Twelve Kingdoms Vol. #07: Reflection

By Chris Beveridge     September 04, 2004
Release Date: August 31, 2004



What They Say
Youko survives an assassination plot by her court advisors, and the event leaves the young ruler shaken and questioning her ability to lead the people of Kei. Hoping to learn more about the kingdom, Youko leaves the palace to live among her subjects.

Meanwhile, the former princess of Ho is working as a servant in the court of Kyou. Unable to bear her change in station, she escapes. Suzu still yearns to meet with new ruler of Kei, but fate leads her instead to Youko's lost friend Asano.

The Review!
With a lot of characters running around in this arc, keeping up is hard to do but all of them get some good screen time as their make their journeys across the various Kingdoms.

Audio:
For our primary viewing session, we listened to this show in its original language of Japanese. The series has a very good stereo mix that lets the varying amounts of directionality flow nicely across the forward soundstage. Dialogue is clear and distortion free and we had no issues with dropouts. We listened briefly to the English track and had no issues during the areas we checked there.

Video:
Originally starting its broadcast run in early 2002, Twelve Kingdoms has a very good-looking transfer here with very fresh materials. The main areas where things don't look as good as one would hope is the opening sequence where there's a bit of cross coloration pixilation going on. Once in the show proper, colors are excellent, with the vibrant areas such as the green eyes or the color of skin coming across in great layers. A lot of the backgrounds and look of the worlds is done in somewhat drab colors, going for the realism look (especially when you have everyone without colored hair). Aliasing is very minimal with only a few areas showing some during panning sequences.

Packaging:
Using the same style as previous volumes, the artwork for this continues to look amazing. With the two characters who are either having life at their worst or just believing it, the expressions used for Suzu and Shoukei are just perfect here as they seemingly look at everything with either disgust or below them. The series logo is nicely done along the bottom with the subtitle of the opening arc storyline. The top of the border gets the volume/chapter listing. The character art inside is just fantastic. The back cover provides two stripes of shots from the show blended together really well, giving a nice feel to the flow of things. The summary is pretty brief and gives the basic premise of things. The discs special features are clearly listed but can be confusing. All of what's listed on the back is actually in the insert as there are no on-disc extras. The insert takes the front cover from this volume and essentially switches the wording from the top to bottom. The insert opens up to provide a translated map of the world while the other panel provides a breakdown of how land is distributed in the kingdom of Kei. The back of the insert provides the chapter listings for the episodes.

Menu:
The menu layout is nicely done here with the front cover background used here as the background but swaying like water, since the static image over it is the non-text version of the world map while some of the nice instrumental music plays along. Movement is decent across the menu as each of the sections provides a selection, all of them invisible until you move over it. Access times are nice and fast and submenus load quickly. Unfortunately the players' language presets were ignored by the disc.

Extras:
None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
In a way, a lot of Twelve Kingdoms is a story about nothing. Or at least, not a lot happening. There is plenty going on but at the same time the actual movements are small. Exposition is lengthy, pasts recalled and flashbacks occur. With as large of a cast as there is as well as it being a very richly detailed world, there is certainly plenty to talk about. While there isn't much moving the storyline forward, though move it does, the fact that it succeeds so well based on its ability to simply detail the way a world works is fascinating and instructive to many other storytellers.

With four new episodes here, the various storylines move along at a good pace as everyone seemingly makes some progress. There's even a surprising return character that took me a few minutes to really be sure it was the same person. Watching things play out here is in some ways like watching a very complex chess game being played but among a dozen opponents. Each of them is trying to learn their way in the game as well as the rules while some of the masters of it are playing as well. As we're given over to watching most of the newer players in things here, we do get a slanted view of things but they do get balanced out on occasion.

Of the various tales, a couple of them are really keeping my interest now, though I know that they'll all likely be coming together in the next volume or two. The main one that continues to be the most interesting is with Youko and her dealings with the kingdom of Kei. Since she's dealt with the problem of her ministers, though not as well as she could have, she's come to understand that her basic problem with ruling the kingdom is her simple lack of understanding it. She has this great little conversation with Keiki about it and the morality of things and how they're different between the two worlds and does it by talking about the length of skirts and the color of stockings. With this in mind, she's decided to leave much of the daily business of the kingdom in the hands of her advisors, which worries Keiki, and take on a new name and live among the citizens for awhile to try and really get a feel for things.

She ends up going to where Enho is and spends time there after a Youma attack to try and get in touch with it all. When the two finally do start talking about things, the realization of just how little of the basics she knows becomes all too clear. While we don't get a lot of explanations of things, what we do is fascinating. In particular, time is spent detailing how land is given out to the people of the kingdom and how they adjust during the various seasons in the communities that are built from it. It's a fascinating exercise in how they do it, though one has to wonder what changes will be put in place the day the population grows too big, but even then there are those that are more likely to live in the bigger cities than the agricultural communities.

The other arc that's continually proving interesting with this volume is Suzu's story. After her escape from the hundred years of servitude and spending some time with the Queen, she's being sent on to explore the world herself some more so that she can start understanding it. Suzu's an interesting character since she has the potential to really understand a lot of what makes up the world by having conversed with those stuck with her during those hundred years but instead kept to herself and kept pitying herself. So now that she's sent out into the world again, with money no less, the expectation is that she'll start to realize just how lucky she is in general. But with her kaikyaku background, she uses that as a crutch with a belief that the world is against her and her kind, even though she's much better off due to her Sen-in status and ability to understand the language. Watching her try to deal with things is amusing and sad at the same time, especially when she comes across another kaikyaku and the two end up feeding the crutch with each other, resulting in a more disastrous relationship.

Shoukei gets some interesting time in this set of episodes as well and her mindset continues to deteriorate, but overall I've not had much of a draw to the character since I can't sympathize with her at all. I find her storyline interesting and a different view of how things have gone for her and her kingdom, as well as enjoying what seems to be her slow descent into madness, but it's not been an arc that's really gotten me as interested as the other two yet.

In Summary:
Much like anyone else still watching at this point, this series has me wrapped up completely and totally. There is just so much going on verbally that it's a pleasure to just watch it all play across the screen. These characters are so richly developed and the world only continues to fascinate, particularly as seemingly small toss-away lines from earlier episodes continue to come back and become more important as we get further into it. This a show that continues to rise to the top of the must-watch pile the day it comes in. Excellent stuff.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language,English 2.0 Language,English Subtitles

Review Equipment
Panasonic PT50LC13 50" LCD RP HDTV, Zenith DVB-318 Progressive Scan codefree DVD player via DVI with upconversion set to 720p, Sony STR-DE835 DD/DTS receiver, Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.