©Yu Tomofuji/HAKUSENSHA/The Sacrificial Princess and King of the Beasts Production Committee
Hold on to your hats, everyone – Sariphi finally has some shoes. That’s probably the least important thing in this episode, but damn, if that’s not the only detail I fixed. Going from bare feet to boots is certainly not easy or comfortable.
Sari’s outfit choices aside, we’re almost at the end of the game here. Of course, that means we’re scrolling through the manga a bit faster than some of us might want, but the plot of the story is still very present. Sari’s diplomatic mission to Yoana, the human world, is more than just diplomacy, although no one realizes it until she gets there. However, you might have thought that someone would have expected that she couldn’t just go to the palace claiming to be the beast’s messenger and get right in-ah, except for Lante, who guessed what would happen. go out. Of course, Sariphi had no way of knowing that beast language was taboo in Yoana since she was raised as a sacrifice; perhaps, her education was patchy at best. But showing up with a letter in forbidden script asking to see the king was, as Ocelot demonstrates, a very good way to get an invitation to prison.
Luckily, there’s a workaround: Ocelot knows of a woman who can read scripts about monsters in the countryside, and he’ll accept her translation of Leonhart’s letter, if Sari can guarantee it. It might seem a bit like a side quest, but that quickly changes when we see the supposed witch: she looks just as gorgeous as Leonhart in human form. And of course, she’s not a witch. As always, it’s the word used whenever a woman does something that scares people. In this case, it was because one of her ancestral relatives had a child with a beast (perhaps that child was Leonhart, and the lifespans of beasts and humans vary greatly; or she’s lying and she’s Leon’s mother), and now the whole highway is tarred with the same brush. That made her understandably impatient when Sariphi appeared to ask for help, and it wasn’t until Sari could prove her good intentions that Anastasia gave in.
There’s an interesting similarity between Anastasia/Ocelot and Sariphi/Ilya, and I’m not sure the show will have time to deal with that. But both women grew up as outcasts, and both men swore that when they grew up they would be able to help. We know how it happened with Ilya, but Ocelot is a little less clear. He now has a very high rank in the royal army, and he thinks clearly about Anastasia and is willing to trust her translation of Leon’s letter, but why, now he can protect her, is he still far away? Did she reject him? Or is he poisoned by his hatred of animals and is now uncertain about her? Or maybe he was too high ranked now to freely associate with a woman considered a witch.
In any case, the truth will soon be revealed. Set is almost ready to reveal his hand, as his troubled conversation with Anubis suggests, and Sari may be on the trail of Leonhart’s mother. How these events come together could spell trouble.
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