Lullabies of the Lost (Verse 1)

Lullabies of the Lost (Verse 1) (酔生夢死 ひと夢 Suiseimushi hito yume) is the sixteenth episode of the anime series Samurai Champloo. It originally aired in Japan on September 16, 2004, and it aired in North America on December 10, 2005.

Summary
The episode begins with Fuu and Jin staring in disbelief as Mugen tries, with no real success, to flirt with a couple of women. At one point they bring up rumors of a monster who’s been haunting and murdering people in the nearby area, and after the women leave, the gang’s approached by an odd trio of rapping lumberjacks who conveniently deliver an explanation of the overheard rumors. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make much sense, as they conflate the mysterious murders and disappearances with the possible ghost of 12th century samurai warrior Minamoto Yoshitsune.

As they continue to wander the woods, the group gets into a massive fight regarding their mission of finding “the samurai who smells of sunflowers”. Impatient and irritated, Mugen angrily presses Fuu for information about their journey, but Fuu remains stubborn about revealing all the details. After things get too heated, the three split up and go their separate ways.

Jin gets ambushed by a surprise attacker, and Fuu is quickly abandoned by Momo, falling off a cliff but just barely grabbing onto something to help pull her up, although sadly Momo causes her to lose her sense of focus and concentration. Eventually she loses her grip and falls into the river below.

While Mugen wanders the woods on his own, he’s unexpectedly shot at by a man wielding a Chu-Ko-Nu, a kind of rapid-fire crossbow originally developed in China. After dodging the assault of arrows, Mugen is asked by the stranger if he belongs to the Matsumae clan, but he doesn’t give a proper answer, forcing the stranger to leave the area before Mugen can do anything.

Meanwhile, Jin is still dealing with the mystery attacker, whose mask comes loose in the middle of the fight, revealing himself to be a man named Yukimaru, a student who learned underneath the same master that Jin did before he killed him. Yukimaru had been hunting Jin down hoping to kill him and make a reputation for himself, and the two continue to fight despite Jin’s seeming disinterest in continuing. Eventually he manages to escape the battle by jumping off a nearby cliff and into the river below.

Sinking to the bottom of the river with no hope of escape, Fuu suddenly has a vivid hallucination of herself as a child in a massive field of sunflowers, observing a man (no doubt her mental approximation of the samurai she’s looking for) walking through the field. When he gets out of view, Fuu suddenly matures, but the sunflowers around her begin to decay and wither.

Fuu suddenly wakes up next to an open fire, having been rescued by the stranger that Mugen encountered earlier, and she immediately thanks him before trying to leave, but a bad leg injury prevents her from being able to walk. Luckily the stranger, who later reveals his name to be Okuru, uses some nearby herbs to treat her ailment.

While still together, Okuru talks about his past as the only survivor of a village besieged by a plague he refers to as “The Roaming God”, a disease that claimed many lives including his wife and newborn child. Meanwhile, Mugen finds himself being ambushed again, this time by police officers representing the Matsumae who have evidently mistaken him for Okuru.

Characters

 * Fuu
 * Mugen
 * Jin
 * Yukimaru
 * Okuru
 * Police officers
 * Rapping lumberjacks

Trivia

 * This is the last time the trio have an argument that causes them to split up.
 * During the fight against Jin, Yukimaru mentions Ogura (from The Art of Altercation) committed suicide from his failure to kill Jin.