English Dub Review: The Heike Story “Shishigatani Incident”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Brewing hostilities begin to boil over between the Heike and Taira families.

OUR TAKE

God, these things are dense with stuff going on, but I think the general through line is that things are continuing to inch closer to the historical conflict between the Heike and Taira, the basis for this series in the first place. This episode in particular seems to be highlighting the moments that cut ties between Shigemori, the official leader of the Taira, and Kiyomori, the retired leader that still seems to be holding influence and power, but a tipping point on a grander scale would be the burning down of Enryakuji Temple, which set in motion a series of escalating fights with mounting casualties. Much like many great historical battles, they are the result of several seemingly small events piling up and snowballing into a major moment in that timeline. However, as one of the whitest white guys to ever white, I’m obviously not very familiar with Japanese history and it took me some time to piece together which side was doing what to whom, not helped by the week off the dub of this took between this and the last episode.

Add to that how we are getting details and scenes touching on each of the characters introduced so far PLUS new mentions of the historical context of these events, along with factions like the Genji who I don’t think have ever been mentioned before now but I’m sure are quite important to this conflict, and it’s quite easy for me to get completely lost. So, as I try my best to keep up here, I think I should point out that the battle at Emperor’s Palace was accompanied by a Biwa performance, possibly quoting accounts of this specific event and sung as to highlight the significance of it. This has happened at least one other time in this series so far, always shown with a strange white haired woman who appears in the ED and shares an odd resemblance with Biwa the character, who we know is able to foresee these events before they happen. Could that be a future Biwa having completely given herself to viewing time a la Doctor Manhattan, or possibly so traumatized by these events that she can only communicate through these performances? Might it be Biwa’s mysteriously disappeared mother? And given that this is a Science Saru show, should I even expect a straight answer here? The answer continues to elude us next time.