Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and welcome to another post about Twelve Kingdoms! I know it’s a bit late-ish, but blame the holiday. This was a pretty eventful week for all 3 of our leads, so lets just jump right into it.
Starting off, I think I figured out the point of these three stories. The thread that connects them all, beyond simply being girls or their positions in society. Simply put, it’s understanding life in this world. Understanding what it is like to live in the kingdoms. None of them have every actually lived a day in these peoples shoes. Shoukei lived in a palace, and while Suzu worked she did so in equivalent luxury, immortal and free from the worlds woes. Meanwhile Nakajima was in constant conflict before being thrust into the highest rung of society. Each of these girls brings a unique perspective to this question, each with their own histories and motivations. It’s an unexpected, but welcome shift in the series and I can’t wait to see what Twelve Kingdoms does with it. Now, how about we talk specifics after the break?
Shoukei’s is the most obvious of the three, at least until the end of episode 27. She herself isn’t at fault for anything, except maybe ignorance. She didn’t commit the atrocities of her father, nor did she even know about them to try and stop them. Yet at the same time she never tried to learn either. Never concerned herself with her people. And now that she has been “cast down”, become one of them, she still doesn’t care. Shoukei doesn’t try to understand the people around her, their plights, their feelings. She still views them with the same haughty attitude, as if she were still in the palace rather than the mud with them. I don’t yet know how she will grow, but I sort of expect her not to. I expect Shoukei to remain unchanged, a foil to the arcs Suzu and Nakajima are going through now.
We will get to them later though, as there is still more to Shoukei. Twelve Kingdoms also uses her as an opportunity to further explore Rulers, another parallel to Nakajima. And I have to say… Queen Kyou is kind of a bitch. She’s arrogant, haughty, seemingly young… but also pragmatic and understanding. She has the decisiveness Nakajima needs to learn and all the “confidence” her people expect of a ruler. I like that she didn’t take Shoukei under her wing to help her, but as a favor for Kei. She wants Hou to prosper not because she cares for its people, but because it failing will only burden her own Kingdom. Its a cold-hearted pragmatism, but one ultimately used to better her people. I don’t know how Shoukei will handle this forced servitude, but I am looking forward to how Twelve Kingdoms handles it.
Next up we get Suzu, who seems to be acting as a sort of bridge between Nakajima and Shoukei. Like Nakajima, she is not native to this world. Suzu doesn’t know the people, the customs, the land. And even after living here for 100 years she still doesn’t, because of her seclusion with Suibikun. Yet despite this hardship, despite her life until now, she is similarly entitled as Shukei. She flits from official to official, meeting Queen Sai before jumping to Nakajima. She demands audience’s, she assumes she can get what she wants if she just asks. She isn’t haughty or arrogant about like Shukei, but she lacks an understanding of this world all the same. I expect through her meeting with Asano, and we’ll talk about him, she will learn what Queen Sai was trying to teach. That a full life is made up of both happiness and sorrow.
Speaking of Queen Sai, I want to ask you readers for some help here. There was a lot of subtext during her conversation with Suibikun, mentions of prior Rulers and just how long Suibikun had been around. But because of the titles and the speed at which the conversation moved, I wasn’t able to fully understand it. It just sort of buzzed through my head as “politics”. From what I understand, Suibikun worked with the Ruler of 2 generations ago? Yet because of her attitude she was effectively exiled to her little side-palace and everyone has left her alone since. My question is, why is she still a Sen-in then? Surely Queen Sai can remove her from the rolls, but I wonder how this falls into her talk about not passing on blame. I would really appreciate any explanations you all can give me.
Finally we come to Nakajima, who had a load of great stuff this week. I really liked how Twelve Kingdoms is building up her arc from the first cour here. Previously, she figured our her problem. She identified how she was seeking validation in other people and adjusting her actions to their expectations. During the first cour though, she had no one to please, there were no officials or teachers to care about. Now that she is Queen, those old habits are resurfacing and she is starting to act on them. To actually address it and move past it as a person. Unlike Suzu and Shoukei, Nakajima is actively seeking to better herself and to understand the people of this world. She wants to learn things her own way, to earn her place, where the other two sort of just want.
While Nakajima is going through all this though she also has to content with court politics ooooo, spooky. To be honest, a lot of this got a bit confusing. I’m sure its partly supposed to be that way, this is political intrigue after all and everyone is trying to play Nakajima. But it feels like Twelve Kingdoms could have done something to make this a bit more clear. Personally, I think Koukan is still probably innocent. This all just seems way to obviously evil, like it was blatantly setup to get rid of him. If I had to suspect anyone it would have the be the Chousai, who is seemingly in on the whole thing. Nakajima was correct, he should have known about such a large assassination attempt under his nose. That he didn’t speaks either to incredible ignorance or that he was in on it the entire time.
With that we come to the individual episodes, starting with episode 25. This one is primarily concerned with Nakajima and her time at court. We see a lot of politics, a lot of decisions that need to be made such as the Lieutenant or river maintenance. The most important thing we see though, beyond the assassination attempt, is just how bad Keiki is as an adviser. I like the man, he is a good character, but he is so incredibly passive. He admonishes Nakajima every time she disagrees with him or does something he doesn’t like without actually providing alternatives. Always hiding behind how a Kirin isn’t supposed to rule, only advise. I can see now why the previous Queen went off her rocker if this was the kind of support she was given. Hopefully he comes to realize this just as Nakajima has.
Meanwhile in the same episode we have an assassination attempt and Shukei’s secret comes out. The assassination attempt is pretty straight forward in execution, if hard to follow politically. I said it above but it seems like they are trying to frame Koukan and remove him from the province. They constantly reference him and say he is involved, or he must have done it, without any hard proof of his involvement. As for Shukei, I am really split. It’s hard to feel sorry for her after what these people have gone through and her attitude. How she constantly looks down on them and insults them, etc. Yet she herself isn’t guilty of anything other than negligence. This is probably how Lord Kei felt when he sent her here, rather than execute her and it paints a grim picture for her future.
Next up is episode 26, and a lot of stuff happened here. Keiki continues to be unhelpful while Nakajima comes to realize she still hasn’t changed. I really liked how strongly Nakajima reacted to this realization actually. So upset that she hasn’t changed, she swings to the other side and immediately starts issuing swinging proclamations. Almost like she is over compensating, without much regard for if they are actually good decisions or not. Time will tell if they are, but it was a very fitting reaction for her and we have seen her do it before she was Queen as well. Meanwhile Shoukei gets exiled and Suzu makes her grand escape, both running from their problems rather than face them. In Shoukei’s case that isn’t exactly fair, since they were going to kill her. But the fact remains that Nakajima is the one reacting the most healthily towards her problems.
And lastly we come to episode 27, which comes with a lot of revelations. The big one of this episode of course being that Asano is still alive! I figured he would re-enter the story at some point, but not that we would find him with the Shusei. It’s kind of weird how this same troupe has run into all of our major characters, but hey. It makes for some recognizable faces. On Asano, I have no idea what Twelve Kingdoms plans for him. He seems to be going a bit crazy, what with the gun and the kidnapping and all that, but what’s the plan? Is he trying to find Nakajima again? Or just looking for someone to translate for him by force? I’ll withhold judgement until we actually see him in action, but for now mark me as intrigued.
Beyond Asano this episode also saw all of our 3 leads embark on some kind of journey. Nakajima willingly sets out to learn what her subjects lives are like, while Shukei and Suzu are more forced into their journeys. Suzu’s is a literal journey, traveling to Kei to try to find Nakajima. Meanwhile Shukei’s is more metaphorical, as she must learn humility in her work as a servant. In general I think this is some good stuff and I am looking forward to how these arcs resolve. I suspect Shoukei will fail, probably dying along the way, but that Suzu will reluctantly grow. Acting as a sort of middle ground between Shoukei and Nakajima’s stories. My personal hope for her is that in her interactions with Asano she will learn that she can’t go back to Japan though. It’s been 100 years after all, and the times have changed.
So all in all, how was this week of Twelve Kingdoms? In broad strokes? It was pretty good. Lots of stuff happened and almost all of it was interesting. There was some political mumbo jumbo that I either didn’t follow or didn’t care to much about, but everything else was great. The structure of using 3 different character’s stories especially has grown on me with these episodes. I was apprehensive at first, because I love Nakajima. But Twelve Kingdoms has done a good job of tying them all together and making them thematically interesting. All the while organically teaching us about this world rather than just info-dumping it on us. I’m still concerned at large with where the series is going to end of course. We have 6 more weeks of episodes, but I know that the anime end isn’t the actual “end”. I can only hope it works out.
