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.

Yuurei Taiji Daisakusen (the great campaign to exorcise the ghost)

This is the one which wasn’t animated. It occurs before the anime begins; that is, before Shuurei comes to the palace. The story opens with Reishin eating some manju that Kouyuu has made. He criticizes Kouyuu’s cooking (the manju are flat, like senbei) and tea making skills, but eats them all. Then, he tells Kouyuu that Shou Taishi requested that he wait upon Ryuuki; although Kouyuu doesn’t want to do it, eventually Reishin bullies, er, convinces him, into going.

Half a month passes, and Kouyuu is sitting in the archives, irritated. Shouka comes and asks him what’s the matter. Kouyuu explains that Ryuuki won’t even meet with him, so he’s been sitting around doing nothing. It’s been about half a year since Ryuuki’s coronation, and the king has just been hiding in the Inner Palace, simply rubber stamping things. Shouka says that Ryuuki has some reason, which doesn’t satisfy Kouyuu. He also reveals that there’s a ghost haunting the archives.

Kouyuu asks for Shuuei’s help in getting rid of the ghost, so they wait in the archives during the night. Although Kouyuu doesn’t care about ghosts, he’s worried something may potentially happen to Shouka. They see a figure reach for Kouyuu’s manju, which he’s left there as bait, hearing the ghost likes to eat manju. When the ghost says that Kouyuu’s manju look bad, Kouyuu becomes angry, and scares off the ghost, although Shuuei tries to capture it. The next day, Kouyuu reports to Shouka that they saw the ghost, although they don’t know if it really is supernatural, or a human being. Sure enough, later Shouka tells Ryuuki that he shouldn’t criticize food that was left out specifically for him. Yep, the “ghost” they saw was Ryuuki.

Kouyuu and Shuuei argue about the next step they’re going to take. They speculate about whether the ghost is really a ghost, and whether it is male or female. We learn that Shuuei finished second to Kouyuu, thus meaning that he was Bougen. They lie in wait for the ghost, and when a figure approaches, they pounce. Unfortunately, it turns out to be… Shou Taishi! Then, Sou Taifu appears and takes a swing at them. Then Sa Taiho shows up and calms everyone down. Afterwards, they sit together in the archives. It turns out the three elders were thinking of some scheme to get Ryuuki to leave the Inner Palace. Anyway, it’s another failure for the ghost-busting operation. For the next five days, Kouyuu and Shuuei wait up for the ghost, and it’s a bit much for Kouyuu, who’s half dead from lack of sleep. Shouka tells him that if he can’t find the ghost tonight, he should just give up already.

As they wait for the ghost, it begins to storm. Kouyuu tells Shuuei this is the last night, and Shuuei says that only Shouka and Reishin could get the stubborn Kouyuu to give up so easily. Kouyuu apologizes to Shuuei for the fruitless quest, but Shuuei says he doesn’t mind (he’s a trained soldier, so this isn’t physically taxing for him), and he gets to hang out with Kouyuu and eat the manju Shouka gives them (made by Shuurei).

Suddenly, there is a great flash of lightning, with the accompanying burst of thunder, and a beautiful woman enters the archive. Shuuei is not at all phased, and greets her gallantly. He removes his coat for her, and so does Kouyuu. However, she doesn’t put the clothing on, but instead uses it to dry her hair. Although the woman appears to be in her mid twenties, Kouyuu thinks she doesn’t really seem to be around their age. Kouyuu reaches out and touches the woman’s hair, which feels normal, then he touches her arm, and he is about to touch her cheek, before he is stopped by Shuuei, who points out that this is rather rude, and one mustn’t do this sort of thing the first time one meets a lady, although he is happy to see that Kouyuu is showing an interest in women. Kouyuu angrily says that he was checking to see if she was a ghost. Kouyuu feels foolish, and Shuuei continues to play the ladies’ man, and goes off to get some water for the tea. The woman asks if she can eat the manju, and seems to be very interested in them, half-laughing/half-crying remarking that the taste is the same. Kouyuu asks if she was outside in the storm. The woman says that this was an unexpected circumstance, and she did not intend to go out, and she is here because of the thunderstorm, and without thinking, came there. She asks if the master of the archives is well, and Kouyuu replies that he is. Then she asks if his daughter and Seiran are well, and Kouyuu says he doesn’t know about them; the woman appears disappointed, so Kouyuu says that Shouka seems to be proud of his daughter, and the woman appears pleased by this.

She then asks Kouyuu some questions about the court (she also knows that he was adopted by Reishin), asking if the succession has occurred, and who is king now. Learning that Ryuuki is king, she gathers that Shou Taishi is still at court. As she is asking these questions, the memory of her doing so disappears from Kouyuu’s mind. Then the woman stands up, and her clothes and hair are now, impossibly, dry. She tells Kouyuu she has a message for Shou Taishi: Don’t do unnecessary things. (don’t make a mess of things/interfere too much?) Also, he shouldn’t mess things up, and especially, he shouldn’t involve those guys, because things will become very bad. [... such a clear message] Shuuei returns, and the woman prepares to leave. She says her time is up, and thanks them (she also knows Shuuei’s name, although they never told her what their names were), and disappears when the next bolt of lighting flashes.

Later, Shouka arrives. He had asked an acquaintance to pretend to be a ghost, but owing to the storm, he couldn’t make it. But Kouyuu claims that the ghost is a woman who seems to be an acquaintance of Shouka, and he and Shuuei fall asleep. Later, Ryuuki meets Shouka in the archives, and says that Shou Taishi has told him he is sending a woman to the Inner Palace. Ryuuki says that no matter what Shou Taishi does, he won’t participate in politics. He’ll keep the promise he made with Shouka, but beyond that, there’s a line beyond which he won’t budge. Then Ryuuki sees the manju, and says that it would be good if the person who made them came to the Inner Palace.

Some days later, Kouyuu meets with Reishin. Reishin asks if he has gotten better at making manju, and tries some of the manju Kouyuu has with him. He says they’re much better, but Kouyuu says that these aren’t his manju, but Shuurei’s. He informs Reishin that for the past few days, he’s been hanging out with Shouka, drinking tea and eating manju, and asks if Reishin is jealous. Naturally, this upsets Reishin. XD

Commentary: Did the author screw up here? In Gaiden #3, Kouyuu meets Bara-hime, but here he doesn’t recognize her. Now, this can , be explained away by saying that Kouyuu never saw her after that time, or he was young so he didn’t remember, or one doesn’t think to meet a dead woman, but it would be nice to see this continuity point acknowledged at a later date. I wonder why this story wasn’t animated at first, but now I think I know; it introduces too much stuff that just isn’t going to get resolved at all in the anime, because it will probably be one of the last things to be resolved in the novels. We don’t really seem to learn anything concrete, although I do wonder if Kouyuu did end up relaying that message to Shou Taishi. Well, if Shou Taishi is following Bara-hime’s advice, maybe that explains why he’s hasn’t done anything useful for volumes and volumes. >_> I’ve complained before that the supernatural stuff seems to simply be underdeveloped in the Saiunkoku world, and this story does make me think this is more true, because the author has included these elements from the beginning, so she’s had time to integrate them into the storyline. Since so much of Saiunkoku is concrete, I think it works better for the magical system to also be rather well defined, IMHO.

The second story is about Eigetsu getting in trouble before the exams. This was mostly in the anime. It’s the story about how Eigetsu can’t find his exam token, etc. At the end of the story, on top of the Kogarou, Shou Taishi and Dr. You are talking on the roof. Dr. You asks if Shou Taishi is going to call the eight immortals together, but Shou Taishi says that there is one (or some?) who is always sleeping. Actually, I can’t remember this part of the anime very well, but it really does seem like there wasn’t much difference, except maybe in the order. Since it was so like the anime, reading this story was sort of uninteresting, though.

The third story is the one where Shuurei gets sick, and everyone goes to her house. This was also an anime episode. Shuurei gets sick because she was chasing one of her students, and she ended up falling in the river in the middle of winter. As in the anime, everyone descends on their house, but then the boy Shin’s father reports that he is missing, so Kouyuu, Shuuei, and Seiran decide to go off to look for him in the mountains. Then Shouka becomes surprisingly leaderly and tells the search party they must come back by a certain time, etc. Most of what happens, I recall from the anime.

The last story is a short piece, called “Bara-hime.” This was also in the anime. Ryuuki and Shusui are talking in the Inner Palace, and Shusui tells him the story of Bara-hime (the legendary figure, not Shuurei’s mother specifically… well, maybe?). In this story, Bara-hime has a child, who is prone to sickness, so she gives her life in exchange for the child’s. She says to her husband, that though now she returns to being a rose, from then on, the rose will have thorns, so it cannot be captured again, and this shall be proof of her love for him. Afterwards, they talk some more, and Ryuuki wonders if he is foolish for continuing to love like he has, hanging on and hoping his feelings will be returned. In comparison, Shusui is content to love without any expectation of return. Afterwards, Shusui is walking in the palace, and runs into Shuuei, and he attempts to sweet-talk her, and they bicker some more. In the end Shuuei says that she was kind to him when they met for the first time (unlike now) and gives her his coat. Shusui doesn’t know what he’s talking about. (For more information on this, see volume 11). Later, Ryuuki is thinking about how he wishes not to be the cruel man who locked Bara-hime up, but the man who freed her and was loved by her (which is why he does things for Shuurei which in effect take her farther away from him.)

tags>>saiunkoku