Whoa… this probably was the hardest to understand episode yet! Anime like Seirei no Moribito and Saiunkoku, who already feature lots of talking, sometimes have a tendency to show entire episodes who just focus on a bunch of people talking, with nothing more. This was one of these episodes. Eighteen minutes just play inside a small blacksmith’s house, nothing else. No flashbacks, other characters, nothing.
Well then, there was one thing I did understand: Barsa’s spear had been quite damaged, so she goes to a famous blacksmith in order to get a new one. At the end of the episode, we see her happily practicing with her spear. What happened between these scenes was extremely different to grasp.
I do suspect that the blacksmith wasn’t keen on helping Barsa at first. This is probably because of her past, and judging by the fact that Tanda had to heal her quite often, she probably frequented his place as well. Either that or he’s seen her wanted-posters. Then, after a while, two of the hunters enter the shop, picking up some swords that they ordered.
What follows is a long discussion, between the blacksmith and the hunters, while Barsa and Chaggumu hide out in a different room. The blacksmith nearly betrays them when he tells the hunters that their swords are in the same room where they’re hiding out in. At the last moment, though, he changes his mind, and puts up a discussion, so that it’ll be natural for him to pick up the swords himself. At least, that’s what I suspect.
To find out the subject of this discussion, I’m probably going to have to wait till Wrex posts his summary, but I suspect he was telling them about Barsa’s history with her father. The way Barsa looked seems to suggest this. The hunters then compare this story with probably Chaggumu’s.
This really was a discussion you’d expect in a novel, not in an anime like that. But still, I liked it, even though I didn’t understand a word of it. The music also was amazing, near the end of the episode. I was surprised we saw nothing of Shuga. You’d suspect that this episode would show him talk to various people, to convince them that the drought isn’t over, but we saw nothing of him. Torogai-shi also was absent.]]>
Seirei no Moribito – 08
What a fantastic episode – the way he extracts the story from the assassins and makes his decision was done beautifully.
this was an awesome episode, but i admit i wouldn’t have understood it either if it weren’t for fansubs. Anime-Kraze released the subbed version of this episode a couple days ago.
A fantastic demonstration of storytelling restraint, through a side character no less in the blacksmith. I’m sure after the smithy relegated about the ultimate weapon, the fighters mentioned that the spear-wielding warrior didn’t kill anyone in her defense of the child convinced the old fart.
The eerie parallels between Barsa and her warrior-guardian lends weight to the anime by giving it more poetic sensibility, almost mythical.