This week, Shigofumi is about a rather extreme case of bullying. The bullies are ruthless in every single way, but this episode is told from a rather interesting viewpoint: from a guy who happens to be in the same class as the bullies, but in the beginning has nothing to do with them. He never takes any action, and finds the bullied guy rather pathetic (which in a way is true. The guy has really gone crazy under the pressure). Then, when the bullied guy asks for his help, he declines, and instead betrays the guy to the bullies (did anyone else think of Kaiji when that beam appeared?). After that, the bullied commits suicide, and the bullies find themselves a new victim in the main character, who now understand how hard it is to be bullied.

Well, I think that it’s clear now that Shigofumi lacks any form of subtlety. It knows how to build up, but it’s interesting how it never tries to go too deep, and instead presents its story quite straightforward. It’s interesting how basically the entire episode says “thou shalt not bully”, and how the symbolism with the puppies was quite straightforward. It kind-of matches Fumika’s approach when she delivers the Shigofumi as well: all that matters is to deliver the Shigofumi, and everything that’s in the way doesn’t matter. I usually like series with a bit more subtlety, but a series with a subtlety like this one also is nice once in a while.

There’s one thing I couldn’t understand about this episode, though. At the end of this episode, we see how the main character stabs one of the bullies with a screwdriver (quite an interesting method to get rid of them), which he posts on a local bbs, it seems. We then switch to a completely unrelated girl, who reads the bbs as well, and seems to get bullied too. She then makes a phone-call to an unknown person and the episode ends. What was that about? Did we meet that girl before? Or was that just an introduction to the next episode? I’m going to assume that it’s the latter.

Haha! This was most definitely the best episode of True Tears yet! Episode six may have been a bit too early for such a deep drama to already start, but at least this episode turned out excellent. It’s interesting how well te creators have managed to build up the atmosphere, in such a relative short time, considering that most series need at least thirteen episodes to achieve the same thing.

Noe’s brother got a pretty large role in the end. This episode, he ends up dating Hiromi, just to get her attention away from Shinichiro so that he can start dating Noe. I assume that he intends to break up with her as soon as Noe and Shinichiro are a true couple. It turns out that the reason why he’s so close with his sister is that they’ve spent almost all of their time together since their grandmother died (I couldn’t pick up what happened to their parents), and now he wants someone else to take care of Noe so that he can go his own ways. It was also pretty fun to see Noe steal Shinichiro’s belt. It must have been pretty tough for the guy to spend the rest of the day. :P

Aiko also finally gets her much-needed development, and we finally know why she started dating Miyokichi in the first place. It seems that she already had a crush on Shinichiro for a long time, but never had the guts to confess to him. Then Miyokichi came around, and fell in love at first sight. He did have the guts to confess to her, and she ended up agreeing, just because Shinichiro encouraged her. With this episode, their relationship also starts to fall apart, when Aiko finally gives enough hints to Miyokichi to make him see that she still fancies Shinichiro.

The really important part of this episode was about Hiromi, though. Shinichiro overhears one of the bad discussions between his mother and Hiromi, and he picks up how Hiromi refers to something that happened in the past between the two. Obviously, he wants to find out about it, and goes after Hiromi. As it turns out, according to Shinichiro’s mother, Hiromi is Shinichiro’s half-sister. Their father committed adultery on Hiromi’s mother, indeed confirming what many people have already speculated. This is why Shinichiro’s mother hates Hiromi’s mother so much: she basically took away her loved one, and she still can’t forgive Hiromi for that, even if this is subconscious.

Well, the same complaints as usual. We’re one episode further, and exactly two and a half rounds have taken place. Considering how one round just consists of putting up to five cards on the table (in this case two or less), you can’t deny that Kaiji is slow. Still, unlike the beam-arc and the ship-arc, I found myself not distracted by this at all. This episode is really what I’ve been waiting for with this series: mind-games, between two people who aren’t just a bunch of idiots, plucked off the streets.

I’m no Tonegawa, but this episode did a terrific job in showing Kaiji’s thought-patterns to the viewer, and I was actually able to predict some of his moves, just as Tonegawa did this with Kaiji. Like expected, in this episode Kaiji tried to use very basic knowledge to try and outsmart Tonegawa, which didn’t really work. I expect that every time Kaiji and Tonegawa change sides, the game will get more intense. After all, after the sixth round, Tonegawa really has the chance to prove how much he sees through Kaiji, and after the ninth round, it’s Kaiji’s turn to outsmart him, when everything depends on him, winning as much on the slave-side.

I’m just a bit worried about the role of the guys who fell off the beam earlier. Their significance in this series stopped entirely ever since Kaiji rose above them (which was quite early). The fact that they got through the door, and into the room that Kaiji and Tonegawa have been playing in (these guys have healed quite fast, by the way) must mean that they’ll have some kind of role later on. I really hope it’s something better than being idiots, like they usually are.

There are just two things I don’t like about Saiunkoku Monogatari: the fact that the slow subs have forced me to watch it raw, meaning that I don’t understand half of most of the episodes without Impz’s help, and all these random hiatuses it’s been having. For the past few months, I realized that it’s really important for this series to continue on a weekly basis, otherwise it loses me a bit in the middle of the action. Thankfully, it seems that the final episodes of the second season won’t have anymore random hiatuses like that, so that eliminates the second point for now. ^^;

And really, Ryuuki stole the show this episode! Finally, he’s actually starting to develop, along with Juusanhime. His sadness on the boat towards Shuuei really surprised me, and it seems that he’s really regretting how he ran away from all of his responsibilities, yet again. There’s even a possibility that he won’t be able to return as the king, which is especially unnerving, considering that a few episodes back, we saw that one of these guys had plans to take over Ryuuki’s throne.

In her turn, Juusanhime finally reveals her history with Shiba Jin. It seems that at one point, her mother died (of which circumstances, I don’t know, though; I’m not even sure whether that was revealed). Shiba Jin was then sent to kill her off too, but he couldn’t. Eventually, after three days if I picked this up correctly, Shiba Jin ended up cutting out his own eye and went along with her to the main house of the Ran Clan, and ever since the two had been in love. The two of them spent most of their childhood years together, along with Shuuei, but at one point Jin killed his own father. I’m not sure why, but if I had to guess, then it’d be because he tried to do something against Juusanhime. Probably to finish the task that Jin never could complete.