#kingdomposting

[cospinol]

HOLY SHIT

[thesuntookgoodcareofme]

Im a little afraid of people in general and I often get really tired and also bored while talking to them but I believe firmly in the goodness and kindness of people (Im not trying to create the good/bad dichotomy here Im just generally speaking) because the other day I was on pinterest and saw some medievalposting by someone on twitter that i don't remember the name and like I love fantasy stories with medieval undertones and learning about the middle ages in general and a person on the pinterest post comments said "I love kingdomposting" and I said "is this like I genre of posting?? I need to find more" and they replied saying it was medieval posting and that they would make a pinterest folder just for medievalposting for me and I din't see the reply fast but when I saw it the person really. Really did have a medievalposting folder there. A stranger online made a collection of posts for me to see it (and also for them to see it of course, they said they also liked kingdomposting) AND IT MADE ME SO HAPPY LIKE PEOPLE HAVE SIMILAR INTERESTS TO ME AND THEY MAY JUST BE LIKE "oh you like that too and want to know the name of it? That's fine I'll show you!" I LOVE YOU

[kjmsupremacist]

rewatching kingdom stages....... juyeon/donghyuk/taeyang should’ve won the dance performance what the hell

[2yuu]

ive done it i hit post limit kingdomposting

EVERYONE CLAP !!!!! nd u ended it with lou even can u believe

[chiwoos-moved]

am i gonna hit post limit just kingdomposting today

[cospinol]

We’re going to western zhao!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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ohhhhhhhhh but also………..

Actually kind of the most important thing in either episode, we got to see shun sui ju in colour!!!!!! absolutely adorable and i’m thrilled he does specifically have white hair, not least because he’s the next entry on the list we’ve been slowly moving down across kingdom anime seasons of Potential Ishida characters lol. I think there’s a reallyyyy strong argument for it being him, he’s exactly in the usual typecast range to such a degree… though you could also say that about rei ou and I was wrong about him obviously. Still, he didn’t say anything this episode so I���ll continue to believe I’m right until next season finally comes around…

[cospinol]

Double episode kingdom finale!!! and the most important thing is:

WE GOT TO SEE IT!!!!!!!!!! I’ve been sooooo curious about this moment all season because this is the first time the anime has really had to deal with Saki Clan Activities under its current staff; kan ki played relatively nice during the siege of kankoku pass (just due to circumstances. But you know…) so the last time we really saw him in action like this was during sanyou, where the anime famously omitted the bags of eyeballs from the bags of eyeballs scene lol. Kingdom under its new direction has been a lot more willing to show gore even if it’s never on the same level as the manga (and there is a Lot of blood in this scene in the manga that doesn’t show up here), but it did fully remove han roki’s stupid severed head garland in season 4, so I wondered if they’d still be reticent about showing this Thing but in the end we did get to see all the saki clan’s hard work <3 yay!

but i was probably wrong to worry about it, because it’s so absolutely necessary to the plot to see what exactly kan ki did in order to understand ki sui’s reaction & the final piece of kan ki’s plan falling into place…

aka Ki Sui’s Wrong Decision That Is Also The Right Decision (that’s literally materially wrong because kan ki looped back before he was even close to rigan but it’s still the obvious, correct decision)! I’ve been so curious lately about the parallels between this situation and shi ba shou’s Seika Values as he’s laying them out in the manga at the moment, i wonder if his sense of his city’s honour would have led him to make the opposite decision here… it’s impossible to blame ki sui though, even if he is capitulating to kan ki’s way of thinking by letting him win the mind game. Shin didn’t win it either this arc lol

There is something I’ve been holding back on saying all season though and it’s WHERE was ki sui during eikyuu / northern zhao?!!!!!!!! it’s so unthinkable to me that he wasn’t available to provide support during either of the Kan Ki Focused Campaigns and that someone had the line ‘recompense for the people of koku you’ and it wasn’t him. I know he doesn’t care about the people of koku you in and of themselves but ……… so much for rigan’s honour I Guess. shi ba shou never would’ve behaved like this basically

anyways, I haven’t really had much to say about na ki because he’s mostly just been in the background providing support this season, but we got his big moment today (following the scene last week where he steps in to protect bi hei)..

and it’s sweet! ;^; i think it’s because this is such a wonderful moment both for him (and as a simple, touching understanding of what makes the hi shin unit tick) that i get so heated about him turning around in northern zhao, but i won’t get into that here. He’s sweet here and has been all season, I looove how soft-spoken katsuyuki konishi plays him. a really gentle touch…

and of course, thanks to him: rage hot enough to melt stone spotted 🔥🔥🔥

Because io repeats this line in northern zhao I’d thought it was actually an early appearance by her in this scene, but apparently it’s just a jobber saki member and we won’t get to hear her speak properly until that campaign. still, someday though…

also in this same scene where na ki is theorizing about kan ki’s backstory is the real most important moment of the episode, though:

koku’ou got her boytoy!!!! this is just a tiny image in the background of a panel in the manga so I’m so glad we got to see it in full here. Good For Her 💝💓💕

andddd over in the second part of the two-parter I don’t have Much to say because it’s absolutely all sei discourse; I think his argument for his vision of the nation here is way, way stronger than it was back when he was talking to ryo fui last season and it’s admirable progress - and, well, it has to be, because he was really just talking to ryo for talk’s sake while their conflict was actually decided on the battlefield, whereas in this scene it’s really sincerely up to him to convince the king of qi, and his thesis is actually material and actionable to the point that I can believe in it working for once! Unfortunately shou bun kun is also There The Whole Time reacting with shock every time anyone doubts sei to the slightest degree or says basically anything at all & just generally Trying My Patience so it lowers my esteem of the whole sequence a little, unfortunately.

Still, it’s good for what it is, which (in my opinion) is table-setting for the really excellent part of bureaucrats’ job arc, which is ri boku refusing to entertain anything sei says and throwing a massive tantrum and yelling about how he’s the smartest man in the world and then storming out <3 and that’s what we have to look forward to at the beginning of next season, along with mou ten winter outfit which we were TRAGICALLY denied in favour of rushing to the qi situation instead. There was a hou mei panel in that scene… rip

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TODAY’S EPISODE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Koku you amethyst time!!!!!!!! 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 And it’s apparently the moment that the show’s staff have been waiting for just as eagerly as I have because it’s the best looking episode not just of this season but maybe… of the entire series since its inception…????!! I genuinely can’t think of another one that has Multiple dedicated cuts of detailed action in a row like the sequence from kyou kai snapping on the mountain road to the encounter between shin and kyou kai + rai do and koku’ou at kan ki’s camp, and certainly not one anywhere near as good looking, it’s such a treat…!!!!!!!

[quick aside, before I forget I want to add that rai do is addressing shin as ‘obocchan’ in the last cap above :DDD truly the gift that keeps on giving]

And anyways that’s without even touching on how good this sequence would be regardless of looks because it’s still Amethyst Plot time 🥰❤️💞❣️💓💍💘 Bi hei giving in to peer pressure in just the kind of moment of weakness that you can’t actually detest him for (of course you would want to believe him when he tells you it wasn’t a civilian village..), kyou kai absolutely fucking snapping, the cool head ten maintains between trying to hold shin back and immediately pivoting the hi shin unit to a defensive formation for the real possibility that shin and kyou kai actually start pvp against the kan ki army , and of course shin and kan ki putting their cards on the table :)))))

^ my favourite panel of him ever now animated!!!!!!! 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 and my favourite moment in the exchange between them, shin’s is still yet to come (I think all his talk in this week’s episode about kan ki not being equipped to handle sei’s dream of unification *is* sweet and sincere but it’s also dumb and that’s why kan ki is able to refute him so easily; the point that really matters and where his moral stance becomes unassailable, for me, is in the fact that it’s all for hyou’s sake. there’s no counter-argument about what you may or may not be turning a blind eye to there, it’s the mandate made absolute and incorruptible instead…) but this is maybe my favourite line of kan ki’s ever… he’s just following through on the promise he made you; these are the rules you agreed to play by! 🥰🥰🥰 i don’t even need to go into the premium emycore aspect of ever part of this sequence lol, the indulgence of it all…

also I was pleasantly surprised to see that they preserved just about all all of the gore from the scenes covered in this week’s scenes; there are some minor changes (the zhao soldiers kan ki is having the saki clan interrogate early in the episode are shown a little less mutilated than they are in the manga, and there’s no nudity) but they really are minor which bodes pretty well for the saki clan artworks coming up soon :~) I think there’s a chance we might not see that scene until the week after next since next episode’s primary focus will of course be Bi Hei And The Hi Shin Unit as per the ep title, but i’m so curious to see what they do with it since the anime has *always* omitted saki and saki-adjacent activities in the past. but I won’t get ahead of myself when we still have all of bi hei’s crisis to savour first :D

also, in shin’s speech telling kan ki off, we got a little additional visual of ran dou from sanyou campaign! always on the lookout for scenes from s1-2 appearing in flashback in the current art style <3

and i really had forgotten what he looked like lol even though this is another scene I absolutely adore for similar reasons to the one in the camp in this episode - though there’s no mou ten around to step in and defend shin this time, of course… :)

[cospinol]

so no tragedy of rigan this week (they’re saving that for the episode titled The Tragedy Of Rigan next week) but we DID get the scene of kyou kai listening to the lead-up to the story, which means so many pretty frames of her with her hair down ❤️

my darling ;_; I’d forgotten that she was treated to this story because she swiped ryuu tou’s guardian doll before she fell off the fortress wall just because she figured it looked important to him. practical! And she’s still trying to convince the woman who saved her to try to evacuate, still trying to do the right thing / trying now to understand why it’s impossible to do the right thing in her current position… ;_;!

in the main body of the episode, though, it’s just fun and games…

emy moment, obviously, i cannot stress this enough. There’s a line in ten’s very serious evaluation of all his potential strategies for the afternoon, where she’s praising his ingenuity and quick-wittedness, that absolutely kills me:

she figured out the Extremely Secret Weakness That Will Definitely Allow You To Defeat Him before ri boku did, it’s that he doesn’t know basic tactics! he’s just messing around!

‘idk, whatever, lol’

anyways, the sequence of mounting tension among both the qin and zhao commanders on the mountainside as they wait for orders / movement is completely wordless in the manga, but here we got dialogue to several parts of it, among the bandits trying to pick a fight with kan ki himself and from both ten and koku’ou as the two strategists most closely anticipating his plans!

they’ve got two sets of paired lines that complete each other and make the same decision / have the same paranoid realization at the same time when the order fails to come by sunset, it’s cute <3

and we got one little additional kei sha image before all the fuss on the mountainside; a closer-up version of the expression in this panel…

He’s smiling! Surely a sign of good things to come :)

[cospinol]

*extremely* important moment in kingdom this week. Miss koku’ou…

choosing which units to send support to based only on how handsome their commanders are… she’s just like me for real. also we get to see the boy she’s favouring from an additional angle lol, he’s only in one panel in the manga so this is new…

appropriate attention given to the absolute most important scene of the episode, thank you. though of course this whole sequence is really about ki sui’s big entrance…

well, we missed out on the money shot of him taking this guy’s head (to balance it out we got… an added visual in the bit before their duel where this jobber thought he was going to get to take koku’ou to bed after he won lol…) but still he’s here to make his big splash entrance, and playing the rigan card immediately ;^; just as a reminder that we’ll certainly get at the very least the beginning of The Tragedy Of Ki Sui in next week’s episode, since this episode ends with a kyou kai check-in, finally..

a rare, rare sighting of her with her hair down!!!! despite Everything she is cute.

also cute is ten defending sensei’s honour over on the river bank

…and taking at least a little credit for herself, though. she’s earned it!

as with the first segment of the river venture we got last week, this part is just a nice, wholesome Hi Shin Unit Good Time which is both nice as always in its own right and extra juicy since we’re now closer than ever to.. the events in the villages of the koku you hills. i really love that this arc goes out of its way to reinforce that the way shin does things in his own right *does* work and he *does* get results just to make that rug-pull hurt even more; shin’s not *wrong* about the way he does things…

relatedly, i wanted to share this cover from the river chapter we covered this week ;^;

sweetest boy in the world!!!

[cospinol]

In today’s kingdom episode… a nice tea party

followed by a nice riverside picnic!

This was my absolute favourite part of the arc when I first read it, in large part because I never expected lieutenant en to get his own personal moment to shine like this! among the supporting hi shin unit members, he’s such a great choice for this team-carry moment; he’s both unremarkable enough to make his success at overcoming this challenge remarkable & endearing enough to make it really satisfying. he’s been supporting shin quietly for so long now… ;^;

also of course it’s always a treat to get to see scenes from early kingdom in the current art style so I’m thrilled that we got visuals for His Past With Shin over his internal monologue…!!

The tiniest shin in the world!!!! thank you for your service lieutenant en 💓

also, garo has a lot of shit to say. I didn’t remember him having as much real estate in this arc as he does but once again he’s here to spend the whole time needling people and complaining

I appreciate his work of course. alongside a little cameo of someone who’s also only in the episode to be negative lol;

a brief appearance by sensei ❣️❣️❣️!!! once again, like in the previous arc, with Advice About Rivers. though all he has to contribute to ten in her flashback is ‘under these conditions I’d give up if I were you’ lol

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if the way this goes isn’t ‘ou sen does his first ever successful on-screen personnel acquisition gambit’ idk what i’m going to do. i’ll blow up this whole damn kingdom

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It’s so devastating that all the best parts of koku you arc feature bi hei in them because it actually made me watch the trailer going ‘where is bi hei’, of all the characters in the world to think that about. I want to see his real koku you amethyst…

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new kingdom pv!!!!!! come to koku you, we have:

hills

your new best friend

tea party strategy session

a village :)

funny spider

勝つためだ全ては！

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Zhao team key visual and cast announcement!! at long last:

our first proper look at ki sui in the anime!! i’m not familiar with his seiyuu (I’ve only heard him in very minor roles before) but in the end they cast katsuyuki konishi (my top prediction for ki sui) as *naki* this season so I’d call that 50% of a correct call or so, lol

and my long shot hope that they’d change kei sha’s colour palette did not come true of course… if anything he’s a little more yellow this season which I think suits the green a *little* more but I’d still far rather his oranges be darker and the light squares in the checkered pattern be white, rip. compare:

he looks so much better in black and white!!! that’s the hill I’ll die on (his is in the background of the poster. lol)