaro snaps Ikuto’s stick, but Shinobu shows up and stops Pandaro, and mistakingly accuses Ikuto of having “secret training” with Pandaro and starts battling Pandaro herself. Ikuto and Suzu takes this opportunity to move on.
Next, the pair face Shima-Tora, the South leader and Suzu’s master. Shima tells Suzu that fighting him means rebelling against her own master, but Suzu says she doesn’t care. The two fight, and Suzu captures him, only to find that it was one of Shima’s cat followers only dressed up as him. Suddenly, hordes of Shima-Toras appear and tell Suzu and Ikuto that they must find the real Shima out of the group. The two start randomly grabbing two-tailed cats until Ikuto notices that all the take cats have one wavy tail and one stiff tail. Ikuto then spots a cat with two wavey tailes and grabs it, finding the real Shima-Tora. This gives Ikuto the win and allowing them to advance.
Finally, Ikuto and Suzu finally reach the top of Mt. Fuji, and Ikuto realizes that he doesn’t know who the east leader is. The pair find a small shrine with the key inside, but someone grabs it out of his hands. That someone turns out to be Karaage, who is revealed, much to Ikuto’s surprise, to be the east leader. Karaage throws Ikuto his wooden sword and the two start fighting, but Karaage is just too powerful. Karaage tries firing Ikuto up by telling him that it is “absolutely impossible,” but even this doesn’t get Ikuto fired up enough to be able to defeat Karaage.
Karaage flies in to attack again, but this time Suzu jumps between the two, and Karaage plows into Suzu’s back as a result. She begs Ikuto to stop, saying that it’s hopeless trying to beat Karaage, and he’ll only get hurt, but Ikuto says that he has to keep trying. Karaage then starts his super-spicy chicken attack against Ikuto. Ikuto, however, secretly changes which hand he’s holding his sword in and is able to hit a caught off guard Karaage with his bare hand, then is able to swing around and hit Karaage with his sword, winning the match.
Suzu and Ikuto then start rowing towards the Island of the Dragon God, but not without Ayane, who has grabbed the underside of the boat as a stowaway…
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Wow, this was a pretty action-packed episode and possibly one of the best episodes in the series, which I guess is good considering it’s part of the closing arc of the series. The only thing I’m wondering about is whether Ikuto will even have time to get off the island and find Misaki in the next episode, considering he still has to see the Dragon God, and you know Ayane is going to cause some sort of trouble there.
It seems that either Ikuto and possibly Suzu are going to get off the island, then quikcly find Misaki - and then Ikuto has to choose whether to stay or go back, or Misaki herself ends up on the island somehow (via the upcoming storm perhaps?) I had hoped that Ikuto would be able to go back and face his father, but I think that’s clearly not going to be happening now. Ikuto would have had to have gotten off the island this episode to have enough time to do that, I think. Of course, unless we have a season 2.
In any case, the next episode is probably the most critical episode in the entire series as, this series really hasn’t had a “make or break” moment yet that determined whether this was a good or bad series - it’s ridden that fence for pretty much the entirety of all 25 episodes, so now we will hopefully finally see whether this series is worth it or not, assuming the final episode can do so much.
