Sakuna: Of Rice And Ruin

Episode 8

For an episode called “The Rice Riots that Shook the Capital” this ended up being a lot tamer than I expected. After revealing Kokorowa's hidden jealousy towards Sakuna, the story's direction seems to lead to Kokorowa working with the demons to drag down her reputation. It could be pretty exciting and I was pumped to see all of that play out throughout the rest of the show—so I was a little shocked when Kokorowa's arc was more or less wrapped up by the end of this week's episode. While we still get some drama between her and Sakuna, it's a lot less dramatic of a falling out than I was hoping for, and while it's not exactly bad, I was left a little underwhelmed.

While Sakuna and the others are busy enjoying the rice from their latest harvest, she receives a message telling her that her rice offering to Lady Kamuhitsuki has been tampered with. Said tampering was done by adding special grains of rice that can become dangerously addictive, and rumors have already begun circulating that Kokorowa is responsible. Sakuna, of course, denies that her friend could ever do such a thing. To prove Kokorowa's innocence she tries sneaking back into the Lofty Realm to speak to her directly. Meanwhile, Lady Kamuhitsuki decides to question Kokorowa about the rumors. While Kokorowa tries to deny her connection to the tampering, she still feels conflicted about doing it. She feels worse when Sakuna shows up and immediately assumes she's been framed. That's all way too much guilt for Kokorowa to deal with, so rather than admit the truth to Sakuna, she opts for the good old method of avoidance by stuffing Sakuna into a box and trying to ship her back to the Isle of Demons.

Needless to say, that doesn't exactly go as planned, and when Sakuna eventually makes it back to the Lofty Realm, Kokorowa's new plan is to sick some mechanical puppets on her, while she hides away. With all that buildup I was expecting confrontation between these two to get pretty messy—and at first, it did look like things would play out that way. When Kokorowa inevitably gets caught red-handed with the storage of addictive rice, she decides to let out all her resentment towards Sakuna. Given how Kokorowa had started going about how much she felt burdened by their friendship, I was half expecting (and honestly hoping) to see her double down on her actions and wholly commit to making herself Sakuna's enemy. However, any dramatic tension that was building throughout this scene was immediately undercut by Kokorowa accidentally setting the rice storage on fire. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't funny watching Kokorowa rant even as she's unaware of everything burning around her. Still, it also comes off as just a little anticlimactic, so it felt like a pretty weird way to end the scene and I wish it had committed to a more dramatic option.

I'm also a little bummed out by how this all resolves, as when Lady Kamuhitsuki tries to figure out who's responsible for all the rice that burned, Sakuna decides to take the fall for Kokorowa and gets seemingly banished from the Lofty Realm forever as punishment. Had the episode stopped there, I would have been fine with the outcome since it would have demonstrated how Sakuna has become more mature and responsible. It would give her more reason to fully commit to carving out a living on the island with the others. Instead, Kokorowa decides to join Sakuna on the island and tells her that if they can complete their assignment on the island and rid it of demons, Lady Kamuhitsuki will let both back into the Lofty Realm. It's sweet, and in the grand scheme of things, it probably was a bit too much to expect her to have an extended villain arc, so I probably shouldn't be surprised by how it ended. Still, given how much potential there was with Kokorowa's resentment playing out over the rest of the show, I'm a little disappointed that this was all just setting up her journey toward becoming a new party member instead. I am curious to see how she ends up blending into the rest of the group but given that her arc over these two episodes was arguably the biggest source of conflict we've seen in the show so far, I'm not sure how much to expect there. For now, the series is back to its status quo of rice farming and demon bashing—and while it isn't bad, it could have done better by taking this opportunity to aim a little higher.

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Sakuna: Of Rice And Ruin is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.