Ahem, so we're given another opening set in... Japan where this time it does not swap to modern day Japan... for a time anyways. I've noticed that a good chunk of the entries constantly use the Schizo Tech trope quite abit. You've entries that say they're a fantasy setting but to only debunk that within the first five minues or so. I mean, you have police officers wearing medieval armor, you've got everyone using magic instead of firearms, and you've got both fantasy and non-fictional animals living together.

Onto talking about the story, we are in fact introduced to Japan in the Edo era where the general premise is about typical Japanese stuff by which I mean ninjas, spys and thing. But it goes from typical to Naruto levels of insanity where our protagonist is at a bus stop and gets jumped on by an enemy ninja. By the way, they use absurd techniques that generally veer on Exactly What It Says On The Tin so the names aren't very inventive to say the least. Firing nukes and cloning your body into a Uncanny Valley.

Edo-maru gets captured by the consuming Uncanny Valley Kawagoe-maru; yeah very inventive names since we gotta have a tradition of Exactly What It Says On The Tin names. He's taken to Castle Kawagoe and thrown into a prison cell because execution is not an option while interrogation is. Edo-maru breaks out of prison by Ass Pulling a secret ninja technique that is also Exactly What It Says On The Tin which is... Lockpick Technique.

Edo-maru has a mission, it wasn't to spy, but instead to do a Coup De Grace on the leader of the Kawagoe clan. With the castle open to him, he wanders around seeking the leader but he is forced to... go through a lengthy side-scrolling section where he is faced with a gun-troting... uhh... tree monster thing. Forcing himself to use his cloning arts to throw a Clone Army and a Doppelganger Attack. Screaming aside and the lives of the clones lost, Edo-maru proceeds to explore the castle and throw more clones at them. Traversing through the dangerous traps and a ladder section that can be compared to Metal Gear Solid 3 but with no music and only laser balls. The final monster he has to face is a....Triceratops who has been longing for Edo-maru, and he's having none of that crap so he fights them.

After the dinosaur is defeated, Edo-maru is confronted by one of the clones he's used during his whole time in the castle. He is Deconstructively called out for ignoring A Million Is A Statistic or uhh... 270 body clones died, and the effects of What Measure Is A Mook and Clones Are People, Too. With the clone going through Clone Angst and they have a fight that starts out like what you would see between Ashe and Luke from Tales of The Abyss. So, the clone does an Ass Pull and uses a skill that a Necromancer would use and summons a monster.

With a battle that covers the entire screen with lasers, fireballs, and screams everywhere - the Original Edo-maru defeats Clone Edo-maru. The clone has an emotional speech and gets back up through Heroic Second Wind or Last Second Villain Recovery depending how you view the Original Edo-maru's actions or lack of foresight. With the 377 body clones added to the 250 body clones dead, the Clone Angsting Clone Edo-maru fires Signature Move Ultra Vulcano Shot. As Clone Edo-maru monologues the Deconstruction side of the Clone Tropes, the Original Edo-maru realizes that the clone is right about Clones Are People, Too and clones himself as another attack is thrown at him.

The Original Edo-maru is turned into a Decoy Protagonist and the Clone of Original Edo-maru takes the lead and talks about Once Original, Now Common and uhhh... Our Clones Are Identical, stating that his stance is completely all about True Cloning. With a Ngoeyyo Shot fired to counter another Ultra Vulcano Shot, Clone of Original Edo-maru wins at the cost of his original. So, with that whole thing out of the way, he goes onto using his cloning arts and stuff to travel long distances while abandoning his uhhh.. clones I guess.

He finds himself trapped by Kawagoe-maru and gets attacked by Tetris pieces because of reasons I do not know. With one crunch, the Clone of the Clones of Original Edo-maru decides that he needs to be a drill and Ass Pulls a new move to escape his Tetris prison with Civil Engineering Ninjustsu Drill. Clone of Clones of Original Edo-maru finds himself in the prison area that Original Edo-maru was thrown into, and he encounters Count Erocula and frees him from his prison cell on the basis that he'll help him get through the next stage. Count Erocula reveals that the guard that Original Edo-maru attacked during his escape was wearing a Powered Armor or Power Suit in this case. And just like Count Erocula said, the Power Suit cleaves right through the enemies with ease as bullets are fired everywhere, so we've become a Action Flick.

In the throne room of the castle, Kawagoe-maru and Lord Kawagoe are having a very serious conversation where the former is getting criticized for being unable to capture the Original Edo-maru who happens to be dead at this point in the story. The latter goes on to talk about his evil plan of destroying Edo and then the Clone of Clones of Original Edo-maru and Count Erocula comes in to confront him about it. Kawagoe-maru goes into Uncanny Valley mode and dies in the fight against the both of them as Lord Kawagoe used him as a decoy to escape. Lord Kawagoe decides he must jump start his plan like jumper cables as the Clone of Clones of Original Edo-maru and Count Erocula catches up to him.

So, Lord Kawagoe does his monologue or Freudian Excuse of how hard he and his fellow Kawagoers built Kawagoe into the most beautiful city in the world only to be called Koedo. Not liking the idea that they're assumed as copying Edo with names that insult all of the hard work they've poured into Kawagoe. With all of the pent up anger rising to the peak like a volcano, Lord Kawagoe's plan is to revive and summon the Demon of Kawagoe which would be summoned in mere moments as Lord Kawagoe intends to wipe the slate clean via Kill 'Em All.

The Demon of Kawagoe rises from the bottom of the screen, politely saying hello and asking to their enemeis to be gentle with them before proceeding to using Signature Move Axe Bomber. With Edo and the world at large facing total annihilation, the Clone of Clones of Original Edo-maru and Count Erocula hatch a most dangerous plan that no one could've ever thought of. They proceed to use the Tetris prison to create a Humongous Mecha which is called Deathris or Puzzle Robo Deathris. They duke it out at the city of Wako and they defeat the Demon of Kawagoe with ease while nuking Wako in the process.

The two pilots deliver what I can assume is a proper Aesop about Kawagoe's situation before... turning it into a Broken Aesop as it is then called Pro-Edo. No one learns their lesson or learn anything valuable, I mean... it's a charming point of the series.

Also, the end screen explodes, so woooooooooo!!!!!

Okay, this entry is going to be incredibly complicated since we have too many iterations of Edo-maru to account for. I'll be talking about Edo-maru and Count Erocula then the Kawagoers but Edo-maru will end up taking like 50% of this bit.

As you know, we have a very complicated situation with our protagonist, Edo-maru. He is a Edo shogunate ninja sent in to investigate troubling rumors of Kawagoe with a mission to stop Lord Kawagoe on a personal basis. The situation gets complicated as he purposely allows himself to be captured at the hands of Kawagoe-maru in order to get closer to his goal of stopping Lord Kawagoe.

We'll start off with the Original Edo-maru first since he's the protagonist of the first half of the entry's narrative. He serves as the initial protagonist and is ultimately the Decoy Protagonist, and he starts off as your typically spy ninja guy until Kawagoe-maru captures him and brings him to Castle Kawagoe. But he completely goes off the rails during the start of his true mission, completely disregarding stealth for no reason at all. He serves as deconstruction of multiple Clone Tropes, basically what happens when you disregard the lives of the clones you create and using them as improvised bullets. Imagine him as Naruto but his abuse of his ninja techniques veers on Abusive Parents, you'd get attacked and killed by yourself. He takes alot of character traits from both Naruto from Naruto and Ashe from Tales of The Abyss.

You have the Clone Edo-maru, the Antagonistic Offspring of the Original Edo-maru and serves as a Foil and Evil Doppelganger, and an extention to the Original Edo-maru's Deconstruction of the Clone tropes through the lenses of a clone.

What happens when you see your original using his clones as bullets and refusing to see you and everyone else as their own person? The original suffers through His Own Worst Enemy, and is confronted by himself. He's basically a Shadow Clone Naruto who values his life and Luke from Tales of The Abyss.

Then last and not least, Clone of Original Edo-maru and the Clone of Clones of Original Edo-maru and they're basically the same character but.. uhh.. clones with whatever. He is the true protagonist of the narrative after the Original Edo-maru learns the value of True Cloning. He serves to be an extention of the Original Edo-maru's initial characterization and a harsh Character Check that reverses the Character Development his original had gained. But that happens quite alot in the series if you've noticed.

His entire character exists to purely show that no one really learns their lesson by simply doing the very thing that caused some sort of conflict, I'm looking at you Richard. All that talk about True Cloning, learning the problems of the Clone Tropes, and understanding the motives of Lord Kawagoe is all swept under the run by the end of the story. But at this point in the series outside the story, it's pretty common that no one really learns their lesson with a few exceptions - and those guys usually die pretty fast.

Now we've got uhhh... Count Erocula. He is one of the prisoners that the Original Edo-maru encounters aafter successfully getting captured on purpose at the hands of Kawagoe-maru. While the Original Edo-maru never really talks with him, the Clone of the Clones of Original Edo-maru does after escaping the Tetris room though. From there, he generally supports the clone throughout the last bits of the narrative as tech support or Bridge Bunny.

We don't really get to know much about him as a character but like I have said multiple times, it's kind of normal thing with Kuniko Takahashi's writing. He's kind of jsut there and pretty much a wingman, but his name is aCall-back or a semi Title Drop of a previous entry.

Kawagoe-maru is one of the two that is a part of the Big Bad Duumvirate alongside Lord Kawagoe. He is a ninja for Kawagoe and captures the Original Edo-maru without knowing it was all a plan to get him closer to Lord Kawagoe's position. He exclusively uses Body Cloning as his means of attacks and constantly goes into Uncanny Valley every time he uses them.

He is The Heavy, a Ninja Monster Clown, a Shadow Archetype and Foil to the Original Edo-maru, and a surprising Virtuous Character Copy posthumously. For one - both he and Edo-maru have cloning stuff in their skillset, and both are ninjas in their own right. The difference is pretty clear though, Edo-maru suffers the Deconstructive side of Clone tropes, he's actually dresses like a ninja, and that he himself dies to himself via another clone.

Then onto the Big Bad of the entire story. He is Lord Kawagoe, the lord of... Kawagoe and is the main instigator of the entire narrative. He was hatching up some sort of evil and dastardly plan, and Edo sends in Edo-maru to take care of him. His entire game plan is unknown to everyone that isn't from Kawagoe.

He is a Anti-Villain with a very understandable Freudian Excuse that any leader of a underdeveloped country would be behind - maybe, I'm not exactly sure. His entire behavior and actions fueled by the fact that Kawagoe's efforts of being a thing of their own has lead to Edo and the entire world giving them the cold shoulder. The treatment they've received has pushed them into Dude, Where's My Respect territory, with all their efforts rendered All For Nothing.

Man, an exceedingly long amounts of text right there. I am so sorry for making it so long.

I think this entry is pretty cool within itself since there is so much going on at the same time. It has all the important ingredients that make it an entry worth watching or dissecting with its random twists and turns and surprising amount of depth of its Deconstruction on both the characters and the tropes it uses.

The amount of Deconstruction on Edo-maru is both amazing and funny at the same time. He's got so many Deconstructed Tropes that it is alarming he isn't in any other entry in the series, I think he's very well-written for this single entry alone - I mean, he's got like three different iterations of himself exploring different kind of tropes. It's like a character study for the first half of the narrative.

While the story is pretty much your stock narrative with lots of insanity, I think the narrative is largely a Character Study and a Character-Driven Story.

Do not miss out on watching this entry if you're into analytical stuff - I'm kind of surprised that Kuniko Takahashi has put alot of thought into her storytelling. You wouldn't be able to see it unless you use your brain or watch it a few times. Twenty minutes of amazing writing if you know what to look for.