Reviews are pouring in for The World Is Dancing ‒ Episode 7, and the verdict is splitting audiences and critics alike. From the performances to the direction, here is a closer look at what the film does right — and where it stumbles.

The Story So Far

Before we get into the localization boondoggle that nearly ruined this installment for me, I have to give “In Between” its flowers for building a very compelling fresh link in the chain of Oniyasha's slow but certain development as an artist. The arrest and eventual execution of the drunk monk Toku is the senseless tragedy we all knew it would be, and it's exactly the kind of sucker punch of real-world injustice that our little hero needed to really start engaging with the lives around him.

While I wouldn't have minded more overt connections between his past experiences and this one, particularly when it comes to the sad fate of the Shirabyoshi, the message still rings clear: Oniyasha's destiny lies in using his art to give voice to the painfully human stories that are all too easy for the privileged and the powerful to ignore.

The first half of the installment is the stronger portion, as it sees The World Is Dancing give the necessary weight to the conclusion of Toku's narrative. His exhausted insistence that Kogane not throw away his life on account of one dying old drunk is among the most powerful sequences we've gotten from this show, and it is very understated in its execution.

I'm less enthusiastic about the somewhat jarring tonal whiplash that comes after Oniyasha recovers and reunites with the others at the shogun's estate. Still, the show has always existed in the messy borderline that separates drama and comedy. Besides, it's all worth it to see Oniyasha confront Yoshimitsu and realize how detached and casually cruel his fresh patron is when it comes to the less fortunate, or to anyone that might be considered too subversive for his grand fresh vision of a unified Japan.

This is where my feelings about “Connection” become decidedly more mixed, and it commences with the fact that Oniyasha's climactic turn of “Komachi at the Gravepost” is entirely lacking in subtitles. To be clear, I get that this choice might not entirely be in the hands of the translators at HIDIVE, since the play's dialogue is presented as an anachronistic modern rock track and must come with licensing entanglements that prevent the lyrics from being presented in English.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter why this happened. One of the most critical events in Oniyasha's narrative has been rendered entirely unintelligible to viewers who don't speak fluent Japanese, and that is simply unacceptable. The whole point of the scene is that Oniyasha is finally using his turn to criticize the shogunate, and it's impossible to appreciate this satirical subtext when one cannot even understand the plain old text on the surface.

This is maybe why I also found myself disappointed by the surprisingly bland frames of the “Komachi at the Gravepost Sequence”, with the very traditional blocking only occasionally being bolstered by a panel split-major screen or a painterly background. This, I suspect, is because this is the first time that the words of the tur…

Whether this marks the beginning of something bigger or a standalone moment remains to be seen. What is clear is that the entertainment world is watching closely — and so are we. Follow TeraMovies for complete coverage.