aghhhhhhhhh, sei and hyou in today’s episode..

This is just a couple of seconds at the end of the episode, but it’s the most significant part of sei’s speech to me because I’m still to this day irreparably torn up abt literally the inciting incident from the first chapter of the series (shou bun kun still hasn’t adequately apologized or atoned in my eyes lol). Shin thinks about hyou relatively often (usually in fist of the north star style power of love victory scenes aka my favourite thing about this series), but a scene like this where sei independently remembers and recognizes his sacrifice is much rarer and very special to me… ｡ﾟ･ (╯﹏╰) ･ﾟ｡

Another part of the reason I like this bit so much is that its role in the story sei is telling us is 1) as an acknowledgement by sei that hyou is the most important person to shin, while then 2) leading directly into sei’s thoughts of shin, which is the core and end-point of his reflections on the love and kindness of other people - to me this sequence is really essentially sei acknowledging that shin is the most important person to him lol. There are other factors at play, of course, but during duke juuteki’s scene earlier in the episode I was thinking about how shin’s refutation to opponents who have been truly, seriously wronged by qin is always ‘the cycle is going to break because sei can break it’; sei here, against his own ultimate rhetorical opponent, ultimately relies on ‘I know the cycle can break, because I saw shin break it’………………… ahh. Ahh

I’ve always really loved ryo fui’s response being Being Overwhelmed By Sei’s Brilliance, not in a the sense that he’s actually overcome or convinced but instead just kind of shakes his head and has to acknowledge that they are talking so completely past each other that his arguments will never come close to harming the radiance of sei’s dream, the way even though he’s so obviously lost it’s in a condescending way (sei’s ideal is so pure it still seems childish to him, even though it’s its purity that makes it so strong); for all that ryo fui’s been litigating the nature of the world below heaven & dissecting human nature, all of his paths lead back to maximizing tangible prosperity, while sei’s anecdotes and personal appeals are entirely for the sake of the dream for the dream’s sake. He’s aiming somewhere so much higher than anyone else…… it’s also interesting to watch ryo fui back down at the point he does while contemplating sei’s recent embarrassing loss to kan ki, a king of a warring state who’s willing to rule thru martial might huh

Also, with that fundamental divide in their positions in mind — ryo fui pushing sei the way he does is extremely funny, love the fact that he sets up sei’s finishing-move point by just going ‘okay, tell me about kantan if you think people are so good’. But it’s fitting that he’s the one challenger who’s made sei start seeing the ghosts of chou hei again, the one obstacle so apparently insurmountable that he nearly shakes sei’s faith in human nature again, and requires the kind of spiritual intervention he gets…

I will say, before today’s episode I actually wasn’t sure that it *was* shi ka speaking to sei through the purple light, but I’m glad the anime cleared it up by bringing in sayaka ohara for those lines :) and wonderful to hear her in the shi ka flashback again!

I’m glad we got some full sequences of her story here, too (in the manga we get an even more truncated version with no dialogue), because my impression of it in the anime is mostly of its very random placement between ri boku’s court visit and the start of sanyou, where it mostly felt like a distraction (obviously displaced from its more fitting location earlier in the manga), which was a shame because I love shi ka herself as a character so much. But we got to see lots of scenes of her in the current art style here so that’s a win :)

And last but not least. Rui was even prettier than usual today 🥰🥰🥰💘💘💘