Saiunkoku Monogatari – 41

Unfortunately, what I’ve feared has finally happened: Saiunkoku Monogatari got licensed. While that alone isn’t such a bad thing, it does mean that both We Suck and Shadow Dreams are going to stop distributing their fansubs. This just forces me to start watching the raws again, simply because: – Being Dutch, I could care less about what shows America licenses. – I really don’t think I can wait that long till the English DVDs appear anyway. Still, I switched from raws to subs once for a reason, as this series is very difficult to understand without subtitles. I remember when the show first started, and I completely missed the main points (if you don’t believe me, then check out the entries I made of them, they’re really full of non-sense ^^;), so I’m going to be heavily depending on Usagijen’s and Impz’s episode summaries. Especially Usagijen deserves credit, with the huge summaries she writes. 🙂 Anyway, this episode had two major focuses: Ensei and Kouyuu. Eigetsu reveals his past in the episode. It seems that when he was small, his parents attempted to kill him once, in order to solve their poverty. A kind man named Doushu then took him in. And with “kind” I mean really kind. Whatever happened to him, he just continued to smile, and he taught Eigetsu to do so as well. Even when people would steal all his medicines, he would still not mind a thing. In fact, he was glad that people would actually find his medicines useful. Because of this, Eigetsu probably got the idea of getting a job to help people. His first idea was to become a doctor, though he then figured that he could do way more as a government official. Kouyuu, meanwhile, continues to get pressured by Kurou when he finds out that the Ran-clan has future plans to marry Shuurei off to Ran Ryuuren. Obviously, he fancies her, and the people from the Ran-clan would love to use her as a leech to control the guy a bit. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Shuurei finds out about this. Shuurei, meanwhile, has been busy to collect permissions from different chamberlains and governors. At the beginning of the episode, all she needs left are Kijin, Reishin and the governor of the Koku-province. At the end of the episode only the Koku-province governor is left, with the help of Tei Yuushun, Sai Rin, and amusingly, Kouyuu as well. ^^; This probably was the first time the Koku Province was mentioned. I also don’t recall having seen anyone from the Koku-family as well. I wonder what kind of role it will play in the future episode, especially its governor. We aren’t shown what his relation to Doushu exactly was, but the fact remains that the two of them are at least acquaintances, when Doushu trusts the guy with a bunch of books that he really wanted to give to Eigetsu, after which he dies. Could it be that Eigetsu grew up in the Koku-province? That death-scene, by the way, was a great one. It seems that Eigetsu told him all about Shuurei in his letters, and it was great to see him thank her for taking care of Eigetsu. I think we’ve also got our first glimpse of the new antagonist for this season. The way he was presented really screams “hey, look at me being mysterious. I’m evil and pretty”. Still, he somehow knows Shuurei, or he heard her name somewhere. Where did he come from, and what’s going to be his goal or purpose? I also do wonder, when are the creators planning to further develop the relationship between Eigetsu and Kourin? For quite a number of episodes, all they’ve been doing together is look embarrassed and cute after their eyes or hands meet each other. While this is nice once or twice, I want to see the two of them get on with it. :P]]>