Rating: A
I expected the intrigue to ramp up a bit with the return of Loumen to the Rear Palace, as a person with his insight, expertise, and experience is the kind of person who could be a catalyst for action even if he’s not directly part of it. Episode 40 shows how completely I underestimated the series on that point, however. In terms of the extent and intricacy of the intrigue in play here, this one matches even episode 19 as the most loaded of the entire series so far and represents a major escalation of the series’ overall plot. And unlike 19, it’s coming from more than one different direction. (Although it’s also entirely possible that both directions eventually wind back to the same source.)
There’s a lot to unpack here, but first let’s start with the scenes involving Lakan and Loulan’s father, Shushi. The latter is supposed to be one of the most powerful and wily men in court, but you wouldn’t know that from the way Lakan runs circles around him during their scenes together. Lakan may act on intuition, but he also knows exactly what he’s doing and seems to understand exactly how he’s perceived, and he takes full advantage of that. Even his rambling about his wife’s Go game may have been more than just his eccentricities showing; not out of the question that it was at least partly a ploy to unsettle Shushi. Clearly he suspects Shushi (those guns would have been too difficult for anyone of lesser station to acquire in secret), and while Shushi carefully avoided saying anything that could imply guilt, his answers were also a little too noncommittal. Shushi also essentially admitted that he was color-blind without saying so, which was unquestionably the point of Lakan’s grape juice stunt. Not entirely sure what he’s trying to prove with that, but color blindness has previously been established as a distinguishing trait of the imperial bloodline. . .
Equally fascinating is how what initially looked to be a more laid-back episode on Maomao’s side so quickly spun into something major from the mere impetus of Luomen innocently being clever about getting an advice notice copied for wide distribution. Much like episode 19, the way little tidbits of information from throughout the series (but especially season 2) gradually coalesced into Maomao getting a glimpse of an insidious conspiracy, and how the tension very slowly builds throughout that process, is a marvel of both source writing and production execution. So many little details that seemed innocuous at the time come together here, such as Shisui’s offhand comment in episode 29 about how there are so many insects around the Rear Palace that she’d “only seen in books.” It didn’t register at the time that a servant girl having access to the kind of books that would have insect pictures should be highly unusual, or the even earlier reveal that she had done sketches on paper. While how she ended up being involved in this incident isn’t clear yet, that Shisui has connections more substantial than most servant girls is clear, and someone with those kind of connections being a servant girl is seeming increasingly suspicious.
But not as suspicious as the old lady at the clinic. Maomao’s supposition reads like a conspiracy theory, and she know it, but details to support it are both present and credible: all the young girls sacrificed to the Emperor’s proclivities, the way them not being allowed to leave (or having nowhere to leave to) might breed festering resentment, and the way the safety notices Luomen distributed during his previous stint in the Rear Palace may have inadvertently given them ideas about how they could strike back forms a logical progression, and the way that no one currently in the Rear Palace seemed to know about poisonous face powder even though there had previously been warnings about it suggests that someone deliberately made sure that knowledge disappeared as servants, concubines, and eunuchs alike cycled in and out. Someone who had been around long-term also explains how knowledge about abortifacients got disseminated, and could have encouraged merchants in the caravan to carry the appropriate aromatic oils on future visits. If true, this is a scenario that’s been decades in the making and one that would be fiendishly hard to detect.
And then there’s the one other major revelation: that the “pretty eunuch” was actually Suirei in disguise. Really, this one shouldn’t have caught me by surprise as much as it did. After all, that Suirei was going to pop up again at some point was practically a given, and Maomao’s speculation back in episode 20 did place her dressing as a eunuch to leave inconspicuously after she woke up. She had both the height and build to pull it off, too. This does raise the question of whose grave she was looking at as episode 39 ended; could be her fake grave, but being involved in something like this suggests a much longer and deeper grudge. She knows how to box Maomao into cooperating without having to resort to violence, too. She clearly acknowledges Maomao as a concern, which makes what she wants to show Maomao all the more curious. Is she going to try to recruit Maomao? And does she understand how much attention she’s going to draw by coercing Maomao, especially given who Jinshi and her father are? Or is that part of the plan, too?
Whatever the case proves to be, the end of this episode is one of the series’ biggest cliffhangers to date. Also nice to see Ah-Duo making a guest appearance as a Jinshi stand-in; hopefully this is not the last we see of her for a while. The wait to see how this shakes out next week will be long indeed.
USA Anime 