They may have been one of the best episodes of Uta Koi yet. In any case the emotional impact it had on me was one of the highest. It’s one of the more whimsical stories of the season (yet again of a love unfulfilled), and it also has this energy that was very addictive, and emotions kept changing from one to the other.
Also, what I really liked is how this episode basically told the same story twice: once from the perspective of the guy, and then from the perspective of the girl. The guy’s story was focused on how he met her, and his struggles to restore his family name that eventually failed, while the girl’s story was that of a young empress falling in love and being unable to do anything to get together due to society. Once again with Uta Koi establishing that there was no such thing as freedom back then.
On a side-note: this episode had a few cameos from Sei Shonagon. Slowly, we’re moving further down history, and that’s the red thread connecting all of the episodes together here. Apart from episode six perhaps.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)
You know, we watched this family rise up and then fall down again…It’s a little tragic.
It was quite sad hearing Michimasa talked about happier times. As for watching the family rise and fall, I don’t feel that emotionally invested since we never got to see much of Michinaga’s actual plotting.
Ok…but we also watched Teishi struggle to protect the family after his death. I believe Teishi was the daughter of Fujiwara no Michitaka.
Wait wait she was not an empress, but a princess who was the high priestess of a shrine in Ise. To put it in colloquial terms, that is quite a prestigious thing (or so it seems). They never mentioned her joining the current Emperor’s harem.
It might have been a good episode, if not for my brain being unable to comprehend how she looked less than 10 before she left, and came back 3 years later looking like she’s 17. Or that the guy, who seemed like he was 30, having trysts with a girl who was such a young kid not too long ago (technically wikipedia says she was 15 when she came back while Michimasa was 24, which some people of our current society would still disapprove of).
Gripes aside, it was a bittersweet episode again, which also nicely contrasts with his grandfather’s happy-ending story. I thought it was a pity we didn’t see more of Murasaki Shikibu, but at least we will finally see Teika’s story.
This episode was just tragic, I kept waiting for a silver lining, but of course that does not happen.