Alongside series such as Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Saiunkoku Monogatari and Kaiji, which all have plenty of time to build up, Shion no Ou forms an excellent addition, simply because the time it has to work with is quite limited, so it has to keep up quite a fast pacing to finish in time. Unlike the series above, you just know that every episode will be interesting and push the storyline a considerable amount further. This effect becomes even more apparent when the characters are just so addictive as in this series. I could care less about the Shougi at this point, the characters themselves make this series worthwhile enough to keep watching.

This episode probably forms the end of the small intermezzo, where Satoru gets fleshed out even more, and where we see two matches: one between Saori and Shion, and one between Ayumi and Satoru. All of them were interesting, and quite important for the storyline. After the first one, Saori finally starts to consider Shion as a worthy opponent, instead of a cute girl who happens to be good at shougi, after Shion makes quite a few smart moves in a quick match. Satoru on the other hand, loses to Ayumi on purpose, in order to test the guy/girl out. His motivations are still quite fuzzy at the moment, but I think that we’ll find these out quite soon.

I’m also quite surprised at how often the reporter-guy passes by. The guy gets featured in the OP, but is he something more than just a bystander, or will he too play some kind of more important role in the future? In the later part of the episode, we also see Shion and Ayumi, going to a local fast-food-restaurant, and the two of them were SO cute at the time. I’m really surprised at how the usually stoic Ayumi talked in such a gentle way to Shion.

One thing that I’ve been wondering: how come the police couldn’t find anything through fingerprint analysis? The murderer basically placed the king of shougi on the board after he killed Shion’s parents. He wasn’t wearing gloves, as Shion recognized how the fingers of the guy were pretty… so why hasn’t fingerprint analysis pointed out the victim? Or could this be because the murderer has never been in contact with the police before?

Aaaand the building-up continues yet again. My patience is getting tested quite a bit for this series, and it really looks like the final arc of this series will be around nine episodes of building up, with the climax taking up only two of them. I’m still not sure whether this was a right decision to make. I mean, the climax has to be really good in order to make up for the episodes that it kept us hungry for any actual development. Can the creators really pull it off, without going through the obvious routes in which Takano dies and the others live happily ever after?

In this episode, Rika teams up with both the major children and adult-characters, and they come up with the plan to fake Rika’s death to cause confusion to Takano. Tomitake goes into hiding, and meanwhile investigates on Takano, discovering what we knew already, Akasaka remains in Rika’s house to make people believe that the house is still being inhabited by people, while Rika, Satoko and Hanyuu hide, Irie continues to keep an eye out, and basically forms Akasaka’s link to the outside world, since his phone will probably be tapped and Oishi is going to be the one to spread Rika’s faked death.

Meanwhile, the woman we saw with Takano turns out to be someone who’d like to see Takano’s antagonists fall too, which explains the support she gives to her. The next episode will probably consist out of everyone getting ready for the major plan. Episode 48 will then probably deal with the start of the plan, while the real climax will take place in episodes 49 and 50. Let’s hope the creators know what they’re doing.

Holy flipping heck! I know I’ve been complaining about Kaiji for the past few episodes… but seriously… this episode was just plain crazy, and I mean that in a good way! If there was anything this series needed, it was betrayal, and this episode features lots of it. I love episodes like these, where everything comes together like that.

So in the end, there was no Mr. X. I should have guessed this: the guy who flushed his cards down the toilet threw away three scissors. He probably ended up with a wrong hand and fell in despair. The matter is, though, that these cards weren’t counted off the scoreboard. Because of assuming this, Funai ended up being the final person with a card, along with Kaiji and the others. Because of that, he just had to throw away five of his nine stars just to survive. The thing is that because he’s a repeater, he needed to have four stars to survive. Because of this, he still has a debt of 4 million yen after this, because he was stupid enough to borrow the maximum limit and he can’t sell any of his stars.

The second half of the episode is dedicated to another problem: because said three cards have been flushed, there is no way for Kaiji and the others to cancel out each other’s cards. Kaiji then sacrifices himself to the other room, where the final pieces of the puzzle come together. The old man indeed has been tricked by a repeater, and now he’s been abandoned while said repeater is celebrating happily in the winner’s room. Then there’s another character (Okabayashi) who gets introduced, and I really like this guy for his realistic view on life. Both the old man and Okabayashi have been working for their partners. Which makes me wonder, where did Okabayashi’s partner go? I recall that Furuhata and Andou were the only ones with more than two stars left.

Which brings me to the next point: Andou is about to betray Kaiji! It is logical if you look at it one way. There’s a huge trust between Kaiji and Furuhata: they knew each other before going on the ship, Furuhata feels extremely guilty for what he did to Kaiji and Kaiji has been way too moralistic to doubt him. Andou is a different case, however. He was basically saved by Kaiji because he happened to have two stars. Kaiji made a temporarily impression on him, though apart from that, he doesn’t know anything about the guy. There are people who trust easily and there are people who are always afraid to make friends and always keep an emotional distance from people. Apparently, Andou belongs to the later part.

Again on a side-note: if the screenshots don’t show up: let me know

Ah, so finally Juusanhime appears. Really, she turned out totally different from what I imagined of her. I expected a mature young girl, probably along the lines of a younger Kochou, but instead she turned out to be Shuuei’s younger sister, quite energetic and quite talented at fighting. So this is the woman who will eventually be married to Ruuki, and I wonder what she’s going to add to the overall storyline.

In the meantime, Shuurei relieves her anger upon a very unlucky lump of dough, and she gets her first major mission from Kouki: safely escort Juusanhime to the palace. Shusui also returns, and nearly commits suicide! Ran also has some worries now that he’s not with Ryuuki anymore, and the two of them meet each other in this episode. There was a lot talking involved, so I couldn’t understand exactly, but apparently Ran had someone he loved, taken away from him by his triplet-brothers. Shushui puts up a strong face in front of him, though she herself is also troubled by hearing a very strange and annoying sound. Could this date back from when she was still working under Souka? All signs point to yes, since she freaked out when she saw small Riou.

Most part of the episode is spent on Shuurei, though. It’s great to see her out of her old outfit that she wore in the past few episodes. I’m again not sure if I understood everything correctly, but it seems that Kouki favours Seiga at the moment, and he lets him in on quite a few things that he doesn’t let Shuurei know. Which makes me wonder… aren’t there any other people working on their department besides the three of them? Or was Kouki really in such a huge need of more people?

On a side-note, I’ve been getting increasingly more annoyed with how the speeds of my images, hosted on putfile have gone down, so I’m experimenting a bit with different image- and filehosts. Can someone tell me whether the images above actually show up? And please notify me if they don’t.

This really was a fun episode. Until, of course, the Batsu-chara appeared, but by now that shouldn’t really be a surprise. This episode was all about a girl who had a crush on Hotori, and I love how it further developed his relationship with the girls around him. The interesting thing also is that we’ve seen how Hotori claimed that he already has a girl he loves, but we’ve yet to see confirmed who it actually is. All arrows point to Nadeshiko, but I think that he sees her more as a very good friend in which he can confide than a loved one. This episode showed him telling her about his worries about his chara-changes, and if the two of them were really dating, they’d be much closer, and if he really had a crush on Nadeshiko, but never had the courage to mention it he’d be much more nervous around her.

In the meantime, it looks like we aren’t quite rid of the batsu-charas, as the teacher will just keep hatching bad eggs until one of them turns out to be Embryo. Where Ikuto and his girlfriend come into the picture isn’t clear yet. The two of them obviously have a mission they don’t like, as they’ve been quite angst for the past few episodes. Also, are they full-time employed by the bad guy, or do they need to go to school as well?

In any case, I liked this episode. The girl of this episode is a real teenager, gawking over the boys she loves, who change every week. I like how she brought back something that Amu said in the first episode, where she confessed her love for Hotori. It really gives a feel of continuity, aside from the plot by the bad guys. I also liked the attention to the different faces that people put up in front of others. That was the thing that originally attracted me to this series.