Boiled to Death - Oden's One-hour Struggle

Orochi greets the wager with a sneer, but the emperor accepts it, swearing to release the followers if they last a full hour in the pot. The lord lowers himself in, the boiling oil scorching him the instant he touches it. As his men race up the plank to join him, he hoists the board overhead so they can perch above the surface, and the emperor allows it, since the group still counts as inside the cauldron. Less than a minute passes before his hold gives, his feet are forced to the bottom, and the strain bursts his veins. Off to the side, Shinobu strikes down a heckler who brands the lord a foolish ruler and lifts her voice against the tyrant Orochi for the whole crowd to hear.

Seared by the heat, the lord turns over the confession Orochi had once made him. A bitter hatred for the land had taken root in the shogun, sprung from the shame heaped on his kin; after his grandfather's plot to kill the ruler came to light and the elder took his own life, the surviving Kurozumi were chased down, beaten, and slain by the people. In return, Orochi swore to grind the nation under his rule. Shinobu, who had hidden in the rafters, fills in the rest. Hundreds of citizens had been seized to be delivered to the emperor as tribute, and Orochi then set a deal before the lord. He would stop the abductions and leave the country with the emperor in five years, provided the lord submit to a weekly humiliation: every seven days he was to strip bare before the people of the Flower Capital while the shogun mocked him. With no chance of beating the emperor, the lord agreed. Those shameful dances, Shinobu explains, were the price that bought the captives back. Mocked in their day, the acts now move the onlookers at the execution, who at last grasp what he sacrificed.

The adaptation slips in a short clash between the lord and the transformed emperor atop the capital's castle; after the lord drops back into the shogun's chamber, the two carry on with their struggle. His past as a hunted man, run to ground and lynched by the people of Wano, also gains more screen time. Hana debuts in flashback, and the episode continues the Wano Country saga.