SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 5 + SOME LIGHT SERIES SPOILERS – I won’t reveal any major plot spoilers, but I do mention a few minor characters who haven’t officially been introduced in the anime yet.
What I can say with absolute certainty after watching episode five is that TOHO and OLM have decided not to follow either the novel or manga to the letter… and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Last reaction I talked about how I enjoyed the minor “filler” that they’ve added to give the storylines more fullness. I think they’ve done more of the same in this episode and will continue to do so throughout the series.
The first couple of scenes with Jinshi and Basen sparring and Gaoshun observing is nowhere in the material source. (If I’m wrong, please correct me!) That also goes for the scene right after with Jinshi, Gaoshun, and Suiren. Suiren, as we’ll learn soon, is Jinshi’s sole maid who has been with him since birth. I like that they’ve introduced Basen now instead of how he randomly shows up in the manga. Well, “introduce” is kind of pushing it since the audience doesn’t know his background yet, only that his name is Basen and he’s from the Ma clan. Another reason I think they added these scenes is to start encouraging people’s suspicion that maybe Jinshi isn’t all that he appears to be. After all, should a eunuch be this physically fit and skilled with a sword?
The eunuch and the rash. That’s also new… in a way. What they’re doing is planting the seeds for a MAJOR conflict down the line, which is another surprise to me. I don’t think they did a poor job of introducing that particular conflict in the source material by any means. But if I had to guess, they probably needed some kind of “mini-mystery” this episode (since they have had one every episode so far), and this fits in with the plot and timeline.
The mushroom thing. That’s… in the source material. But not until wayyyy later… and it’s associated with another mini-mystery, not a eunuch and trash burning. In the manga, the garden party is in volume two. But the mushroom storyline is in volume nine, chapters 44-45. Big jump, right? Without giving too much away, the mushroom mystery is where Jinshi assigns Maomao to find possible poisonous mushrooms in the woods near the rear palace. It’s there that she discovers a particular fungus that can cause rashes, just like the ones we see on the eunuch’s hands this episode.
What I’m sure most people are going to be talking about this episode is the freckles reveal. It’s just as much of a gut punch in the source material as it is in the anime. And they knocked it out of the park this scene! I dare say they made it even better, and they didn’t do much different from the manga. In fact, scene for scene matches panel for panel almost exactly.
It makes me wonder how they’re going to handle the hairpin storyline. One common confusion amongst readers of both the novel (either web or light) and the manga is what the hairpin means. I don’t want to reveal too much until they fully flesh out this story in the anime, which I would guess will happen in an episode or two…. but not many readers understood what the act of Jinshi giving his hairpin to Maomao meant. The audience is supposed to be confused, just as Maomao is at this point, but I do hope that when they do the reveal, it’s a little more clear than it is in the source material.
Of course I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about what I wasn’t a fan of in this episode. And there wasn’t much, honestly. Just one thing comes to mind.
I’m not sure if this is an issue related to the subbing (on Crunchyroll in particular) or the directing of the episode itself, but I didn’t like the way they handled Jinshi catching Maomao red-handed for cooking the matsutake mushrooms. Anyone going into this series blind might not have caught onto the fact that what Maomao and Guen (the Quack Doctor) were doing with the matsutake mushrooms was against palace rules. Sure, Maomao mentioned that it was a secret when she first approached the doctor and she does call Guen her accomplice, but I don’t think that was obvious enough. And because of that, Jinshi’s later comment about liking them “teapot-steamed” isn’t clear that he’s referring to the earlier mushrooms Maomao and Guen were secretly eating.
Or maybe I’m just really dense and it was obvious. Let me know your thoughts!
