Let's Get Ready to Rumble!
- The harvest is completed and all seems peaceful, which is usually when everything goes bananas.
- Shino and Katsushiro continue their Romeo and Juliet thing, with Shino opining that she wished she belonged to a samurai family (the fact that samurai families are on the skids at the moment eludes our heroine).
- They're interrupted by Shichiroji, who's spotted three bandits on the road: advance scouts for the other raiders.
- They take out the trio, killing two and capturing one alive.
- Kambei demands that the prisoner receive fair treatment, but the village engages in a little mob justice, led by the old woman who said she wanted to die (tough as nails she is).
- That bit of gruesomeness behind them, the samurai launch an ambitious plan to take the fight to the bandits.