The word that keeps popping into mind watching Kingdom this season is “impeccable”. For this kind of series, it would be pretty hard to do much better. The animation remains nothing special, but the writing is so good that it almost doesn’t matter. Not that it wouldn’t be great to have I.G. or Bones here, but Kingdom doesn’t need that to be great. When the adaptation began the visuals were truly execrable – so hideous that even Hara Yasuhisa’s writing couldn’t overcome them. But for whatever reason – an exec intervened for the sake of decency, the budget got bumped, who knows – it gradually leveled up to “fine”. And the series has never looked back.
On balance I may love the political side of Kingdom even more than the military side. But this season has been stellar as far as the latter is concerned – again, impeccable. The battle for Zhao is playing out in a truly fascinating way. As expected, Sima Shang (Hayami Show) has dealt with the invading Qi armies admirably, which amounts to a huge stroke of luck for Li Mu. But given Shang’s famous indifference to greater Zhao’s affairs, is he going to offer any assistance to Li Mu in defending the capital? It seems unlikely you’d get a seiyuu of Hayami’s stature unless the character was destined for a significant role, but that would be out of character given what we know of Shang.
Meanwhile, the Qin army has turned to conquering “pissant” castle towns between Liewei and the capital region. All the generals are puzzled by this, although Xin is naturally the most outspoken about it. They’re even more puzzled when Wang Jian announces that any solider who kills a civilian is to be beheaded. The stores are plundered and Huan Yi’s thugs are allowed to steal valuables, but – apart from the astonished goodwill of the townsfolk – no one can see what the sphinx-like general is thinking. There’s barely enough stores here to make a tiny dent in what’s been lost in the abandonment of Liewei.
Wang Jian is a clever bastard, there’s no denying that. It became clear to me immediately once he sent the first town’s survivors to flee as refugees that they were the real reason for his decision. And not long after that the light really clicked on (Qian Lei was the first on-screen to get it, but I still beat her, ROFL). Li Mu’s plan is to trap the Qin army outside Ye and starve them out. So Wang Jian’s decides the starve out the defenders at the same time. With refugees from nine small and mid-size cities all headed towards Ye, the cities’ stores will soon be drained. If Ye can’t be conquered from the outside, Wang Jian is trying to conquer it from the inside.
It’s a very clever strategy, born of desperation. When news of the hordes of refugees headed east reaches the capital, Li Mu is the first to grasp what his enemy is planning. Naturally he goes to the king to plead for Handan’s elite army to send a few thousand troops to Ye. And naturally he refuses, being the bastard he is. And he flat-out admits that he cares not a whit for what happens to Zhao once he’s gone. This places Li Mu in a terrible position, of course. He can rebel openly against a monarch he knows is destroying his country and likely lose his head. Or he can fight on with one hand tied behind his back, knowing the king will do nothing to help and in fact will actively undercut him.
The introduction of the crown prince, Jia (Ishibashi Hiro) is a potentially very important twist. Li Mu has to do everything in his power to keep him alive long enough to succeed his father, which is going to prove a real challenge. As for Qin, Wang Jian knows his stratagem isn’t going to be easy to pull off. He tells his generals that Zhao will send many armies from the regions to attack the besieging force. He leaves Huan Yi to deal with the smaller ones, telling his subordinates that there are two major armies for them to deal with – one from Laoyang in the South, the other from Yangxie in the northwest.
Here is where the hard decisions must come, with no more help (or provisions) on the way. Yang Duanhe is dealing with the Laoyang army already, but they’ll soon be outnumbered 2-1 – Wang Jian assigns our man Bi to take his eight thousand, along with two thousand from Huan Yi, to aid her. But the larger force he commits to Yangxie, including himself – all three young lions will send thousands of troops to assist his own 70,000 strong in attacking that army. The reason is simple – Wang Jian assumes (correctly) that it will be with the Yangxie army that Li Mu himself rides. With the versatile quick-strike forces of the “little three” as weapons to use as he sees fit, Wang Jian clearly intends to take down Li Mu himself – in the process crippling Zhao’s ability to mount a defense of its sovereignty.
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