Yep, it does seem that Daijin’s right about the length of this series. There is no way that the creators are going to stuff the rest of the tournament in just four episodes. This episode revealed that the tournament is going to be huge, and EVERYONE will be participating in it. There is no way that four episodes will be enough, especially since this episode has also been introducing new opponents for Shion.
Also, after playing a few shougi-games myself here (link, thanks to Daijin), I’ve gotten even more respect for the different characters of this series. Really, shougi is hard. It’s really much, much harder than it looks. The pieces can really come from nowhere, there are so many holes that can be created in your defence, and you really need to take care of all of them if you don’t want to fail miserably. The shougi-match between Shion and Saori in the last episode, I really can imagine how one simple move can turn the entire tables for one match.
Anyway, now that that’s out, I absolutely loved this episode. The tournament starts here, and it’s well built-up for. Not only the characters we know have entered, but also quite a few unknown ones, and this episode already marks the end of the first matches of the first rounds. Something you rarely see in tournament-series.
The tournament is basically divided into three groups, and the participants are randomly divided in these three groups. Here’s the line-up:
Group A:
Hisatani (Shion’s foster-brother)
Shinji (Shion’s foster-father)
Ayumi
Group B:
Hani-Meijin
Ayumi’s shougi-teacher
Saori
Group C:
Shion
Satoru
An interesting line-up, especially as it seems very likely that Hani-Meijin will end up playing against Ayumi’s shougi-teacher. Shion is also the one who’s going to have to go up against Satoru (which he probably arranged behind the scenes). Apart from that, she has to go against newly introduced characters. This episode, she wins from a grown-up adult, who is something like a good amateur. Next episode is some kind of other child prodigy, which could turn interesting. Ayumi has also won his first match, though we don’t get to see the opponent, and I can imagine how all the others won as well. Satoru also seems to have beaten quite a famous shougi-player, suggesting that the guy indeed was really good.
And yet, so much more went on in this episode than just that! We first get to see a bit of background between Hani-Meijin and Satoru, of the time when their mother died. They were just playing a few shougi-matches, while the hospital phoned. Satoru begged Hani to continue playing, though Hani wanted to take care of his late mother. After that, Satoru stopped playing. Later, we see how Shion visits Ayumi’s mother.
I must say, that out of all anime that feature tournament-arcs that I’ve seen, Shion no Ou is the best. It successfully manages to avoid so many clichés, and I love the way the first rounds have turned out, with enough going on. I also love how many friends have entered in the same tournament. Also, none of the matches drag, and all of them so far have been over within a minute. While this will probably change in the future, I still love how so far, Shion no Ou feels refreshingly different from them.
And seriously, I love the scenes where Ayumi and Shion are together more and more. Right now, I’m really sure that it wasn’t a mistake to label Shion no Ou as the best series of the autumn-season so far. No other series has managed to make me care about its characters as this one.
