Man this made me cry all over again, especially with the opening theme this week. I knew what was coming, so gosh dang it, knowing the significance of lyrics, it just hit even harder! The final scene made me cry so bad, with Suirei running towards Shisui after she had been shot and tried to catch her before she fell. Although Suirei hadn’t uttered a word the entire time this episode, she didn’t need to say anything to express her horror and grief of the loss of her one and only dear sister who had cherished her the most. Way to break our hearts!
And it goes without saying: Shisui’s such an amazing character. Like her father, she played the part of the villain to prevent a further catastrophe. She was incredibly fortunate that Jinshi’s not some cruel cold-blooded prince, especially since he was willing to do what he could to fulfill her two wishes. The first one’s a bit difficult, which is sparring the rational members of the Shi Clan that had been ousted by her mother. She doesn’t want them to pay the price for the crimes that they had sought to prevent, which were Shenmei’s embezzlement, and revenge mission to destroy the nation.
The second, was one Jinshi knew he could fulfill, though it’d come at the cost of Basan getting punished because his whole role is to prevent Jinshi from even getting a scratch on him. Jinshi allowed Shisui to inflict quite a terrible cut across his face. It was a way of putting Shenmei’s grief and grudge to rest with her soul, as Jinshi’s bears such resemblance to his late grandfather.
In the end, Shenmei was never going to own up to her mistakes and greed for power, nor was she ever going to acknowledge that she was sent to the rear palace as a “hostage” not because they “wanted her” like she thought they had. She was also blind to the fact how much Shisho had loved her, how he was willing to give her the world, and make necessary sacrifices so that they could be together.
But unfortunately for him, she never loved him back, and didn’t want to settle with a lord in the outskirts. It’s truly tragic that after all of that, Shisho knew the only way to put an end to this was like Shisui did– be the necessary evil to rid of the rot that festered thanks to Shenmei’s influence in one fell swoop. He owned up to the fact he was to be killed, and accepted his death, sadly thinking of Shenmei when she was the most beautiful to his memory till the very end. Similarly to her father, Shisui had a theatrical ending, dancing her way to death, accepting it in full glory, making sure she smiled till the very end. But not before making sure she finished off her mother first, giving her a chance to see the light– but the woman didn’t even shed tears when she heard that Shishou had been killed. She kept projecting the blame and faults to someone else. So that’s why Shisui had a trap set for her. The feifa she carried and used to bring Jinshi to where Shenmei and Suiren were hiding was rigged. So should she (and she did) decide to use that weapon against Jinshi, Shisui or Suirei, it’ll explode and kill her instead, which was exactly what happened. A fitting end for a selfish woman who had needlessly tortured so many souls, including her own daughter!
We got a lot of answers that probably some didn’t think too hard about at first, but turned out to be otherwise quite important. The expansion of the Rear Palace and slavery being made install were instrumental for this particular plot. The Shi Clan’s main source of income was slave trading, so as soon as that was made illegal, they lost their means of profits. So Shisho had a plan. Pitch forward expanding the Rear Palace to the Empress as a means to help the (late) Emperor to take interest in women. This way, they could then send their leftover slaves there to work as servants and court ladies, and eunuchs to fulfill the labour source. And thanks to pitching and overseeing the project, Shisho was in the position to create a secret path that the cat, Suirei and Shisui would all later use, as a means to escape together with Shenmei. Sadly, even back then Shenmei couldn’t let go of her pride, and refused when the offer was ripe.
Another thing that came out of this was delivering the confirmation that yes, Suirei’s indeed royalty. She is the daughter of the late emperor. She secretly carried the hair pin of the Phoenix, which the Emperor had bestowed to her. Although we can all agree the late emperor had his serious problems and created mess through his selfish wish– he didn’t completely abandon Suirei and her mother. He really did try to right his wrongdoings, which was entrusting them to his most trusted aid, and hoped that they could have a better and more comfortable life. Sadly that never panned out, since the wicked witch Shenmei was released from the inner palace as Shishou had asked for in return for fulfilling the Emperor’s wish, and made their lives a living nightmare.
With that said, this was a fantastic episode. It was certainly an info-dump, but it nicely wrapped up all the incidents and developments that led up to this very moment. And now that the actors have all been dealt with, Jinshi and Mamao can finally catch up with each other to put to rest the remaining things that needs to be dealt with.
Oh hey, if you want more grief, watch a special video TOHO animation made.
Now let us cry all over again! See you next week!
