The Twelve Kingdoms

Episode 19-20

I'm starting to think The Twelve Kingdoms has a thing for abrupt endings. Watching the next-episode preview at the end of episode 19 and seeing it list episode 20 as the final part of The Sea of Wind, The Maze of the Shore made me wonder if there was some sort of editing mishap when rendering the video. Surely after five episodes of the sometimes frustratingly slow buildup of Taiki's storyline, there was no way the show could actually conclude any of this – especially when the present day Taiki/Kaname is still somehow back in Hourai and dealing with his human family. Turns out I was right – it can't resolve all that and doesn't even try.

But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself – first is episode 19, which is easily the most compelling entry in this arc. After 4 episodes of Taiki taking the tiniest baby steps towards his magical destiny, we finally see him take a commanding stride forward when confronted with a monstrous, shapeshifting youma that is seemingly unstoppable. With his back against a wall and the life of his new comrades hanging by a thread, the kid stands resolute and manages to tame his first servant creature, even compelling it to take the form of a shiba inu for extra cuteness points. It's a much appreciated bit of tension in what has been a fairly smooth storyline, and it did a lot to endear me to Taiki beyond feeling sorry for him being caught up in all this magical gobbledygook. His success also compels him to make another, somewhat more worrisome choice – to choose Gyousou as the new king of Tai, despite the apparent lack of a divine revelation and his own unease around the man.

It's a big turning point for the boy, not only because he risks defying the mysterious will of this world's gods, but because it's the first real decision he's made in his own story. For as impressive as taming an unbeatable monster is, it's still ultimately in line with what is expected of him as a Kirin, not all that different from the other instructions he's followed since returning to his original world. But here it's Taiki making a decision for himself, even if he immediately second-guesses it and spends the entire coronation process anticipating a holy smiting. That tension doesn't last too long – after confiding in Keiki, the older Kirin sets up a charade with good old King En and Enki to show that Taiki didn't bluff his way into crowning a friend king, but it's meaningful in how it lets Taiki finally express his own will upon the plot for once. The resolution is good for easing the boy's worries, but the most striking part is that the “revelation” he expected was, simply, making a choice. For as much as his very existence seems predetermined by the metaphysics of The Twelve Kingdoms, in the end Taiki's decision to trust Gyousou to be the right choice is what made him the right choice. It's still a bit murky whether that's entirely true or just his fellow Kirins' interpretation of the unknowable will of the divine, but we don't have time today to debate the subject of free will right now.

Especially not when we don't even have time to properly cap off this arc. The Sea of Wind, The Maze of the Shore doesn't end so much as it just stops, mid flashback, to bring us back to Youko's timeline and skip through her own coronation. It's a bizarre choice, to be certain, since we don't even see how Taiki later winds up back in Hourai, and are left on the note of his residual magical guardians seemingly murdering anyone who gets close to him in the present day. It's shockingly quick and without even a little closure, to the point where I'd think the show was suddenly canceled if I didn't still have 30-odd episodes in my Crunchyroll queue. I have no idea how this is handled in the source material, but I have to imagine there was a better way to execute this transition than the whiplash inducing way it's implemented here.

Not that getting back to Youko is necessarily a bad thing. While conceptually interesting, Taiki's storyline has mostly felt like six episodes of preamble. It fleshes out blindspots of the world's mystic underpinnings, and by the end crafts a solidly compelling central character, but lacks the direction and overarching tension of Youko's journey to royalty. Maybe I would feel different if the story actually had, you know, a conclusion, but as-is this pit stop mostly feels like an odd experiment, and I hope whatever story comes next will have more to sink my teeth into.

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The Twelve Kingdoms is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Amazon Prime Video.