It’s episode 12 of Shion no Ō. It’s time for all 3 girls to play in their big 3rd round matches - Shion plays against the enigmatic Satoru, Ayumi plays against Shion’s foster-father Shinji, while Saori plays against her training master, current shogi champion, and brother to Satoru Hani-meijin. One of them goes down, but what about the other two?
|
|
|
|
Go Straight to the Screenshots | Go Straight to the Review
The highlights of this episode:
- Shion enters her match against Satoru, while Ayumi plays against Shinji and Saori plays against Hani-Meijin. When Shion opens the box to take out the Shogi pieces, the king piece is laying on top of the bag holding the other pieces, like how the king piece was placed on her father’s head after he was murdered. Satoru then tells Shion that he heard about Suo, who wrote king on his forehead during his match with Shion, and Shion wonders if Satoru is the one who placed the king on top, and if that’s why.
- Satoru plays his first piece, but then leaves the room, saying that he’s checking in on his brother’s match. Shion realizes that by leaving the room, Satoru is trying to get her to over think her strategy, so she decides to move right away anyway. When Satoru returns, Shion decides to leave as well, playing Satoru’s trick back at him, and uses the time to look in on Ayumi’s and Shinji’s match. Once Shion returns, Satoru starts harassing her some more, and Shion wonders why he seems to hate shogi so much.
- Meanwhile, the detectives are going over the results from the private detective Satoru hired to investigate Shion’s parent’s murder case, and start to wonder about Satoru. While they can’t really say he’s a suspect yet, they are concerned about all the coincidences involving him, but can’t come up with a motive.
- Ayumi, meanwhile, is playing her usual shogi, but Shinji isn’t drawn into her style of play and defeats her. Ayumi becomes distressed that sher style is essentially ineffective against a calm, superior player like Shinji. However, Shinji then invites Ayumi to attend his training sessions, since Ayumi can’t make to sessions at the association and because Kamizono has had to be admitted to the hospital recently.
- Meanwhile, Hani-meijin is thrashing Saori pretty good, but continues to train her even during their match against each other.
- In Shion’s game, Shion starts rushing her end game, making a mistake, playing one of her finishing attack moves too quickly. Satoru takes advantage by placing his rook in the center of the board, which gives him a significant strategic advantage…
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Out of the three main characters playing matches, Ayumi is already down, Saori is probably going to go down pretty soon, and Shion isn’t doing so well either. Shion may still find a way to win, but given people’s reaction to Satoru’s last move, it seems that Shion is in quite the hole.
Given that it’s come pretty clear that this series will be a full season series (ANN now lists up to 17 episode titles), this tournament no longer looks like the concluding story arc in the series, and thus all three losing seems more of a probability. That opens up the interesting question of who else will win the tournament? We also have the interesting development of Shion’s foster-father essentially offering Ayumi to take him in as an apprentice.
The series clearly seems to be making a push for Satoru-as-murderer, given the detective’s suspicion and his apparent significant dislike of Shion. However, I hold firm to my belief that this isn’t the case and that there are other explanations for that (though I don’t know yet what they are). However, given that the series will apparently be a full, rather than half, season, that also opens the possibility that we have not yet met the murderer. If it was just 12 or 13 episodes, I would assume that we have already, but now I’m not as sure.
The only main gripe I have about this series is that I still have to rely on character’s reactions to know whether a move is a good or bad one, and thus I’m sure some of the character’s reactions are over-exaggerations of what they would normally be. However, I’m still pretty interested in where this series is ultimately going.
