Hey, this episode was really good! I’m beginning to understand what Kiseki gurl meant with Shion’s strong character, as she’s really one of the most likable characters to appear this season, along with Kaiji. The episode started off a little buggy, though. So much publicity for just Shougi seems a bit unrealistic. It could be that Shougi is the most popular “sports” of the city, and the city is relatively small, though, but the horde of reporters still may have been a bit too much.
Shion then ends up fainting, the day before her rematch with Ayumi, after thinking back to the murder-event again. While it was nice enough to watch, it wasn’t anything special yet, but I was actually surprised how afterwards, the police managed to track down the creepy stalker, and Shion kept pushing herself to make it to the match once she woke up. Basically, Shion’s a heavily traumatized girl with a huge mental will to keep going. If the scriptwriters continue to develop this through the next nine episodes, we might have ourselves a very special anime here.
The episode also ends with the match between Shion and Ayumi, and Shion was basically crying as she started playing. Still, something tells me that she’s not going to give up at all in the next episode. Also regarding the creepy stalker, in the end he just was a creepy stalker and doesn’t seem to be the guy who killed Shion’s parents. The question remains, though: why did the guy decide to stalk Shion, and if he didn’t kill her parents, who did?
I’m also wondering whether I should change the title to “Sion no Ou”. If you look carefully at the sign on S(h)ion’s bedroom, it reads “Sion”, instead of “Shion”. Still, for now I’m going to blame it on bad katakana and romanji, since there’s no difference between “si” and “shi” in Japanese, and there never has been a universal form of romanji anyway.
(On a side-note: there’ve been quite a few anime this season where children have been traumatized because of the murder of their loved ones, haven’t there? Shion with her parents, Mari from Blue Drop with all 800 inhabitants of the island and Tarou from Ghost Hound with his sister, and I probably missed a few. It’s interesting how all these series give their own meaning to the incidents, and the characters who suffer from the traumas).]]>
Category: Shion no Ou
Shion no Ou – 02
Sigh… why do nearly all the good shows have to air at the same day!? To illustrate, here is my blogging-schedule for the coming season, if the shows I watch subbed get released regularly every week:
Monday:
none
Tuesday:
nada
Wednesday:
– Suteki Tantei Labyrinth
Thursday:
nope
Friday:
– Baccano! (will be ending in two weeks)
– Ghost Hound
Saturday:
– Shugo Chara
– Saiunkoku Monogatari
– Dennou Coil
– Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
– Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji
– Shion no Ou
Sunday:
– Gundam 00
– Les Miserables
I think this shows enough. And I thought the five shows on Saturday for the previous season was a lot. In other words: expect this blog to be quiet during weekdays, and busy in the weekends. ^^;
Anyway, about the episode: something went terribly wrong with the outsourcing. There’s nothing wrong with the animation, the poses are as creative as you’d expect, with perhaps a low frame-rate, but the art style is completely different from last episode. The characters now look much more like an ordinary anime, unlike the rather unique first episode. Let’s hope the creators realize this.
Apart from that though, I liked this episode, even though it served mostly to build up. Shion has finally become a pro, it seems, despite her loss of the previous episode. Ayumi and Saori meanwhile develop a rival-relationship, so it could be interesting to see how the two of them are going to develop. Especially since Saori seems the most likely person to find out that Ayumi is actually a guy. I also liked how Ayumi, instead of being glad to have won, looked down on his opponent, who was clearly playing just for the fun. On the surface, you’d say that the guy was just playing for his mother, but something tells me that he also likes challenges and to take risks.
On other news, it’s going to have to play really weird if the stalker didn’t turn out to be the killer of Shion’s parents. Ayumi managed to save Shion at the end of the episode, and ever since, Shion’s been put under surveillance, though he does send a threat to the Shougi-club, that if she were to win, he’d kill her. Obviously, the owners didn’t show that note to Shion, but there’s more than just that stalker going on. Some suspicious undercover-journalists also get introduced in this episode.
Overall, this series is going to be short (only twelve episodes, if I recall correctly), but it’s going to be interesting to blog it. Despite this season being rather disappointing when compared to the other major series, it’s good to see that there are at least a handful of series that have the potential to become great later on. Let’s hope I chose to blog the right ones.]]>
Some quick first impressions: Shion no Ou, Koharu Biyori and Ghost Hound
Shion no Ou
Okay, so here’s one that’ll never get licensed: the creators assumed that the viewers know the basic rules of Shougi, which isn’t really the case for most western viewers, now is it? Still, this series rocks, despite this, and it actually motivated me enough to learn more about the game in order to understand it better. I’ve said this before, but I really like Studio Deen, in the way that they’ve got an eye for great concepts, and there is a chance they’ve struck gold here. The murders only turned out to be a very small part of all the mysteries surrounding this series, and I’m so going to watch this.
Koharu Biyori
The OVA-format can be great for those stories that are too short for their own series, yet have the potential to turn into excellent stories. And then came Koharu Biyori where a perverted teenager buys himself a maid-robot and puts her in different dresses. Seriously, this is just one big excuse for fanservice; it’s especially obvious when a big octopus appears from out of nowhere. I admit, there were some funny moments here and there, like the selfish-joke, but that’s nowhere near enough to make up for the shallow plot, bad writing and nature to milk money out of the perverted otaku.
Ghost Hound
For me, this was the big title for the fall-season for me, and so far it doesn’t disappoint. It’s nothing amazing yet, though, but that’s because this clearly was an introduction-episode, with the purpose of giving the viewer a small taste of the different characters and the setting. One of the interesting things about this episode is how the creators managed to make a male main character of about fourteen years old who actually doesn’t feel annoying. I also like how his sister died, when both of them were kidnapped when they were young: it shows great promise for the future episodes. The graphics also look awesome, but what else do you expect when the character-designer of Jigoku Shoujo and Production-IG team up together? The voice-acting is also quite good and realistic; this is going to be a major series once the plot really gets fired off.]]>