Short Synopsis: Genji gets a chance to see the princess (the one he kissed in the first episode) again.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
So yeah, you can pretty much consider me a fan of Osamu Dezaki right now. First he did a great job on Ultraviolet, and now he promises to do an even better job with Genji Monogatari. These episodes really keep getting better and better. It’s interesting, though, because based on the stories I’ve read about his other works, his series and movies are either incredibly good or incredibly bad. It seems that in the seventies and eighties, he established himself as an incredibly strong director. Then in the nineties, something went terribly wrong and he produced one terrible anime after the others, but with the new millennium he has managed to pick up himself really nicely, with the Air and Clannad Movie, the Snow Queen and Ultraviolet. It’s always interesting to see what happens when an already established director learns from his mistakes.
Anyway, in this episode, Genji feels pretty much down from what happened in the previous episode, when the ghost of the hatred of one of his neglected loves ends up killing his current love. He however, becomes his old self again when he meets the one he kissed as a fourteen year-old (I believe her name was Lady Fujitsubo). It seems that both of them are still heavily affected by that moment.
There’s also a young girl he meets (she probably will play a bigger part later in this series, but it’s quite disturbing that age really seems to not matter for Genji…), but the biggest event of this episode was of course when Genji forced himself upon the Fujitsubo, even though he probably wasn’t allowed to come near her at all (especially since she’s married to his father).
That’s what I meant last night after seeing it on TV. Yes, that was Murasaki he met at the schoolyard with the sparrow. Murasaki is Fujitsubo’s niece, and the spitting image of her… She will play a MAJOR part in this whole thing. The novel is written by a Lady Murasaki.
Genji was suffering from malaria and went to the mountains to see a sage that could cure him. It just so happened that the niece lived nearby. The exchange in the novel is funny, it was something like “That child was outside and General Genji is in the neighborhood!!”
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Wow, so now he’s having an illicit affair with his step-mom. This series really is getting better and better.
You have NO IDEA!!!! I describe Hikaru Genji as the Heian “Don Juan”. I really should read a bit more of the novel, but I’ve read summaries. There are some interesting “bumps” in the road.
I can’t believe they never mentioned the Korean fortune teller, and what he said. Though I may have missed it if they mentioned it.
The age thing is rarely a factor, old men married young girls all the time. Same with older women taking on “boy toys”. What happened in episode 4 wasn’t an example of that though. I think it was a tad smoother in the novel, he had a go between to set things up.