Movies: The Story of Saiunkoku, DVD 1-3

Saiunkoku was almost a lost series. Originally set to be released by Geneon, it was one of the many titles that disappeared into limbo when the American arm of that company had its plug pulled in the Big Anime Shake-Out of 2008. Funimation stepped in to pick up many of the licenses that got dropped on the floor during that time, so to speak, and rescued a great many titles that would have left a sizeable hole in anyone’s catalog: Samurai Champloo, Black Lagoon, Ergo Proxy, Darker Than Black.

And now Saiunkoku, too. I’d been anticipating this show ever since I caught a snippet of it during one of Geneon’s panels way back when there was a Geneon. What little there was to be seen made it look like a smarter and far less cloying version of Fushigi Yugi (a show I wanted to like but could not due to its shamelessly manipulative construction). Fans of Fushigi Yugi will probably pick up on this one as well, although in my opinion this is the better of the two shows. It lets its characters and their behavior drive the show, instead of just dragging them kicking and screaming into happenstance.

Saiunkoku is the name of the land where the story takes place. It most strongly resembles Imperial China, but is actually a little closer to the pan-Asiatic mix that we saw in Moribito — maybe about 90% China to 10% everything else. Power is split between eight great houses, all with allegiance (in theory, anyway) to the emperor. A few years back there was a savage internal struggle to see who would take the thone, and after the dust settled they were left with the current emperor, Ryuki Shi, a complete dolt who spends most of his time chasing other men (!) and delegating responsibility to anyone who’ll take it. The inner circle of courtiers is desperate to have Ryuki take up his responsibilities, and have burned through one option after another with no luck.