Sanzo pre-show promo...Usual opening titles...Recap: The Sanzo-ikkou arrives to save Gojyo from Kami-sama...Hey, this is a differently-animated version of Sanzo's line that they're the ones who will kill Gojyo!

Kami-sama may think Gojyo is his new toy, but Hakkai points out that none of them have given Gojyo to him. Gojyo is moved that the others would come to his defense, and a brief flurry of name-calling between Goku and Gojyo shows that things are once again right within the Sanzo-ikkou.

To Sanzo's annoyance, Kami-sama laughs that he'd heard that they were strong, but now that he sees them, they're hopeless. He asks Sanzo if he wants to give up being a Sanzo, as he's clearly not up to the task. That brings a hail of bullets from Sanzo, but Kami-sama slips away.

Goku charges after him, taking out a chunk of wall where Kami-sama had been--but Kami-sama reappears behind him, mockingly impressed with the damage. Hakkai unleashes a blast, but Kami-sama is again gone. He's too elusive for Gojyo's shakujou, too.

With no luck separately, the Sanzo-ikkou comes charging to attack together. A dorgi materializes in the smiling Kami-sama's hand, red beads solidify in mid-air--and the beads rocket into, and through, the four. They hit the ground, writhing in agony and spitting up blood as Kami-sama cheerfully calls, "Satisfied?"

Goku has taken a bead in the shin, and as he moans, an apparently-pitying Kami-sama approaches...and gouges the bead out with a finger. Goku's screams are horrible--and his sudden silence that follows is even more awful. Sanzo struggles to see what's happened, but he can hardly move.

Kami-sama ask Sanzo if he knows muichimotsu--"If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha; if you meet your ancestor, kill your ancestor." Kami-sama's teacher had taught him that. And it's clear to Kami-sama that Sanzo is too attached to various things, such as winning, living...so he isn't fit to be a Sanzo. Kami-sama reaches down and helps himself to Sanzo's kyoumon! Exploding up with his last strength, Sanzo pulls his gun--but Kami-sama floors him again with a point-blank kick to the head. There's no more opposition from the others, bloody and unmoving, as Kami-sama puts on the kyoumon. Commercial break...

A bandaged Gojyo is vacantly flipping his lighter open and shut, open and shut, as he sits on the floor back at the inn and remembers Kami-sama's parting words. Kami-sama had been disappointed that his audience couldn't seem to hear him anymore, but when he puts a foot on Sanzo's head and bids him farewell, he's suddenly snagged from behind by the chain of Gojyo's shakujou. The impact knocks Kami-sama through the wall, but he emerges without a scratch. With a firm grip on Gojyo's chain, he begins to silently mouth something--and the chain yanks Gojyo forward, and then sends him hurtling against the opposite wall. Since Gojyo hadn't gone to sleep like a good boy, he's going to be punished...but as Kami-sama moves to do it, Hakuryuu flies into his face! The fiercely flapping dragon even manages to draw blood!

Gojyo yells for Hakuryuu to transform, and then drags the other three into the jeep and hops behind the wheel. "What are you doing?" demands Kami-sama. "Getting away, asshole!" Gojyo snarls, and peels away down the steep stone stairway!

With a shout of "That's not fair!", Kami-sama flies after them--but from the back of the jeep, Hakkai fires a blast that helps derail the pursuit. Gojyo goes like hell, and Kami-sama watches them leave, laughing.

Back to Gojyo and the lighter. He had gotten the three to the inn, and the innmaster, still grateful for Gojyo and Sanzo dispatching the punks a few episodes ago, had taken them in. That was four days ago. The innmaster urges Gojyo to sleep, to help him recover from the terrible loss of blood, but Gojyo insists he's fine, and keeps up his vigil from the floor.

In the same room is Hakkai, bandaged and in bed. As he wakes up, he's worried to hear the innmaster admit he's not optimistic about Sanzo's condition. Sanzo is in the adjoining room, and has not woken up since they got there.

Hakkai is unhappy about being so slow to heal. Goku was the fastest to heal, but Gojyo grumps that the monkey is out of control--not eating, not talking. Even now, Goku is outside, brooding. Goku is like a wounded animal, Hakkai notes, as he gently pets his adoring Hakuryuu. "An animal that's been thoroughly defeated..."--and that's what happened to them all, he adds quietly. "We lost."

Suddenly Sanzo, still unconscious, starts thrashing violently and yelling. Gojyo tries to hold him down to keep him from hurting himself even worse. The innkeeper runs to get a pain-killer, but Hakkai, having staggered to the doorway, observes that Sanzo's pain might not be caused by his wounds.

Sanzo remembers that when he was young, Koumyou introduced him to a friend from old times: another Sanzo whose name is fuzzed out now in memory. The pupil of that Sanzo--name not given but it's young Kami-sama, who's about Kouryuu's size--was also along that day and presented Kouryuu with a doll...a doll whose head suddenly falls off. "Oh, it's broken!" comes Kami-sama's voice, and as an image of Koumyou shatters, blood appears on Kouryuu's hands. The adult Kami-sama appears behind him. Before them are Gojyo, Hakkai, and Hakuryuu, lying dead in pools of blood. "You broke them," Kami-sama tells the trembling Kouryuu. Now Sanzo is an adult, kneeling in the midst of his dead companions. "You're weak," says Kami-sama, "and they're all dead. You aren't fit to be a Sanzo." He again takes Sanzo's kyoumon. Sanzo shoots at him--but to his horror, the person he's shot is Koumyou! As Kami-sama laughs, Sanzo remembers Koumyou being killed by youkai.

Now, late at night, Sanzo sits bolt upright in bed, awake--with sentinel Gojyo sitting nearby, watching from the floor. Sanzo struggles up out of bed. "What are you doing?" asks Gojyo, eyeing him. "I'm going," Sanzo grits out. "That thing is mine."

"If you can go..." muses Gojyo quietly, and Sanzo finds his legs won't cooperate. Although he soon falls, he still tries to pull himself across the floor (backed by a very moving piano interlude...oh please oh pleeeeeze let there be a soundtrack CD, and let this be on it!)--but when his panting progress ends and he can't make it any further, Gojyo lifts him back into bed.

Outside in the moonlight, Goku punches a wall. "All right," he decides...

Next week, the Sanzo-ikkou try to regroup. It's "Oretachi No Yarikata ~Dawn~."

UraSai (instead of reading "UraSai," the four read the tiny calligraphy credit at the lower right of the screen: "Daiji: Minekura Kazuya"!): "Hamigaki" ("Tooth-brushing"). All four are brushing their teeth and making grunty sounds, almost as if talking to themselves while brushing. Gojyo suddenly starts chortling, apparently remembering something funny, and whacks half-asleep Goku. Goku swallows. "Don't swallow!" the others scold him, and Goku blushes. (Minekura-sensei wrote it...)

This episode brings us to the end of the Sanzo-ikkou segments of Vol. 8 of the Saiyuki manga. Next week, on to Vol. 9!