It’s episode 16 of Shion no Ō. Tragedy befalls Ayumi on the eve of his game with Satoru. Will he be able to defeat Satoru, or is Satoru’s drive to play Hani-meijin again too overpowering? And someone gets a new hairstyle, and a new shogi master.
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Go Straight to the Screenshots | Go Straight to the Review
The highlights of this episode:
- Ayumi’s mother dies. However, Ayumi is shocked to see Hani-meijin at the funeral, obviously figuring out that Ayumi is really a guy. Ayumi asks him how long he’s known, and Hani-meijin tells him since he heard he became Kamizono’s apprentice. He then tells him the tale of he himself trying to see Kamizono to become his apprentice and getting rejected, and became interested in Ayumi for being able to do something that not even he was able to do: become Kamizono’s apprentice.
- Reporters show up to interview Shion, and they ask her how why plays shogi, but she’s unable to give an answer. They then ask her for her favorite slogan, and she writes down “Watching from Heaven,” which the interviewers misinterpret to mean wishing luck to some god of shogi, but which really refers to her parents.
- We learn one reason why Satoru may be interested in Shion: Satoru’s lover at the time, Kazumi, was found dead of apparently natural causes the day after Shion’s parent’s murder. Meanwhile, the lead police detective ponders whether Satoru is interested in Shion due to jealousy. Shion, despite losing her parents, was able to gain new parents and found a place that she belongs. Satoru, meanwhile, after losing Kazumi has gone along aimlessly and alone, partly because his brother Hani-meijin stopped playing shogi with him.
- On the mourning that Ayumi plays Satoru in the quarterfinals, Shion goes to take flowers to Ayumi’s mother in the hospital, unaware that she’s died, and then runs into Ayumi outside of the Association, crying.
- Ayumi and Satoru start their match, but Satoru gets word that Hani-meijin is late for his match and becomes distracted and starts playing sloppy, which Ayumi sees as a chance. However, Hani-meijin finally arrives, and tells Satoru that he shouldn’t take attention away from his game “even if he found out that he had died.” Now that Hani-meijin is there, Satoru starts playing a lot better, and after a couple of sloppy moves by Ayumi, defeats him.
- The next day, Ayumi visits Kamizono in the hospital, but Hani-meijin is there as well. Kamizono asks Ayumi what he plans to do now that his mother has died, and Ayumi tells him that he doesn’t plan to cross-dress to play for money anymore. Kamizono then officially repudiates Ayumi for breaking his promise that he made when becoming his apprentice to only play for money. Hani-meijin then takes Ayumi in as his apprentice.
- Hani-meijin then takes Ayumi to his “hideout” where he tells Ayumi he will train for the next year watching and studying with Hani-meijin. Hani-meijin then “kills” the female Ayumi once and for all by cutting Ayumi’s hair…
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Nooo! I’ll miss Ayumi’s long hair. He looks rather odd with short hair, but I guess I’ll get used to it. And with Ayumi apparently agreeing to study with Hani-meijin for a year, does that mean the last 6 episodes will be over the course of a year? We’re not even done with the big tournament yet, so that would seem like a stretch. In any case, I’m not sure we’ll see Ayumi playing much shogi anymore, though Shion has played him twice and lost both times (and Ayumi has played Satoru twice and lost both times) so there are certainly rematches that he could be involved with that would matter.
I’m assuming Shion will win her quarterfinal match, which means that we’ll have a re-match between Shion and Satoru in the semifinals. This will really be an interesting game since, just plot wise I can see either winning. Will Satoru get his wish and get to play Hani-meijin one more time in the final, or will Shion get a crack at Hani-meijin?
I’m also starting to form an idea about Shion’s murder now too. The main thing that had bugged me up until now is that, even if I suspected certain people, I could never really come up with a motive. However, I may have come up with one, even if it is a little rouge around the edges:
I get the idea that Hani-meijin basically sees shogi as the only thing that matters. He may have said as much before, but his basically abandoning Satoru to play, and his telling Satoru that he should pay attention to his game, even if he heard that his brother had died seems to show a belief by Hani-meijin that shogi is the absolute most important thing, even to the extreme. We also know that Hani-meijin has wanted to open up the shogi world to anyone, including females, and he seems interested in watching Shion’s progress.
What I’m wondering is this: What if he was aware of Shion’s aptitude for being a shogi player when she was little, but believed that she was being held back by her parents, which apparently didn’t play shogi (I think I said her father played shogi before, but I believe I was mistaken), and believed that she could fulfill her full potential if she was raised by Shinji. Is it possible, in his misguided view that nothing was more important than shogi, that Hani-meijin murdered Shion’s parents under the guise to “help” her fulfill per potential as a champion shogi player? It’s at least a somewhat plausible explanation, I think. The only catch is what about Satoru’s girlfriend? How is she connected with Shion’s parents, if at all? (and that’s a problem, no matter who I suspect of killing Shion’s parents, beyond Satoru).
In any case, we’ll probably see the match between Shion and Satoru next episode, so I’ll be interested to see how that ends up going.
