Saiunkoku Monogatari – 46

Once again, Saiunkoku continues to stun me with some amazing episodes and plot developments. I do admit that the struggles within the Sa-clan dragged on a bit, but the current arc more than makes up for it. I can’t believe how awesome Shuurei is when she’s determined. (On a side-note: only now I noticed that Shuurei still wears the make-up that she received from Kochou). So, in the last episode, it seemed that the cause was somehow spread through the snow foxes into the water-system, and the disease wasn’t contagious. In this episode, we finally get to know the truth about the disease: it’s caused by the bugs that live on the snow-fox. People swallow them while drinking the water, and the bugs start to take over the human body. The only cure: manually removing it by cutting into the human body. This is where the problem lies, though: nobody of the palace-medical team knows how to do this. And this is where the strange guy we’ve been seeing with Sho Taishi comes into the picture: he actually was the doctor who took care of Shuurei when she was sick, and he turns out to be a legendary medic who knows how to properly cut into the human body. He then agrees to go with Shuurei to the Sa-province, along with the medical staff from the palace, with whom he spends the rest of the episode teaching how to properly cut into the human body (I know there has to be some kind of special word for this, but I just can’t seem to remember it), by practicing on a pig. If this wasn’t already enough, we also get to know why Doushu’s death means Eigetsu’s death: Doushu died once already. Yougetsu then put half of Eigetsu’s soul inside Doushu, so that he could remain alive. Apparently, this only kept him alive for about six or seven years, before this part of the soul died along with Doushu. Now that Eigetsu has lost half of his soul, I can imagine that he can’t live without it. I’m glad to say that I actually understood the first half of the episode quite clearly. The second half… however, was a different story. I know that Shuurei went to a department to ask permission for something, but which department that was, and what she needed from them still remain a big mystery to me. Shuurei also exits the episode with the message that she only has one job left to do, and I do wonder what that job might be… It’s interesting how you can compare the pacing of Saiunkoku Monogatari with Les Miserables. With both shows, you just know some things are definitely going to happen. With Les Miserables, it’s for example Fantine’s death and Jean, revealing his own identity, while for Saiunkoku Monogatari it’s for example the scene where Eigetsu either dies or gets saved somehow, and the revelation of who the mysterious Li Senya actually is. With both shows, these scenes are definitely going to happen, and with both shows, you won’t be able to predict exactly when these moments will come. It can be the next episode; it can also take five more episodes. That’s another thing I love about both of these series.]]>