Encounter… Changing the Color of Fate

Synopsis

The prince of Tanbarun, Raji, is looking for a wife and hears of a beautiful town girl with red hair, her name is Shirayuki and she’s a herbalist. So he demands her to be his concubine. Not wanting to be forced into marriage, Shirayuki cuts off her hair and leaves it for him and runs away.

En route, she falls asleep outside an abandoned house and wakes to three guys Mitsuhide, Kiki and Zen who were hanging around. Zen injures himself and Shirayuki helps treat the injury with her herbs.

She tells Zen about why she’s here, however Raji’s found her and left a basket of poisoned apples for her. Before knowing it was poisoned, Zen takes a bite and falls unconscious. A guard of Raji then arrives telling them that only Raji has the antidote. So Shirayuki goes with the guard to get the antidote.

Raji asks that Shirayuki be his concubine again but Zen kicks down the door. Turns out he has been building an immunity to poison in case he does get poisoned so this poison doesn’t hurt him because he’s the second prince of neighbouring kingdom of Clarines.

With the threat of an inter-kingdom conflict, Zen agrees that he will say no more on this poisoning business if Raj lets Shirayuki go and never talk to her again freeing her.

Thoughts

An anime based off a classic fairytale. I vaguely heard about that before, but seeing as how the title of the entire anime is basically the name of the fairytale, I definitely know that now. This fairy tale is one I don’t remember much about. I do think I remember the jist of it being about Snow White, a princess was poisoned because she was too pretty and then woke up from the kiss of prince charming and they lived happily ever after, something like that right?

However this is not quite the same, for one thing it’s not a princess, and for another she wasn’t the one poisoned. I think the only similarity is her finding prince charming, which happens way too early for a happily ever after. Still I’m glad it’s not the same otherwise it’d be pretty boring. I’m also glad the air of romance isn’t quite as strong as a lot of other shoujos I’ve seen that it becomes almost suffocating. If anything there’s barely any, of course there is a little with prince charming, but I feel it’s not going too strongly in that direction, and it’d be strange without romance there.

I was thinking that when Shirayuki did the cliché hair cutting off and leaving her home thing it might turn out similar to Yona, but it took a different direction. Actually if I’m thinking about it Yona is a princess, so that’s somewhat more similar to Snow White than this is. Though no apples involved there, it’s just another shoujo with a strong willed red haired girl.

Anyways, since watching Euphonium and seeing this episode, I feel obliged to make a quick comment on the animation. Whilst I felt it felt old fashioned and a little plain, it was pleasant and relaxing. It wasn’t overly complicated and I will say that it isn’t as detailed as Euphonium, but that’s not why I’m here and actually, for the type of relaxed story it looks to have, the watercolours and plain/simple characters suits perfectly.

I would say a lot happened in the first episode and perhaps some decisions felt rushed like Shirayuki leaving the city so abruptly. I would’ve liked to see more of Shirayuki’s personality at her shop before she goes off elsewhere. But I guess I can just discover her character in the new kingdom although it will have changed. The scene is still set, though we haven’t gotten to her moving to the other kingdom yet, everything is in place for a new life.