Short Synopsis: The series skips ahead to the death of the emperor.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
I’ve received some comments about how my summaries of this series (and others as well) are always rather ‘inaccurate’ and sometimes even don’t make any sense. I appreciate these comments, because there are enough times when I get a bit too lazy in trying to understand raws. It’s especially bad with this series, since there are no subs whatsoever and more people than usual are going to use these summaries of mine to find out what happened. This series also doesn’t make the job of understanding it any easier due to the large amount of feudal Japanese inserted, not to mention the large amounts of unintroduced flashbacks, dreams and time skips, but I’m going to try to deliver summaries that are at least a bit more accurate than what they used to be.
In any case, the main event in this episode was the death of the emperor, which leaves Lady Fujitsubou and many others as a widow. This means that a lot of things are going to change now. Genji’s kid is probably going to have to take up the throne as soon ass he grows up, and the incident also allowed Genji and Fujitsubou to talk to each other again for a bit (even if it was just during the funeral, and they indeed continue to avoid each other for many years afterwards).
But yeah, especially Fujitsubou has it tough. I really don’t know about the royal system at that time, so this paragraph consists just out of a bunch of guesses that seem the most likely to me (please DO correct me if this is wrong), but it seems that she is mostly caught up with what to do with her son: if she stays quiet, she’s going to be the king’s mother, keep her influence and status, but she will be putting a fake emperor on the throne (which must have been a huge shame at the time). If she does confess, then she’ll immediately lose her status and her child will probably have a really hard time growing up in the least.
In the end of the episode, we see how she cuts off all her hair, and becomes a female monk after saying her goodbye to Genji. In this way, she possibly creates a scandal on herself, but her son will be allowed to stay out of everything and just continue his lifestyle while she can repent for the sin she committed.
With two episodes left, Murasaki now really has to come to the foreground, and she will probably be the one that Genji turns to within his sorrow. I really wonder what kind of climax the creators have prepared for this series. How far are we into the original novels anyway? Has it been consistently one volume per episode, or has the pacing increased over the past few episodes?
Actually, I think the anime does not yet cover half of the novel. The novel continues as Genji’s life progresses to about a few years before his death (possibly of old age). Furthermore, there’s a latter part of the story about Genji’s youngest son and Genji’s grandson, who are about the same age and are rivals in love.
As far as I remember, the anime skips some parts of the novel and possibly rearranges the order of some events. There are a few women who are not included, and judging from the way things are last episode, Genji hasn’t married Murasaki yet. In the original story he marries her a few years before Fujitsubou’s ordination. (Murasaki is about 14 when he marries her. I’m not sure if the marriage takes place unmentioned in the anime, or it’s going to be saved for the end. It’s more likely to be the latter though. In the anime, I think Murasaki should be the one to ultimately console Genji of his grief of losing Fujitsubou because of her resemblance to her aunt.)
I know how hard it is to summarize by judging from what you see when a lot of words aren’t understandable and an extensive background of another’s cultural knowledge is needed. You’ve done a good job and I’m glad that you’re blogging this series. Keep up the good work for the last two episode!
Thank you for your summary, I was tired last night and while I was waiting for it to come on, I left the TV on the wrong channel and missed half of it! 🙁
Yes, this is only the very beginning of the whole Tale. Murasaki seems to die before the end of the novel, if I remember right and well…He hasn’t even “kidnapped” her yet, from what I gathered.
I agree this anime is not easy to understand. But actually I think they are not speaking any feudal japanese at all. They just seem to be speaking normal keigo.
True, it’s regular Japanese. Formal though. Even a dumb gaijin like me can get some of the dialogue.
I’m so glad that Live-Evil has decided to pick up this series, episode 1 is just out. Hope they will finish it…
http://www.live-evil.org/