Seirei no Moribito – 21

Finally: an episode of Seirei no Moribito where we know what to expect: Barsa’s past, and it doesn’t disappoint. Seeing young Barsa again was awesome, and like expected, the amount of detail thrown in was as excellent as the rest of the series. Barsa grew up in Kanbal, a nation, mostly covered in mountain. Her father worked as some kind of doctor, or something similar. Her mother died early. At one point, Barsa’s father ended up angering the emperor, which resulted in him, sending people in to kill his daughter. Because of this, her father asked Jiguro, a member of the royal guard, to protect her. Much like how Chaggumu’s mother asked Barsa to protect her son. This time, however, Barsa had done no wrong, but she’d end up involved in his father’s punishment if she wasn’t taken away. Jiguro saved Barsa just in time, and they left her birthplace. That night, they stayed in a cave, though a few days later, the first soldier, out to retrieve Barsa arrived. I’m not sure if Jiguro kiled the guy, but he definitely wounded him, breaking his spear in the process. Because of that, they entered a Yogo-village, and came to the blacksmith we saw in episode eight. He forged the spear we saw Barsa wield in the beginning of the anime. Then, a while later, we see the couple of Barsa and Jiguro running again, and we see another assailant. This one, however, is a former friend of Jiguro: Takuru. An amazing fight follows, and there we see the flashback, shown in episode three, in which Jiguro kills a former comrade, and cries over his dead body. Then, when they arrived in a new Yogo-town, Barsa learned the news of her father being killed. Jiguro then told Barsa all about it, why he was forced to take her with him, and what happened to her father. Because of this, Barsa asked him to teach him to fight. Jiguro refused, though. Fighting should be something for men. No matter how hard women trained, they’d never be as good as men (HAH!). After Barsa kept insisting, though, Jiguro changed his mind. They hung out with a couple of what I assume to be low-class fighters after that, where Barsa got her first training. She turned out to be quite popular amongs the guys, and often she was the centre of attention. At one point, however, she went too far, when she started boasting about Jiguro’s fight against Takuru, after which he punished her, with the same intensity of Barsa in episode 19. Then, they stayed with Tanda and Toroga-shi for ten years, in which Barsa lived with Jiguro peacefully, while training. Interestingly enough, at that time Torogai-shi had four pets, living on her head. I wonder what happened to the others. Ten years later, though, a group of six warriors found them. Barsa was forced to hide, so that Jiguro would be able to take all of them on. We see the episode end as he runs off in a direction, opposite to hers. Even though I obviously missed a few details, I loved this episode. I wonder why it was necessary to continue the story in the next episode. Barsa’s background could be solved within five minutes or less by the looks of it. I wonder whether there’s some twist left to happen, or something similar. In any case, I now understand why Barsa is so intent on saving Chaggumu: because of Jiguro, who probably died heroically, trying to save her.]]>