Go Straight to the Screenshots | Go Straight to the Review

• Shion briefly ponders if Hani-meijin is the murderer after he repeats words back to her that only the murderer and Shion would know (from the night of the murder). However, she quickly blows the occurrence aside as a mere coincidence. However, as Hani-meijin leaves for lunch, he remarks that the strategy he taught Shion is serving her well. Except that Hani-meijin has never taught Shion anything about shogi, to her knowledge.
• Suddenly Ayumi shows up at the mach, against Hani-meijin’s wishes, and tells Hani that he is withdrawing from being his apprentice. Hani tells him that he’s the only one who can protect Ayumi’s secret, but Ayumi just says that that’s less important than protecting Shion. Hani then tells him that he doesn’t know anything and walks off.
• In the meantime, the Detective Yokoyama begins his investigation about what Hani-meijin was up to around the time of his Kakusei title match eight years prior, which took place the day after the murder of Shion’s parents. A worker who attended to Hani at the time said he arrived alone that evening, didn’t drink at all (unlike everyone else at the pre-match celebration) and went to bed early.
• At the same time, Satoru is asking Kamizono about the match. Kamizono ends up telling him that Hani’s eyes had a very cold looking eyes through the entire match, and ended up leaving immediately after the match. Kamizono then asks Satoru what he plans to do, and Satoru says to get revenge. Kamizono just laughs and says that he’d like to see that, and asks if Satoru will take him back to the Shogi Association.
• Detective Yokoyama starts investigating the game pieces used in the match, which haven’t been used since, and finds a piece of what appears to be nail polish on one of the pieces, and takes them back to the station. When he leaves, he meets Satoru and Kamizono outside, and the three take a taxi back to Tokyo.
• After lunch, Hani-meijin and Shion continue their match. After a while, Hani-meijin plays a couple of moves which put Shion into a tough spot.
• On the ride back, Detective Yokoyama hypothesizes that the murderer covered his fingers with nail polish when he murdered Shion’s parents, but that part of it wore off, leaving a fingerprint on a king piece. Satoru also gives the police the evidence of his cell phone, which had 3 messages left by Kazumi on the day she died on it, as well as the video of Shion and Kazumi at the Christmas party. Satoru hypothesizes that the murderer visited Kazumi and, after seeing the murderer in front of her, her weak heart gives out and she dies.
• Back a the match, as Shion struggles to respond to Hani-meijin’s moves, he tells her that Yamamura, the first person to teach Shion shogi, once told him that she may be good enough to even become the meijin some day, but if Shion can’t beat him, then Yamamura must have been mistaken. Hani-meijin then remarks that Shion’s necklace isn’t a momento of her mothers: but that it is Hani-meijin’s and that he dropped it “that night.”
• Hani continues: saying that he did everything in his power to make Shion a good shogi player, even that, and that he’s disappointed that she would seem to be running away from him yet again. Shion then has a clear flashback of the entire evening where she played shogi with her parent’s murderer: the Hani-meijin.
• Shion then writes down, asking Hani-meijin if he did it, and he nods. Shion rips off her necklace and grabs another one from her picket: the necklace Ayumi gave to her and continues the match…

And so it is finally revealed by Hani-meijin himself: he killed Shion’s parents to “make her stronger.” How it was supposed to make her stronger, maybe we’ll find out in the final episode, but the motive was basically what I expected it to be.

We also get most of the “how” as well, with the theory of Hani-meijin having fingernail polish on his fingers to hide his prints.

Of course, Hani finally revealing himself to Shion is a risk on his part, but either he feels confident that Shion won’t tell, or he’s willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of better shogi. Of course, in a sense his revealing himself had the result intended: Shion seems more determined than ever now to beat Hani-meijin at the game.

So I guess we have the following things to look forward to in the final episode:

1. The end of the match, which I assume Shion wins
2. The arrest and/or suicide of Hani-meijin (I don’t see him killing himself as out of the question)
3. Ayumi being revealed
4. Probably some sort of “this is how everything turns out” ending
5. Shion speaks!

I have to say that, for a series about Japanese chess, this has been one of the more enjoyable series I’ve had the privilege to watch and blog. Only one episode left, and I can’t wait for the dub to come out for it.

There are 7 possible levels of ratings that I’ll give a show:

• Will definitely blog it
• May blog it
• Will definitely watch it
• May watch it
• May watch it if I hear good things about it
• Probably Won’t Watch it
• Won’t watch it

As usual, I’m leaving out anything that seems to obviously be a children’s show. Like always, thanks to the Fansub Wiki for keeping a great list of upcoming shows.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way…here we go!

Here are some quick links to the shows if you want to go straight to a particular show:

OK, so for those who skipped everything, here is the review of how I judged the upcoming winter shows. Of course I hold the usually disclaimer that this is dependent on shows both being fansubbed and not getting licensed.

This season looks a tad better than the spring, but again, there doesn’t seem to be any really obvious “wow” series this season.

I’ll probably pick up 1 series to blog which, looking at the list, almost certainly will be Someday’s Dreamers. I’ll probably pick up another 2 or 3 series to watch otherwise.

Will Blog These Series

May Blog These Series
Someday’s Dreamers: Summer Skies

Will Watch these Series

May Watch these Series
Hidamari Sketch x365
Natsume Yuujinchou
Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu
Strike Witches

May Watch these Series if I Hear Good Things about Them
Birdy the Mighty Decode
Koihime Musou
Ryoko’s Case File
World Destruction

I Probably WON’T Watch These Series
Blade of the Immortal
Ultraviolet: Code 044

I Won’t Watch These Series
Antique Bakery
Mission-E
Neo Angelique Abyss -Second Age-
Sekirei
Slayers REVOLUTION
Zero no Tsukaima ~Princess no Rondo~

Go Straight to the Screenshots | Go Straight to the Review

• The episode begins with Kei still in Shanghai when he gets a call from Yahiro telling him that Hikari is going out on a date the next day. As a result, he flies back to Japan and picks up Hikari from the end of the last episode.
• In the chopper, Kei gets all flushed. Hikari asks him where they’re going, and Kei quotes a line from a movie he saw the night before: “with you, I could go anywhere, even if our destination was hell.” Hikari remarks that she’s rather not go to hell just as Kei faints with a high fever.
• Hikari takes Kei back to his house, where Sui says that, while Kei has been overworked, he’s never collapsed before. Hikari then thinks that’s why he wanted to spend a day with her: so he could have a day off and have fun.
• To help Kei get better, Hikari decides to make porriage, but ends up destroying Kei’s kitchen in the process. Fortunately for Kei, Hikari ends up spilling it all over herself before being able to feed it to him.
• Next, Hikari decides to bring down Kei’s fever by getting some ice. However, she goes and gets a huge block of ice, shatters it, and piles it into a sack. He tosses on Kei’s head, which obviously doesn’t look or feel good, so Hikari tries to grab it off, but ends up dumping the whole sack of ice onto Keis’ head.
• Now needing a change of clothes, Kei tells Hikari where his other pair of PJs is. Since Kei is too out of it to change himself, Hikari decides that she’ll change Kei for him. However, Sui returns to Kei’s room just then and yells at “ero Hikari” for trying to undress Kei.
• Hikari asks Kei if he’d sleep better if she weren’t there, but he strongly rejects this, both because Hikari agreed to say with him for the day, and if he slept, Hikari would have left by the time he woke up. However, Hikari tells him not to be reckless and to go to sleep.
• When Kei wakes up, Hikari is gone, and he asks himself why things never go right with Hikari. However, when he leaves his room and looks downstairs, Hikari is sleeping there. When she wakes up, she asks Kei, since he’s been stressed and all, if he wants to hang out with her the following weekend, which Kei obviously agrees to.
• However, Hikari also wants to do it to “atone for her mistakes”…such as making Kei be kissed by a girl (Hikari) he doesn’t like (who he of course does like). In response to this, Kei kisses Hikari, which causes her to go crazy…

This was probably the single best episode in this series so far. For once, they actually had an episode which made me laugh out loud multiple times. Perhaps some of the reason why is because I basically have 0 sympathy for Kei except in the area of Hikari being utterly and completely clueless about everything, which this episode addresses head on.

If every episode made me laugh even half as much as this, it would be a pretty good series. It would be nice if this marked a turning point in the series, but I somehow think this is more of the exception to the rule than a turning point.

In any case, Hikari is as weak at anything dealing with the home or taking care of people as she is strong in strength (and how heavy must that bag of ice have been if even Hikari found it heavy?) I was just wondering what was going to happen to Kei by eating Hikari’s porridge before she decided to spill it all. He probably would have gone into convulsions or something.

In any case, this episode seemed to be a turning point, somewhat, which I guess isn’t expected for a series when it hits the halfway point (I don’t know when the last time I was this happy to hit the halfway point of a series was).

Also, was this our first Akira-less, Ryuu-less, Jun-less, and Megumi-less episode? I think we had seen everyone else at least once before.

Again, here’s hoping to the 2nd half no being as bad but, no promises. At the very least, hopefully, they’ll swap OPs for the 2nd half.

This week’s Podcast Stats:
Time: 17:52
Download Size: 12.3 MB

Opening theme:
“Kokoro no Ato” by Riyu Kosaka
Opening theme to Mokke

Ending theme:
“Agony” by KOTOKO
Ending theme to Kannazuki no Miko

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