The Smiling Senshi

The Smiling Senshi (ほほえみの閃士) is the first episode of the Grenadier anime. It first aired on October 14th, 2004.

Summary
The episode begins with Rushuna sitting in a Hot Spring Bath at night. Then a battle between the Samurai and the Yatou is shown. The Samurai are losing badly to the Yatou and Yajirou Kojima orders the samurai's to retreat for now. Members of the Yatou see Yajirou retreating and chase after him. After being able to sneak and kill one of them it catches the attention of two others.

Yajirou ends up finding a river and sees that the water is hot. Once Yajirou follows the river it ends at a Hot Spring where he found Rushuna bathing in it. Shortly after one of the Yatou guards finds Rushuna still in the bath and Rushuna offers for him to join. Just as the bandit agrees and begins to strip another Yatou member pushes him over and asks Rushuna if he has seen a Samurai. Rushuna tells the bandits that she hasn't and she is just a traveler. During the conversation Rushuna is hiding Yajirou under the water between her breasts.

Once the guards leave, morning arrives and Rushuna is out of the bath getting dressed while asking Yajirou why the bandits were after him. Later on Yajirou returns to the battlefield still losing to the Yatou, when Rushuna arrives to meet Yajirou once again. Yajirou then sees that she has a gun and is a Senshi. Rushuna helps Yajirou by shooting some of the Yatou guards on the castle surprising them because they weren't expecting to fight guns and catching the attention of the Yatou's leader Akki Nago.

Rushuna and Yajirou are able to get into the castle where they find the castles lord Kanetsugu tied up so they can collect the reward for saving him. Once inside, Akki Nago and his guards come over to Rushuna and Rushuna politely requests to release the lord even though they have no money to pay the ransom. Akki Nago declines and has his men shoot at Rushuna who nimbly dodges their bullets and shoots down and disarms all of them without killing any of them. With Akki Nago being the only one standing, he attempts to shoot her down with his gun the Galdo but fails since Rushuna says that it is inaccurate and slow. Akki Nago then grabs the lord and runs off away from the castle but Rushuna shoots him from far away disarming Akki Nago completely to just his underwear which causes him to drop the lord and retreat.

Once the lord was saved, the news of it spread to the empress Tenshi who is proud of Rushuna and says that Rushuna will someday win the battle using Tenshi's teaching of winning without fighting. While walking together on a distant road, Yajirou decides to travel with Rushuna instead of joining the military because he has a feeling that she is not like the other Senshi which he hates. Afterward their conversation, Rushuna sees a Hot Spring in the distance and runs towards it and offering to srub Yajirou's back who declines the offer.