Memories Draw Spirals of the Past

Synopsis

With the rumours of Shirayuki being Zen’s fiancée spreading evermore, it’s attracted further unwanted attention for her. So Zen decides to have Obi act as her ‘bodyguard’ for a while.

Zen thinks back to his past and we see that he wasn’t very fond of Mitsuhide when Izana first brought him in to act as Zen’s attendant. Also Zen often sneaked away to play with his only friend at the time, Atri, who was an archer.

Mitsuhide notices this and decide to find out more about Atri and also keep an eye on him and Zen as something bothers him, going so far as to report this to Izana. But Izana does spot something whilst going through Atri’s files.

It turns out that Atri was part of the remnants of a family that Izana had annihilated and who are now after Izana’s life. They manage to get Zen out of the castle and surround him. Mitsuhide and Izana appear quickly before anything happens and a fight ensues. After a short fight, Atri and the rest of them are wiped out by Mitsuhide and Izana.

Thoughts

So, we found out that Shirayuki is a lightweight and we also take a stroll down Zen’s memory lane. The main focus of this episode being Obi’s quite tasteless question to Shirayuki, if she would’ve preferred it if Zen wasn’t a prince.

The flashback showed showed us that Zen hasn’t changed in many regards, but he has also made leaps and bounds in other ways. He’s still as athletic as ever making inhuman high jumps and likes to get out of the castle unnoticed, but he’s changed his opinion of social status hugely. The ‘you’re just my attendant’ attitude has come a long way, with Shirayuki being a prime example of him not really caring that much. Although of course, with Obi’s question, it still does open an old ‘wound’ of sort.

This episode felt just a little empty. I don’t see what setting up Obi with Shirayuki achieved apart from set up for Zen’s background. And actually, I thought we’d see more of this rumour that’s been spreading around and how they were planning to deal with it, or how it would affect Shirayuki. We didn’t get any of that. Apart from finding out Shirayuki is a lightweight and set up for the flashback, the first part didn’t serve another purpose in my view. Although it was fun seeing a drunk Shirayuki, even if she just collapsed.

I’m a lightweight too, although I don’t collapse. But that’s probably because I’m in a chair whilst drinking the majority of the time so when I do ‘collapse’ I just fall asleep.

On another note, I didn’t think Mitsuhide was that much older than Zen. But by the height difference it does seem like there is a large age gap. Though after looking it up I now realise they only have a four year gap, lower than I thought. But then again, it’s just the height difference that’s distorting my judgment.

Not against backstory episodes, they just usually feel a little bare. And this was no different. But that’s fine, I’m sure everything will pick up again soon.