I must say, ep9 is one of my favs of the whole show. It’s the one where the trio struggle to go through a checkpoint and Mugen is sent out to deliver a head as punishment after getting caught. That episode embodied what I consider the essence of this story. A self contained story filled with drama with a hind of Champloo humor.
Ep 17 is really really good as well. Hell, it even had a special ED just for itself. What made it great was how it resolved the whole, the three of them don’t match conflict. The start of the episode we saw the three of them going their seperate ways because mugen and fuu had a fallout. But man that ending was great. It’s like you don’t really need to have a full on logical reason to stay with another person. It can even be as simple as getting better food when with them.
It’s been a while since I’ve watched a show whose characters didn’t seem like naive children. I love this show’s characters.