Josh’s Anime Blog

It’s episode 14 of Shion no Ō. What will Saori do now that she knows Ayumi is a dude? And it’s time to seed the remaining 12 players in the tournament, but Satoru and Koybayashi decide that leaving the matchups totally up to chance just won’t do. What matchups are those two going to come up with?

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The highlights of this episode:

• Ayumi and Saori go outside to chat. Ayumi worries that Saori will tell the shogi association that he’s actually a guy, but Saori just kind of laughs it off, saying that he was cute as a girl. Saori reminds Ayumi that the top rule in the tournament is that the better player, no matter who they are, should advance. However, Saori warns him that if him being a boy is revealed, that many in the association would reject him.
• Saori then asks Ayumi how long until his mother will be released, and he tells her two to three months. Saori seems happy that it won’t be too long, but Ayumi bushes her off, saying he only wishes that his mother’s remaining time is happy and painless. Saori notes his wording: “her remaining time” and realizes that the two to three months wasn’t how long until she’s released, but how long she has left to live.
• At the police station, the two detectives look at Shion’s cut show and the bled-over score card from Shion and Satoru’s game and decide to make Satoru a “person of interest” in the investigation.
• All the shogi players all pick one of 12 cell phones which have numbers on them (some of which Koybayashi is manipulating under Satoru’s instructions) to determine where in the bracket they fall. The big matchup - the one that Koybayashi had the most hand in - was Shion playing Shinji, her foster-father, in the first round of the final bracket. Hani-meijin and Hisatani both get byes and could potentially play in the semifinals. Satoru gets another bye, with the possibility of playing Ayumi in the 2nd round, and the winner of Shion/Shinji in the other semifinal.
• Satoru approaches Shion afterwards when she’s alone in the press room and mentions what a “coincidence” it is that she’s playing her father. However, he then goes on and says that she probably doesn’t care because he isn’t her real father anyway, so there isn’t any real love between them. This gets Shion angry, but Satoru continues, saying that she must have been all alone since her parent’s murder and slides his hand next to her face. However, this reminds Shion of the murder night as the murderer.
• Ayumi then comes in and demands what Satoru is doing. Satoru then walks out of the room, but tells Ayumi that “she” “act’s just like a boy” on his way out, startling him.
• Elsewhere, Saori thanks Hani-meijin for the text message about Ayumi’s mother, and he pretends that he heard about it from the association, but realizes that Saori must have gotten the message when Satoru used his cell phone and wonders what he’s up to next.
• Meanwhile, Koybayashi is ecstatic about the father-daughter matchup and the press it will generate, but mentions to Furuta that he knows how it will end since Shinji will obviously let Shion win. However, Hani-meijin overhears this and gets extremely angry, telling Koybayashi how Shion’s win could ever be legitimate if Shinji were to let her win and tells Koybayashi to never disparage shogi again.
• Meanwhile, the game between Shion and Shinji is about to begin…

This episode seemed to be relatively light on the action and new info, other than clearly Satoru has several plans up his sleeve with trying to uncover Ayumi and putting Shion and her foster-father against each other. I still don’t think he’s the murderer (remember the noname guy didn’t have his hair color), but it seems like the detectives have him at the top of the list (though not a suspect yet). However, Shion mentions that his hand next to her face felt “familiar” to the murderer, which I think backs up my theory that it is Hani-meijin.

Really the only other thing we learned in this episode that may visit us in the future is that Ayumi’s mother’s condition appears to be terminal.

As far as the tournament, I’m guessing we’ll skip over most of the first round as the Shion/Shinji match is really the only match of note in the first round. I guess we may see part of Ayumi’s first round match.

We’ll then have Hisatani, Hani-meijin, Satoru, the winner of Shion/Shinji, and probably Ayumi in the 2nd round, with Ayumi and Satoru playing their second match - and first official match - against each other. I’m sure Ayumi won’t underestimate him again, and I’m wondering how that match will go.

I’m assuming the semifinals will be Hisatani vs. Hani-meijin and the Shion/Shinji winner vs. the Ayumi/Satoru winner. If I had to give a guess, I’d say Shion vs. Satoru, but we’ll see. I still think Shion and Ayumi will still play each other, but it may not end up being in this tournament.

Oh, and sorry for the lack of image captions, but I’ll probably leave them out, at least until I catch up.