Juni Taisen: Zodiac War (十二大戦)

Very well. Our alliance ends now.

Let us duel.

Juni Taisen

Episode 10: A Tiger May Die, But It Leaves Its Skin

Ugh...

What a pain in the ass.

He disappeared?

Were you harmed, miss?

Someone's forced you to drink alcohol, haven't they?

For heaven's sake... It's outrageous.

They're a disgrace to the warrior name.

Rest easy.

No need to worry anymore.

The people who tormented you are gone.

I'll take you somewhere safe, miss.

Wh-What the hell?

He thinks I'm a civilian or something?

And calling me "miss," even...

What's the matter?

U-Um...

C-Can I ask you a question?

What is it?

You do the right thing, but how do you do it?

Without hesitation...

without fear... without mistakes...

Is it possible to just do the right thing?

I've never given it serious consideration.

Miss, do you want to do the right thing?

Then, for your sake, I will give it a moment's thought.

It can be beneficial to express one's motivation verbally from time to time.

One.

First, I try to do the right thing.

Two.

Then, I do the right thing.

That is all.

What kind of overly genius philosophy is that?

Did he dumb it down because he thinks I'm a child?

If so, he went way too far!

If it were that easy,

I wouldn't be suffering like this.

Suffering?

Am I really suffering?

I thought I'd left my suffering behind.

Does this mean the booze hasn't drowned it all?

That I've actually been suffering all this time?

What I mean is that you can't do the right thing

unless you consciously try.

People's mistakes happen in the most offhanded ways.

Swept along moment to moment, they fall into evil.

Without reason, without consideration, without dedication.

The next thing they know,

they are on the wrong path, as if it were the only one.

Path? "Michi"...

Yet, by contrast...

"I was doing the right thing without realizing it."

"The next thing I knew, I was doing good deeds."

"In a moment of carelessness, I helped someone."

You never hear those things.

You surely never will.

Righteousness cannot exist without intent.

Righteous action requires righteous intent.

You can't do the right thing unless you try to.

If your inability to do the right thing is causing you to suffer,

it's because you don't feel that you're trying to do it.

There are many reasons one may not try to do the right thing.

Mountains of things may cause hesitation.

Slews of things may inspire fear.

It's fine to blame it on another.

It's fine to blame it on society, too.

You can blame the age we live in, or on the cards you were dealt.

But those who are not doing the right thing should

acknowledge that it's not that they cannot,

but that they will not.

The same goes for you.

There's no need to force yourself to do the right thing.

But you must not forget that it isn't because you can't,

but because you've chosen not to.

All righteous people...

One. They decide to do it.

Then, two. They do it.

The steps must be taken in that order.

Worrying about the second step while you're still on the first

is the height of foolishness.

Though we were both warriors, the difference between us

was like an adult and a child.

I'm afraid I can't do that.

I wanted to.

I wanted to become the kind of person who could understand.

I wanted it so much...

Well, take care of yourself.

H-Hey...

C-Could you stay with me a little longer?

I'm still not feeling well.

I'm afraid I can't do that.

I have many more children like you to save.

That's my job.

Then, in the future, be sure to stay away from battlefields.

I will pray that you never have to witness killing like mine...

slaughter like mine, ever again.

We were both warriors, but we were so different.

I started to think that maybe

only people like him truly had the right to be called warriors.

But strangely, I didn't find that frustrating.

Instead, I felt like I had a goal for the first time in my life.

It wasn't like when I'd blindly tried to follow my path,

or when I'd strayed from it.

I wanted to become someone that warrior

would acknowledge the next time he and I met.

"I pray we'll never have to meet again," he'd said.

But I didn't care about that.

One. Want to do it.

Two. Do it.

I might never really know the right thing to do, or the real reason to fight.

What mattered was that, for the first time, I decided to see.

I decided to try to find myself again.

I decided to reexamine things I had stopped thinking about.

All my life, nothing could stop me, and now,

suddenly, a towering wall was in my way,

a teacher I wanted to aspire toward.

It wasn't long before I learned that the genius, who'd said those

incomprehensible things, was the "incomprehensibly powerful" Warrior of the Ox.

It didn't take long to find out that his name was Ushii, either.

But the world is vast, and there are countless battlefields out there.

I believed that if I kept fighting,

I would meet him again someday.

But just when I was about to give up on ever seeing him again...

Kanae?

It's been so long!

The Juni Taisen?

Yeah. You hadn't heard?