Here is a series which is a little off the normal track for me – Shion no Ou. I decided to try something new, and to pick up a series that not many people seem to be paying attention to. This one seems to have a lot of potential, so I hope you enjoy it.

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A man, whom we can’t see the face of, holds a long knife. He charges at and stabbs a man as a woman looks on. The man then turns and stabs the woman, causing her to drop an bracelet. A young girl watches and the man turns his attention on her. It looks like the girl is about to scream, but the man covers her mouth with his bloody hand…

Seven years later…

The girl runs, who is now in elementary school, down the street towards the Japan Shogi Association building and two men see her pass by. A middle-aged remarks that she’s the girl who had her parents murdered 7 years prior – Shion Ishiwatari – though she’s been taken in as a foster child by the Yasuoka family now. A younger man holds a picture of Shion at the murder scene and remarks that she seems pretty happy now, but the older man says that due to the shock of the event, Shion is now unable to speak.

An elderly man, Furuta, meets Shion at the front desk, and Shion takes out shogi-shaped cookies. Another youngish man, Hanemeiji, arrives whom Furuta addresses as “the games master.” Furuta asks him what he’s doing there, and Hanemeiji just says that all the games currently going on are boring. While Shion walks over to display showing one of the Shogi games in progress, Hanemeiji asks Furuta who she is, and Furuta tells him that she’s participating in the women’s tournament, and that she’ll become a Junior Pro is she wins her two matches that day.

Shion then arrives in the room where all the participants in the women’s tournament are taking part in a practice tournament. Shion prepares for her first match against an obviously older woman, whom Shion defeats rather handily.

After the match, Shion is talking with Furuta when a high school girl suddenly pops up and rushes over to hug Shion, saying that she’s always wanted to meet her. Suddenly another girl, Ayumi Saitou, arrives and, without emotion, notifies Furuta that she won her match. A little later, the first girl introduces herself to Shion as Saori Nikaidou and tells Shion that she watched one of her matches online and thats how she came to know of her.

Suddenly a boy shows up asking Shion if she was nervous in her first match. Saori, who has suddenly become overprotective of Shion, grabs Shion and asks the boy if he’s trying to pick her up (the buy is something around high school aged as well). However, he says she’s wrong and that he’s Hisatani Yasuoka, and thus Shion’s foster-brother. Shion writes down on a piece of paper telling Saori that Hisatani is a 3-dan ranked player (which is one rank below being a professional).

Saori grabs Hisatani’s hand and does some sort of palm reading, and then tells Shion that she shouldn’t marry someone with a palm like that, holding Hisatani’s open palm over her. However, doing this spooks Shion as it gives her flashbacks to the murder night. The trio then see the schedule and see that Shion is scheduled to play Ayumi.

After Ayumi and Shion sit down for the match, Shion takes out the bracelet that her mother had dropped when she was killed and looks at it in her hand. The match begins and pretty soon Ayumi sees that Shion is laying out a trap. Meanwhile, Hisatani, Furuta, and Hanemaiji watch the game on a monitor in another room, making various comments. The two players keep making apparently brilliant moves until Ayumi finally catches Shion off guard and checks her, ending the game.

Outside, Saori is fawning over Shion again when Ayumi walks by. Saori hails her, but Saori ignores her and walks by. Then a fancy car comes up and picks up Saori. Shion and Hisatani start to walk home, but a man in a red sport’s car watches them. While riding home in her car, Saori directs her driver to find out everything that he can about Shion and Ayumi.

Meanwhile, Ayumi is riding the train and has a flashback. She’s playing shogi against a very old/ugly man, and makes a move which finally gives her a win over the man. The man lets out a small laugh and Ayumi realizes that he lost on purpose. He rushes Ayumi and grabs her and tells her that “he could tell from how she played that,” and then rips open Ayumi’s shirt revealing Ayumi to be….a boy!

As Ayumi sits in shock at being found out, the man remarks that he must have a good reason for doing something like that, but it will be problematic if people find out. Ayumi tells him that his mother is sick, and he needs money, but it’ll take too much time to work his way up through the boy’s tournament. Despite this, the man agrees to take Ayumi as his pupil, but he tells Ayumi that he should never forget to play for the sake of money, or else it will be like “forgetting his mother.”

That evening at home, Shion’s foster parents try to comfort her about losing, but without much success. After Shion has been put to bed, her father tells her mother that Shion has helped him achieve all his goals in playing Shogi, and wonders if she “saved him.”

Meanwhile, the man from the sports car works at a desk at night, sorting through newspaper clippings and photos of Shion. The next day after school, Shion is walking home when the man begins to follow her. Ayumi (dressed like a boy now) leaves the hospital, and on his way walking, sees Shion passing by, and then sees the man take a picture of Shion with his cell phone from behind. Obviously sensing that something isn’t right, Ayumi begins to follow the man, but suddenly the man runs and grabs Shion…

This seems to be the “people with problems” anime series for the fall, as just about everyone in this show looks like they do, or will have, issues in the future – from Shion’s past to Ayumi being a boy, to Saori appearing less cheerful and more calculating in private than in public, to Shion’s foster-father.

Of course, there is the issue of who killed Shion’s parents and whether we have already seen him. The two most obvious targets would be the man who is following Shion or the ugly dude training Ayumi. However, the fact that they are the obvious first picks probably means that they aren’t it.

Also, given that this series deals with something that I have pretty much zero knowledge about – shogi – I tried reading up on the game before watching this series so I know somewhat what is going on. Luckily, while some people may throw around a couple terms that will mean nothing to you if you don’t know the game, I think this first episode does a good job of not requiring the viewer to know the game to watch it.

Finally, there is the animation. I’m trying to decide how much I like it – and it certainly seems bright and crisp, but there is something that keeps bugging me about it. I don’t know if it’s a lack of texture in some of the art or what. Oh well, maybe I’ll either pin down what it is later, or come around to completely liking it.