It’s episode 7 of Shion no Ō. Who will win the match between Shion and Saori. Also, Satoru decides that he wants to “learn” from Ayumi as well. Meanwhile, the detectives investigating Shion’s murder decide that they may try to use the proposed open tournament as a trap to catch the murderer. And why does Satoru want to sponsor this open tournament, anyway?

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The highlights of this episode:

• Shion and Saori play their match, and Saori appears to have the advantage in both position and time all the way through, but she’s too busy trying to impress Satoru and not paying attention to the board. Shion takes advantage of Saori’s inattentiveness and is able to defeat Saori without Saori realizing she was in a vulnerable position.
• The detectives confirm the existence of the planned open tournament and decide that they may be able to use it to their advantage, believing that Shion’s killer may decide to enter the tournament.
• Satoru says he wants to meet Ayumi, and when they meet, Satoru asks “her” to instruct him in a game of shogi. However, Ayumi fins Satoru to be a rather formidable opponent. However, Satoru makes a very amateur move, which Shion – who is recording the progress of the match – finds very odd. Ayumi at first thinks it was a mistake, but then realizing that Satoru intentionally made the mistake to allow Ayumi to win.
• That evening, Shion and Ayumi go out to eat somewhere and talk about the match Ayumi played. Shion asks him if he thought the bad move Satoru made was strange, and Ayumi agrees. They then set up a portable shogi board so they can analyze the match.
• Meanwhile, Hani-meijin wonders how his brother was able to start a successful enough business to be able to sponsor an event with a 50 million yen prize. He asks Satoru whether he’s involved with anything shady like things Satoru had apparently been a part of in the past. Hani-meijin also tells him that many of the shogi pros won’t be happy with the open rules, and asks Satoru to require some sort of minimum standard on entrants. However, Satoru tells Hani-meijin that if he does that, he wouldn’t be able to enter and defeat him…

This episode was considerably slower than the past ones, and Satoru is still obviously slimy, and would still seem to be obvious pick for murderer of Shion’s parents out of everyone in the show. However, while he seems slimy, he doesn’t necessarily seem slimy in that sort of way. I’m also not sure of a motive either. And while he has the same pendant that Shion has, I can’t tell that he’s necessarily paying her more attention that either Ayumi or Saori at this point.

In any case, Satoru is obviously much better at Shogi as he lets on, pretending to have made a stupid mistake in his game against Ayumi, but having, in reality, letting him win.

My only beef with this episode was in the game between Shion and Saori where Saori is all like “heh heh, I’m winning! I’m winning! I LOST!” after one move. Obviously her position wasn’t what she thought it was, but I didn’t think it was that bad. Maybe one move can change the game from Shion almost losing to Saori losing, but it just seemed like a major shift in the game for one move.

From the description of the manga, I was thinking this show would be more about Shion herself trying to find her parent’s murderer, partly by playing shogi, but that hasn’t materialized. I don’t know if that’s because the description of the manga is wrong, or the anime is making her more of a happy bystander in that part of the story. I guess we’ll eventually find out.

Oh, and by the way, I had complained about the animation level in the 2nd episode as compared to the first. Well, it may be that I’m just used to it, but I think the animation level is back up to an excellent level again. Maybe they just sucked up some episode 2 budget for the first episode to make it really, really good, but then went back up to normal budgeting for the rest, I don’t know.