Apologies, this site was down for awhile while I tried to get everything working again. Things now seem to be mostly back to normal, although I need to go and reinstall some plugins.
BTW, I have uploaded an archive of the data to my backup site.
I forgot to write a summary for this gaiden. This is the first gaiden; however, most of the stories were covered in the anime, so I’ll only summarize the part that wasn’t animated.
Second part of the Gaiden. (covering the third story). Thanks to everyone for your comments. I’m glad that we’re getting some discussion in.
Hey, it’s the Return (dramatic music) of the hideous charts! Er, looking at these charts will SPOIL you for all of the novels. So if you don’t like spoilers, don’t look at them.
There has been some confusion here, so I’ll try to clear it up a bit. There are twelve Saiunkoku light novels and now, three Saiunkoku gaidens, so now fifteen books in all. “Gaiden” literally means “outside story,” and in the gaidens are side stories/short stories. Most have been serialized in The Beans magazine. The Saiunkoku manga, on the other hand, is up to two volumes right now, but I’m not summarizing it here since people are translating it anyway.
Anyway, in this gaiden, two of the stories have appeared in The Beans magazine before, and the other is new material. BTW, can someone tell me where the stuff in the anime about Shouka and his great-aunt appeared? Also, I think this is pretty much the moment where the anime and the novels are going to “diverge.” (Well, not so much diverge as the novel story is continuing, whereas the anime will, I am speculating, stop at volume twelve. As it is, the new material is too relevant to what is probably going to happen in the next volume, IMHO, for a reader of the novels to skip this gaiden).
Also, thanks to everyone for your comments! I will try to respond to the questions later.