Joran The Princess Of Snow And Blood “Divine Right” Review
Joran The Princess Of Snow And Blood “Divine Right” is the fifth episode of Joran Princess Of Snow And Blood. Continuing on from the events of episode 4 we discover that Sawa is alive and saved Asahi. Not necessarily because she wanted to though. Takeru makes her as she goes to save him instead.
Surviving
The episode opens with Sawa’s body being buried. Overseen only by Asahi and Kuzuhara. The next scene shoots straight to the end of episode 4 again and shows us Takeru’s sacrifice. Sawa comes out of the building with Asahi in her arms whilst Kuzuhara and Elena watch on.
Cut immediately to Elena in some house with a random guy. Looks pretty cosy but eventually it’s revealed she’s pregnant. It’s obvious she’s not thrilled about it but is kinda just accepting it. Meanwhile, Sawa is going through the motions having lost the reason she stayed alive. She’s still working for Kuzuhara but just about. She’s not interested in being alive and not interested in taking care of Asahi. With some cuts of Makoto going to flee Japan, then deciding to stay when he learns Sawa survived. The driver of the car he was sneaking off in goes to shoot him. It doesn’t show who gets killed but it’s most likely the driver and not Makoto.
New Directions
Elena confirms Sawa’s suspicions that she’s pregnant. As she was acting odd during their last mission. With nothing to aim for anymore, Sawa is finding it more and more difficult to justify the blood she’s shedding and for the first time freezes up on the job. Whilst she’s left to deliberate what she’ll choose to do with her life now, Elena tells her she’s off to live with the guy who wants the baby.
One day, whilst walking down the street Sawa sees a crowd of people huddling over a burnt down house. Everyone is saying it’s an apparent murder suicide, pushing through the crowd she sees just the top of the head of the victims but knows it’s Elena and the man instinctively.
Back at home whilst questioning why she’s still a part of the organization as she no longer wants to kill. Asahi offers to kill Sawa. She still has the poison. Sawa takes it with no hesitation and the episode ends with Asahi calling screaming her name.
Review
This was, unfortunately, probably one of the weakest episodes for me. It takes it’s time in setting up the new story and asking new questions but in doing so it seems to lose all sense of pacing. Having a slow paced episode is fine, good, even but only really when you can offset it with interesting characterisation and perhaps some shocking or interesting directional changes.
This episode unfortunately can’t do that. There’s one moment that maybe is interesting, when Elena is killed, the show cuts to a small shot of Kuzuhara looking at a photo of her, heavily hinting he was involved. But that’s the thing, nothing here is newly established. Even with that one scene everyone knows Kuzuhara is dodgy anyway so it’s like spending half an hour telling people the sky is blue.
Whilst I can’t say what everything means for Sawa, they may actually take a risk and leave her dead but I doubt it, for Asahi it’s not looking good. Likely she’ll be dragged into the organization by Kuzuhara. The whole episode revolves around the idea of new beginnings but nothing is new here… it just seems like the directors are desperately trying to get to the next arc of the story without rushing it. But in their desperate need to not rush it, they’ve created an episode which really doesn’t need to be watched because it adds nothing.
Maybe I’m wrong, I’d love to be, and this episode proves itself to be a keystone in the next arc. I’m actually hoping I’m wrong because this was weak from an otherwise consistently good show.
