#banging on mr. hara’s door pls I just wanna talk!!!!

[cospinol]

omggggg at the end of today’s episode…!!!

I was expecting it to end with shin’s victory but instead we made it to shou hei kun’s Glorious Entrance..!! This line makes me so ravenous for more details of his and mou bu’s past together; shou bun kun having no idea he was ever a combatant definitely suggests that he’s solely been a strategist at least since ryo fui’s faction entered the court of qin, so I wonder if by ‘his youth’ kai oku really does mean their teen years (their earliest campaigns together..?)… wah

This episode absolutely is the shin and ruki show, though — shin’s entrance & ruki’s defeat is my absolute favourite moment for both of them in this arc:

So many aspects of this…… First of all, what really really stands out about ruki as a villain is how easy he goes down. He’s the main arc antagonist & personal opponent for shin, and his gleeful sadism/upbeat bloodlust is an attitude we’re familiar with from other extremely daunting figures (obviously his severed head garland is a softcore kan ki stunt, but his brand of cruelty also has notes of fu tei’s introductory battle) so all the stars seem to be aligned for this to be a really serious challenge for shin, but because he does succeed in getting there on time the battle is won —— it was just the Getting There that was the challenge, and shin has become strong enough now that he can easily prevent the tragedy once he’s There :’). And ruki *has* been so stupid, he’s brought this all on himself, we’ve been watching him indulge himself all arc without realizing that he’s setting himself up for failure because he doesn’t really care about this conflict the way shin does. Spoiled boy…

Tho of course another aspect I love love love of this bit is how much it feels like setup for the conflict in koku you, in retrospect. Shin’s had to contend with Guys Doing War Crimes before, but everything abt ruki’s way of going abt it is like kan ki in reverse - he’s stupid, his own bloodlust betrays his plans, his men don’t care about him and will abandon him if pressed, he can’t hold his own when it comes down to it. So shin gets this genuine, well-deserved and extremely satisfying moral victory over him, only for his next campaign to be under the command a man who follows the same evil methods, but who lacks ruki’s failings and Achieves Results…… :)

anyways, ruki remains cute and i’m sad this is the last we’ll see of him, but shin is also cute and his little moment with sei’s daughter..

Kind of makes the whole kanyou plot worthwhile to me, he’s so sweet ;______; I also like that they kept him and kou recognizing each other; we’re still firmly in ‘assassination plot did happen, actually’ territory!

Also, I did like you-chan’s big moment ;_;

Getting to see some additional moments of her and kou together as kids was adorable, and the sacrifice itself is such a great character beat for a girl who up until this point hasn’t gotten to take any major actions like this - the second she gets the opportunity for a moment of Agency she’s willing to give up everything for her best friend❤️. She and shin also have fun chemistry in their few lines of interaction, and it makes me wish it wasn’t narratively impossible for shin to be involved in more inner court stuff..

#on the topic of ruki. ​a couple of weeks ago my brother revealed that he’d read the entirety of western zhao believing that #ruki and a ka kin were the same person lol he was like ‘huh I was sure they executed this guy after state of ai.. #they let him into the gyoku hou..?’ #and I’ve been thinking abt it ever since because I want it to be true so badly actually he would be a fun and valuable asset to any unit #if I had to choose I would put him in the gaku ka though (also since the gyoku hou does have a ka kin. who IS basically the same character) #but I think he’d have a fun dynamic with mou ten. weird easygoing nepo babies… #dangerous train of thought tho because it just makes me think abt how we still don’t have any sense of the dynamic between mou ten & kan ki #banging on mr. hara’s door pls I just wanna talk!!!! #txt #kingdomposting