Six episodes in, Black Torch finally decided to let its characters breathe. Fuyo traps Jiro, Reiji, and Ichika inside individual illusions, and what comes out of that is the best thirty minutes this show has put together. Backstories, unresolved family trauma, and a reveal about Rago that reframes everything the Bureau of Espionage thought they knew about him. Good week.
Reiji, Ichika and a Training Arc That Finally Earned Its Place
The 6th episode structure is actually quite simple. Fuyo pulls all three into separate illusion traps, and each person has to face something personal. Ichika gets a confrontation with her mother, and the show does not linger on it, which honestly feels right because that wound clearly runs deeper than one illusion sequence can contain. The real version of that fight is somewhere down the line, and the episode seems to know that.
Reiji is where the episode really digs in. His brother Shinji murdered their father and walked away, leaving Reiji alive. No explanation given. No reason was handed to the audience. Just that fact sitting there with all the weight it deserves.
Anyone who has spent time with shonen knows the shape of this: an older brother who did something unforgivable and spared the younger one for reasons nobody is allowed to know yet, and yeah, the Sasuke and Itachi shadow is long. But the reason that comparison keeps coming up is that it works.
Reiji carrying that question around, not knowing whether Shinji loved him, pitied him, or had a reason he has not shared yet, is the most real thing the show has made any of its characters feel. Whatever Black Torch decides to do with Shinji down the line, the foundation laid here is solid.
The one thing that stings a little is how quickly both Reiji and Ichika move through their illusions. Fans watching wanted to see them actually struggle, to have to fight their way through the worst version of their memories rather than processing and moving on at a pace that felt a bit too tidy.
Hopefully, the real confrontations with these wounds will happen later in the season, because the episode proved the show knows how to handle them.
Rago Was Never What the Bureau Said He Was
The Rago reveal was not supposed to happen this early, and the fandom noticed immediately, mostly in a good way.
He used to be a local deity going about his existence when Amagi, the mountain god, showed up and made him a pitch. Join the fight against the humans hunting mononoke. Pick a side. Rago said no. What happened next is what got twisted in the historical record.
Amagi baited him into a confrontation, and what the Bureau of Espionage has on file as Rago going wild and destroying everything was actually Rago trying to avenge a friend he lost. After it was done, rather than sign up for Amagi’s war or keep fighting, Rago sealed himself inside the death obsidian and went to sleep. Checked out entirely. Left the whole mess behind.
Jiro’s reaction to learning all of this is that Rago essentially invented the most dramatic possible method of avoiding a situation he did not want to be in. He is not wrong, and the show plays that beat exactly right because Jiro processing ancient tragedy as elaborate conflict avoidance is very Jiro.
The reframe is genuinely important for where the story is going. Rago being benevolent by nature means the dynamic between him and Jiro is not going to be a possession story where the host is always managing an inner evil. These are two beings who got pulled into someone else’s war and are now stuck figuring out what to do about it together. That is a better story and episode 6 commits to it.
The only real stumble is the 3DCG on Rago’s true form. The illusion sequences are beautifully constructed, and then the visual centerpiece of the Rago reveals, in noticeably budget CGI, what the internet has been loud about. Of all the moments in the episode to cut corners on, that was the one that needed the most care. Hopefully, the show corrects that when Rago’s full form comes back.
Black Torch Episode 6 is not clean. The illusions resolve faster than they should, and Amagi gets dealt with a little too off-screen. But it is the first episode where the show actually makes you care about the people in it, and that covers a lot of ground.
See you next week, when we’ll be back to talk about Episode 7. Until then, keep rooting for this trio and let’s see where their story takes us next.