The following article contains spoilers for Shenmue: The Animation.
In its penultimate episode, the Shenmue anime continues to fulfill its desire of adding more character depth to Ryo’s friends, while at the same time finding room for some unusual funny moments. While it won’t be to everyone’s liking, it’s definitely a very entertaining take on the Yellow Head building raid, save for one crucial mistake.
Series creator Yu Suzuki has indeed played it safe when it comes to changing meaningful events in the story and his decisions have mostly served to enhance the plot thanks to essentially leveling up every single NPC from the games into characters with real personalities and motivations. However, “Guidepost” is possibly the biggest departure from his own source material and it doesn’t even finish Shenmue's trip to Kowloon, leaving the most exciting part of the game for next week’s finale.
Much like Suzuki handled the final part of the first game, the tone for the finale in the Shenmue 2 section of the story is being set by side characters and not by Ryo, for that reason the episode kicks off with Wong getting away from a few Yellow Heads brutes to find Joy and tell her what’s going on. Most notably, the scene shows Wong’s real reason to help out Ryo from his perspective - as an orphan he’s always felt like there are no opportunities for people like him, he’s always craved for a better life and Ryo made him believe in that, this is real character development.
In Joy’s case, her motives have already been more carefully drawn out, yet with both characters having a deeper background, it finally makes sense why these two relatively harmless NPCs decided to ‘barge in the Yellow Heads’ HQ. One thing worth noting though is that both Wong and Ryo’s flashbacks to events seen in the anime’s present have a different aesthetic than when Joy again remembers her father, and the style might be a bit jarring for some.
Elsewhere in Kowloon, Ryo and Ren are trying to ditch Dou Niu inside his base, but the entire mission does come up a bit short when compared to Shenmue 2 since the two don’t really engage in as many fights as in the game, with only a couple of thugs standing in their way, aside from the criminal couple. Yuan might as well be this episode’s MVP, because his attacks against the two heroes convey a sense of bloodthirst and viciousness rarely seen so far.
Not only that, him being labeled a neat freak by Yuan sets up two hilarious moments when Wong tries rescuing Yuanda Zhu from his imprisonment and later on once the group finally defeats him. Speaking of which, Wong gets a really nice upgrade as his entire sequence breaking out Zhu provides a rare change of pace, and the same goes for Joy’s interactions with her kidnappers.
There is a big loss drawn on the board here, and that’s the fight with Master Baihu. In Shenmue 2 the mysterious looking villain is one of the most difficult enemies a player would encounter throughout the whole adventure, and the anime had teased him as an intimidating challenger Ryo would have to face in his near future, nevertheless, the result is severely disappointing, to say the least.
The entire fight delivers less than 10 seconds worth of action as Ryo merely dodges and blocks a few punches from the Master only to then knock him down with what appears to be the Swallow Dive kick his friend Guizhang Chen taught him back in Japan. Ryo’s own flashbacks to the Wude teachings he slowly learned during the anime’s duller episodes take more time than the whole fight, and this will undoubtedly be one of the bigger letdowns for fans of the games in the entire anime.
Of course, it’d be easy to forgive the Shenmue anime for downplaying Master Baihu’s strength if this episode had another action scene packed for later on, but sadly that’s not the case. Right after defeating Yuan, the group heads toward the rooftop in order to save Zhu and Wong, and as Ryo opens the door to see Lan Di calmly hanging from his helicopter the episode ends, thus leaving the fight with Don Niu as the main dish for the finale.
Episode 12 does manage to cram in a lot of content in the usual 23 minutes, however, it’s hard not to feel that the funny moments with Yuan ultimately take time away from what could have been a longer and much better fight with Master Baihu, or even find an extra couple for minutes to get things going with Don Niu on the roof.
With rumors of Shenmue 4 being just around the corner, the potential for the anime to get another season is quite interesting, one that would develop the third and possibly part of the fourth game’s story. For now, it seems like the finale will only give Ryo a very short tour of Guilin and little time with Shenhua, so Shenmue 3’s story will have to wait, but at least that’s all staying video game accurate.