I managed to see the first fansub of the series, and a couple of more things became clear. Mostly about the backgrounds of the story and people, and what position’s they’re at.
Shiurei’s family has a very important status, though despite the status, they’re incredibly poor. This is mostly because her father spent almost all of his money to good deeds. She’s not only asked to be the emperor’s concubine, she even gets to become his wife, which explains the awe everyone suddenly has for her.
Shiurei’s father is the castle’s librarian. He doesn’t make much money, though he’s a well respected man.
Ran Shiuei and Koyu are both assigned to keep an eye on the emperor. They’re both very talented commanders in the royal army, though especially Koyu isn’t too happy with his new function. They also spend most of the time idle, as the emperor keeps wandering off without a trace.
The emperor, who’s apparently named Ryuuki, is the youngest brother of five. Or six. I have no idea which is the right number, though different sources state different facts. Anyway, three, or four of his brothers died while vying for the throne. His only older brother left when he was young, so he’s been assigned to take up the throne, mostly to keep up the name of the royal family. The fight between his brothers explains why he always came so heavily beaten up to Shiurei’s father. He was the only one to comfort him.
When Shiurei got assigned as Ryuuki’s wife, Seiran, for some reason, got assigned as a captain of a certain squad (forgot its name, unfortunately). I still have no idea why, but it does explain why he keeps popping up in the castle, and not to mention why he got to participate in last week’s tournament.
Another interesting fact about the story itself: Long ago, there used to be demons roaming around the country. Then one legendary warrior came and defeated them, along with his eight supervisors: the eight sages. These eight sages continued to watch over the land, even after the death of the warrior. This’ll probably useful info for later in the series.
Anyway, about the episode, it was incredibly fun. We get to see the introduction of another side-character: Ran Ryuurei. Yes, indeed. He’s Ran Shiuei’s brother, and a very peculiar character as well.
We begin with Shiurei and her two servants holding a random conversation. We then switch back to a very hilarious scene, at which Ran Shiuei and Ryuuki talk for a bit, and Shiurei overhears them. She only hears a part of the conversation, and now she thinks that Ryuuki also has a relationship with Ran as well.
She then comes across Ran Ryuurei. He’s dressed rather odd, and when he tastes one of Shiurei’s dango, he utters some weird critizism. At least, in Shiurei’s eyes. He then randomly begins playing a flute, though it’s horribly off-key. Ran Shiuei then arrives, and recognizes his brother. He has no idea what he’s doing at the palace (heck, I still don’t know that as well), and tries to make him go back, to wherever he came from. Ryuurei just doesn’t want to, so he has to stay for a while.
Ryuurei then randomly disappears, to the great displeasurement of Shiuei, and ends up playing a card-game with the three old men. This was the first time I saw a comedical moment of theirs, and it worked pretty well. They were very angry that Ryuurei beat them all at once, and they won’t let him go until they defeated him. (Interesting note: this could be a sign for future episodes. This might show that they always act like this whenever defeated. If it does, then they’re going to play a huge and probably magnificent role).
With Koyu joining them, Shiuei and Shiurei finally get Ryuurei away from the old men. This was quite hilarious to see, especially Koyu apologizing while running away at the end. Shiurei then figures that it might be nice for the three of them to show Ryuurei a bit around the palace, but he only ends up taking a little nap at something that looks like the emperor’s throne.
When it appears that Ryuurei’ll be staying the night over at the palace, a place for him to sleep needs to get decided. Of course, Koyu gets to be the fortunate one to sacrifice himself. Needless to say that he’ll be waking up quite pissed the next morning. ^^;
Anyway, while Koyu’s getting the worst night of his life, the emperor’s heading to Shiurei’s bedroom, with a smile on his face which instantly screams that he’s been looking forward to that moment for the entire day. Then one of the three old men comes, and tells him something. The two have a serious discussion, though I have no idea about what that might’ve been. When Ryuuki reaches Shiurei’s place, she tells him how she’s studying very hard. She has probably very good reasons for this, though I have no idea what they are.
The next morning, after a little rant on Koyu’s side (^^;), Shiurei finally manages to calm Ryuurei down, to the surprisement of Shiuei and Koyu. Afterwards, the two have a bit of tea, which Kourin brought them. Ryuurei mentions a couple of things, and Kourin falls down because of these things. She’s being saved by the other servant, though this shows that there’s something on Kourin’s mind. Though I don’t know what. I guess we’ll have to find that out later.
Then Ryuuki sees the two of them walking, and asks who Ryuurei might be. When he asks for Shiurei to come with him, Ryuurei invites her to come along with him to the town, as he still has to pay her back from the dango from earlier. Shiurei agrees and Ryuuki feels a bit worried. he tells Seiran about this. I thought that he also ordered Seiran to follow them, but we never see Seiran again this episode, so they must’ve been talking about something else.
In town, we get to see that Ryuurei’s the total opposite of Ginko when it comes to playing the merchant: he sees a bag of beans, and buys it. He then trades the beans for a couple of eggs, the eggs for selery, the selery for firewood, the firewood for flowers, the flowers for a fish and the fish for pack of straw. He finally gives the straw to a lonely child, who just spilled hers all over the ground, making it useless. He ends up with only one piece of straw left, at which he keeps staring for a couple of seconds. Even though the meaning of this remains oblivious, I somehow found this very enjoyable, seeing Ryuurei just trade random, useless things for even more useless things. The face he kept when doing all of this was priceless.
Now that I think a bit about it, it appears to be that the two of them were looking for some kind of food, as Shiurei suddenly seems to be all giddly over a fish. But then again, she probably never ate any fish, so it she must be very curious about trying one. Still, it’s nice to remember this. It might come back.
Anyway, we turn to dinner, at which the two of them begin to get a bit closer, and finally, Ryuurei starts to fall for Shiurei as well. I was really reminded of the harem-shows at this time, though almost all of them had something that Saiunkoku Monogatari doesn’t have: an impulsive young male lead. Because of this tiny difference, I managed to enjoy this.
We then have some final discussion between Shiurei, Shiuei, Ryuurei and Shiurei’s father (these names look a lot like each other, don’t they?), and Ryuurei leaves. I don’t know what happened in this discussion, though it left a great impact on Shiuei. We end the episode with Ryuuki trying to make up with Shiurei, by buying her what looks like the most horrible and useless stuff ever. And in large quantities as well. Shiurei, of course, doesn’t like this. ^_^;;
Like I said before, I really liked this episode. Each of the characters is unique, and funny in his or her own kind of way. And even though the show contains healty amounts of comedy, it knows when to be serious, and leave the jokes aside. I really like the way this anime is going.
