Kingdom is nothing if not a marvel of consistency. You just don’t get peaks and troughs very much with this series. It’s always good, almost always excellent, and occasionally spellbinding. That and its pedestrian (though nowadays perfectly passable) animation make it a perfect candidate to be serially overlooked. As indeed it is, by almost the entire English-speaking anime fandom. But it’s the 15th highest-selling (110 million volumes) manga of all-time for a reason.
This was an episode that showcased Kingdom’s dual nature with rare clarity. The first half was all about politics, the second all about war (strategy, specifically). Zheng’s (frankly pretty outlandish) plan to unify the Middle Kingdom is at the heart of everything, of course. Changwen is – rather optimistically – thinking about the world after the war. And he can’t imagine what laws to govern such an unlikely and unwieldy nation would look like. He goes for help to one Li Si (Okumura Shou) – one of the Four Pillars of Lu Buwei, now rotting in an underground cell.
Lu Buwei continues to cast a long shadow over Kingdom. In real life he was exiled to the remote south and committed suicide, but his military genius Cai Ze was the one who steered Changwen towards Li Si’s counsel before his death. Governing without warfare was Lu Buwei’s whole game, so it makes sense that we would have had Qin’s greatest legal mind in his inner circle. Li Si preaches that aspirational laws are the only ones that have a chance of taking hold, but Changwen realizes he needs more than advice. Li Si must be returned to the corridors of power, no matter how loudly the court objects – he’s simply too great an asset not to use.
Of course for any of this to matter, Qin has to conquer six nations. And the road to that goes through Zhao and the most feared strategist on the continent, Li Mu. Changping is rather stressing over that, given that Li Mu has sussed out his plan for an invasion on the Western frontier and started building a string of defensive forts to thwart it. Changping reckons it would take a minimum of ten years to push through that way, and that’s a non-starter. He confides a for-your-ears-only plan to Zheng – use the West as a diversion, and attack the military city of Ye’ on the doorstep of Zhao’s royal capital.
Not for the first time I’m struck by serious doubts about Zheng and his unification plan. Even if he defies all odds and succeeds, the cost will have been huge. And Changping’s plan is enormously risky and certain to exact heavy casualties. A cadre of elites retreat to try and work out how it can work, including the young strategist Meng Yi (who’s grown up quite a bit). You get the idea that this quarter is none too confident in their eventual plan – all the more so in the way they interact with the generals Changping summons to the capital to discuss it.
The three young lions of Qin – Xin, Meng Tian (Meng Yi’s brother of course), and Wang Ben – are central to the strategy. This implies that it’s going to be an unconventional campaign that requires dexterity and improvization on the ground. It also reflects how a serious generational change is happening in Qin’s military leadership. The old guard is dying out, and these three are the future – all the more so since the young king clearly trusts them more than their elders. But their lives are on the line here, and if they die as a result of this audacious plan, the future of Qin probably dies with them. Zheng clearly believes it worth the risk – as for me, I’m not so sure.
