Shion no Ou – 06

Now that the first half of the series is nearly over, it’s time for an intermezzo. Shion no Ou spends it giving Shion and the ones around her a bit more background in the form of a friend who died eight years ago, develop Ayumi’s case even more and introduce the final half of the series. Next episode, we’ll see the match between Shion and Saori. The friend who died was basically a good comrade of both Shion’s foster-parents, Shion herself (who seems to be quite close with them, even before she lost her parents) and Hani-meji as well. His name seems to be Kyotarou, and he was the one who taught Shion shougi when she got interested when she saw a shougi-board. I also love how this little piece of background brought Shion and her foster-family even closer together. Kyotarou seems to have caught a deadly sickness afterwards, and his condition went worse quite quickly, and if I understood things correctly, he wanted to play Hani-meji (who already was a terrific shougi-player back then) one final time, and died before he could finish the match. Meanwhile, we know what happened to Ayumi’s father: he’s an incredible idiot who just leaves his ex-wife to die, while stealing money from his son and beating him viciously. While it is a bit stereotypical, I guess it does feel in place in this series. It would be awesome if said father would receive a small bit of development himself in one of the final episodes, but I have no idea what to expect from the second half of this series. Well, apart from one thing, perhaps. This is just one big hunch, but the yellow-haired guy, who finally gets a proper introduction in this episode as Hani-meji’s brother, is on the top of my list of “people most likely to have killed Shion’s parents”. Remember, we know that the silhouette of the guy must be one with short hair. In this episode, Shion also claims that the killer had clean and pretty hands, and the guy seems to fit these requirements as well. But most importantly, there has to be a reason why both he and Shion have a necklace with the exact same gem on it.]]>