Remember any anime in which a member of royalty suddenly becomes a commoner? Well, all of them have the obligatory episode in which this royal person ends up in a crowded place, and has to get accustomed to the customs of the normal people, and often ends up doing something completely reckless. This was exactly such an episode. I kept wondering where it went.
While it was a bit disappointing to see nothing of Shuga, the episode itself focuses on Tooya, who finally managed to find Barsa, Tanda and Chaggumu. Barsa then asks him to take Chaggumu and explore the shopping areas of the city a bit, while Barsa would keep an eye on them from afar.
The two of them eventually end up near a group of entertainers who are hosting a local gambling game. Basically, you spin three coins in a round bowl, and try to guess how many coins fall with their shiny side up. Chaggumu manages to see that the entire game is just being manipulated, though initially he doesn’t do anything about it. Only when Tooya takes the initiative, but fails he gets in action and unmasks the guys.
While the plot progression in this episode was ridiculously close to zero, I quite liked the last quarter of it, when Chaggumu unmasked the plan, and people started to cheer on him. We’re only three episodes removed from episode thirteen, a point at which most anime insert some kind of climax to mark their halfway point. I wonder if Seirei no Moribito will be doing the same, or will it really be waiting till a random point until it takes off? Looking at the pacing of the past ten episodes, there really is no way to be able to predict this.]]>
Seirei no Moribito – 10
I’m enjoying this series a lot at the moment. It’s alienating a lot of action junkies, but that’s because they thought it was an action anime when it’s first and foremost a great tale (though obviously capable of stunning action sequences when they fit the story). This episode was well done in that what started off as Tooya instructing Chaggumu on street life ended up as the opposite, and Tooya calling Chaggumu ‘Aniki’ instead of the other way round. It also showed that Chaggumu has a highly developed moral sense (he only agrees to help expose the fraudsters because Tooya wanted the other gamblers to stop losing money, and not because he simply wanted his own money back). It also showed that he was selfless in helping others, in that he genuinely risked his mother’s charm – his most precious possession, to win back the money for the villagers. There’s a lot going on in these ‘quiet’ episodes that I think will bypass the notice of some people who are used to seeing the stereotyped shallow anime we’re flooded with all the time.
Yeah, it’s quite ironical for one of the best choreographed fighting scenes to get featured in an anime like this one, instead of a fully fledged action-series. I indeed hear many people claim about how slow this anime is and all, but it’s a nice change from the usual series, and something tells me that it’s currently building up for something amazing. 🙂