Hats off to the translation team for somehow finding a way to do a Japanese folk song in English with all the intonations of the original kept somehow intact. That always seemed like the hardest part of the dub process to me. It's hard enough to match the original intent of the dialog; it's harder to re-word that dialog to sound right in English; and I imagine the hardest part is then trying to match the cadence and intonation, too. So kudos to Funi!
Actually, the show gets double kudos for being so sly about making this the requisite recap episode without turning it into too blatant of a clip show. These can actually be pretty helpful when you get this deep into a series and start having a little trouble remembering every little detail of what's come before.
== TEASER ==
Although, to be honest, I'm not sure how salient the points reiterated in all these flashbacks are. When the priestess gets into expository mode and starts finally filling in the backstory of the great war, it started looking like the show was trying to paint the merchants as war profiteers in some allegorical dig at the military industrial complex. I guess I was expecting these callbacks to start tying together all the clues of what this is really about - - but they mostly seemed to be cute, uneventful statements about rice.
Unless… unless… this is all supposed to conflate the food business with the war business in some Byzantine conspiracy that gives the whole "guns and butter" debate some horrifying undertones!
Nah… let's not get lose our heads, now.
Although, I still maintain that the remaining episodes are going to go a lot deeper. The merchant "prince's" seemingly Machiavellian stroke to seize his father's title and then his oddly-detached admiration for the peasants' victory all seem to be sizing up for something interesting. All bets are off, now!
Watch this episode, "The Remembrance" here and decide for yourself, then read my comments on the previous episode here.
Tom Pinchuk's a writer and personality with a large number of comics, videos and features like this to his credit. Visit his website - - tompinchuk.com - - and follow his Twitter: @tompinchuk
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