Alright, as I was saying.
It was pretty damn good. The fights were short but creative as hell, I was glad to see Zenzo and Sarutobi get some serious airtime, and...well. The ending was...bittersweet and very smartly played. It being the first and only ending to an arc that didn't do an AMV recap of the events of what happened just overlaying the credits over that scene, almost as if pushing the viewer to expect Soyo to find out what was going on...that was painful in the best possible way.
The new opening's pretty great (and the adaptive openings were pretty great, too), I'm more of a fan of the endings than I thought, and I loved the development (and seeds of it) in this arc, and I'm really fucking hype for this one.
Oh, and kudos to them for the particularly clever usage of "Shogun ka yo!?" It wasn't really given much attention, but previously, in literally every scenario, it's used as a comedic reveal for the shogun. Here, though, it's used as a reveal, but a serious narrative changing...one...so...
...I dunno, I thought it was pretty clever.