It sucker-punches you with the same reflex it gives the cast: someone looks like they need saving, and the whole jeep piles in before anyone asks what she actually is. Houran isn't a damsel and everybody watching knows it twenty minutes before Goku does, which is precisely why it hurts. Then the film stops being a road trip and becomes a story about how Sanzo got his title, and about a boy who was passed over for it and has been gnawing on that grudge for decades. Requiem understands the real engine of this series was never youkai-slaying, it's four men who bicker nonstop because the alternative is sitting alone with what they did. Gojyo and Hakkai get their jabs in, the sutra comes out, and it still ends quiet. Goku, of all people, is the one who gets her.

A band of travelers on the road comes across a girl in trouble, and none of them can resist going to her aid. She is not what she appears to be, and both her motives and her humanity come into question. Before long the group finds itself dealing with Sanzo's past, along with a young boy who has nursed a grudge for decades. The film is a supernatural adventure in which a simple rescue pulls the travelers into old history.