Ten years ago, the Tale of the Kingdom of Colored Clouds was brought to Japanese television, Saiunkoku Monogatari. It tells the story of Shurei Hong, a young woman who is the heir of one of the eight great families. Her family is of dwindling wealth, and she hastily agrees to become the consort of the King in exchange for a hefty payout. This isn’t a rags to riches story, rather it’s as if Jane Austin fell in love with the far east and chose to set Sense and Sensibility in a Chinese setting. Romantic pursuits often come second to Shurei’s own personal goals of improving the kingdom with her own skills, and fighting against the establishment that would see women are kept out of politics.
The promotional artwork of a lovely girl surrounded by lovely men made me, many years ago, initially write off the series as a light tale of reverse harem wish fulfillment. Sure, there is some shoujo wish-fulfilling here but there is drama and a good story as well, especially as the series stretches on and more characters and motives are introduced. Saiunkoku wears it’s setting on it’s flowing sleeves, the ancient China influence is strong in everything from the character names to the structure of the government. Those old Chinese epics lend their sweeping political machinations and a cast of hundreds to the simple story of a girl from a noble house’s pursuit of respect, money, and yes even romantic love.
The show is a slow burn before the drama really begins to kick in. The rom-com antics in the start mostly stem from Shurei’s stingy attitude with money and her all-business attitude to become the consort. The humor either hits you or it doesn’t. She’s almost a too perfect lead outside of her money antics, but her do-it-yourself attitude goes a long way to making her likable. Ryuuki is just as conniving as she is, and just socially awkward and damaged to be worthy of Shurei’s effort, and they play well off each other while supporting each other. When the political drama starts to kick in it really kicks, especially in the later half of the season, which at 39 episodes is extremely long by today’s anime standards. Expect the usual backstabbing, plots, and assassination attempts.
Even though the story is billed as a fantasy the more fantastic elements at work in the Saiunkoku universe are limited. There’s the hint of a ghost lingering here and there, and fate is at work behind the scenes but there are no flashy magical battles here. It feels very historical in a grand mythological way as if these were real events in a time where magic still existed and gods founding a country was fact, not hubris.
This is one of those properties where sub or dub you were getting the same level of quality. The Japanese cast for the Madhouse production featured a good but not spectacular set of performances. Houko Kuwashima played Shurei and Tomokazu Seki played Ryyuki Shi. The original English release featured a solid dub provided by Ocean Studios, and featuring many of their usual voice actors in the roles. Kelly Sheridan gave a solid performance as Shurei Hong (changed in English from Shurei Kou due to another of the noble families having the similar surname of Ko, a change which carried to the manga as well.) Brad Swaile played the deceptive Emperor Ryuuki Shi, while Andrew Francis covered the role of Seiran, Shurei’s adopted brother.
The show looks old-fashioned nowadays since digital production has become the norm. Character designs date from a time when shoujo was dominated by pointy chins and enormous watery eyes and hair where every strand is visible. The hand-drawn backgrounds don’t always mesh well with the foreground animation, and for a Madhouse production the animation is stilted and clearly not top budget. It all gets the job done, in the end, but it’s not as vibrant as the older Card Captor Sakura from the same studio. The draw for the audience is clearly the character interactions and drama, not the serviceable presentation.
Saiunkoku’s release in North America was a perfect storm of poor timing. The anime market was contracting as the recession hit. Geneon USA was still releasing DVDs in four episode disc sets, and right in the middle of Saiunkoku’s release Geneon shuttered it’s doors, ceasing to exist in a official capacity in North America. Funimation stepped in and picked up the Saiunkoku release (along with several other Geneon titles), eventually releasing the entire first season of 39 episodes in one box set (which is sadly now long out of print and the rights expired.) However, low sales numbers and the fact that the series had been dubbed by another studio meant that the second season of 39 episodes was never released in North America.
While it was tragic we never got the second season, those two animated seasons didn’t tell the whole story. The novels were still being published when the second season ran, and a final third season that would have completed the story never materialized! The main novel series eventually finished at a grand total of 18 volumes, with a handful of extra side story volumes raising that number further. Sadly, even though light novels are far more marketable now, the age of the property means few US publishers would consider a US light novel release of the series. A manga adaptation of the first story arcs did find it’s way to an English release by Viz Media. It featured lovely artwork by the original artist of the novels and is worth reading for that alone. The print editions of those are slowly starting to become difficult to track down, but the digital editions are still available legally for purchase.
Today, fantasy shoujo has made a strong comeback. Yona of the Dawn has drawn an incredible amount of fans and this winter we got to enjoy Snow White with the Red Hair. Maybe someday in the future Saiunkoku will find it’s way back to a streaming service, and a whole new group of viewers will fall in love with it once again.
