Despite Police Tactics ending on a high note, I guess Toei thought there was still more to tell with this story and mandated that we get a definitive ending with nothing left unresolved. The fittingly titled Final Episode maintains the series' exceptional quality, one that doesn't feel tacked on in the slightest, easily the talkiest of the series and burdened with the task of wrapping up dozens of loose threads, it's a testament to Kinji Fukasaku's incredible talent that he and his crew were even able to fashion a film out of so little material and on such a tight schedule. Though the incidence hasn't been perfect all along, five pictures deep, the trajectory of the ongoing narrative mirrors, at the first and the last, how the instalments are approached in terms of both film-making and storytelling style. The progenitor explored the violence of the yakuza in the early post-war years as Japan rebuilt, and it's quite fitting that as both written and executed it would bear wild, chaotic energy that was a veritable shot in the arm for the genre. Granted the pacing of this one is filled with stops and starts due to the loose structure of its script and the big players are mostly kept to the sidelines for the majority of the runtime; I'll be damned that it follows in the same vein as Deadly Fight in Hiroshima thanks to some exceptional performances from its cast, all of whom deliver fantastic performances. As compelling for its performances as for its historical detail, Final Episode keeps the energy level high, its technical aspects strong and its cast thoroughly engaging right up until the last body falls and the Battles finally end, one age of the yakuza fades to be replaced by another.