One of the challenges with Kingdom is to remember which of these people (each of them with one name my eyes are telling me is their name, and one my ears are) before.  There’s just so damn many of them, and so many names and faces to keep track of.  What of Biao, the general who intercepts the Wei army on a desolate plain and keeps them occupied for far longer than he should be able to, being outnumbered 10 to 1?  I’m pretty sure we met Biao in season 2 (and maybe even the first) but that fact that it was six years ago doesn’t make it any easier to remember…

It so happens that Biao has a personal history with the Kingdom of Wei.  He slew their top general (did that happen on-screen?), whose son Wu Feng Ming is now leading the Wei forces.  He’s played by Namikawa Daisuke and I’m almost certain we haven’t met him before.  For Wu this is clearly personal – once he realizes who’s leading this opposition force he’s keen to dally with him for far longer than he probably should be.  That will prove to be an issue later on, but we’ll get to that.  For now Xin’s arrival on the scene is a fortuitous one for Biao – the math being what it is, he can use a rapid-strike group like the Feixin Force to great advantage.

Meanwhile the Qi angle played up as the cliffhanger last week is not strictly military, but “diplomatic”.  Changwenjun has sent his wily old diplomat Cai Ze to Qi, where he has a long-standing relationship with the oddball king (who we meet as he’s eating a whole roasted viper like snake jerky).  The king has intentionally slowed his army down in expectation that this meeting would occur, and it’s a simple matter of economics.  Li Mu has offered all the invading nations a share of the spoils of Qin commensurate with the size of their army, bit Cai Ze offers to double it.  And the king has no reason not to accept, since Qi was getting the smallest portion of the pot anyway.

Qi’s withdrawal is 50,000 fewer invading troops to worry over, it’s true, but Changping’s main reason for this move was the give the other five armies something to worry about at their rear, especially with their own borders now poorly defended.  Qin is still between a rock and a hard place but they’re so far down that any marginal improvement is welcome.  As Changping desperately tries to find a stratagem that doesn’t end in certain defeat, Xin formally folds his battalion under Biao’s command, and it’s clear the latter is still one of the most formidable generals in Qin’s armies.

The coalition certainly has a massive advantage in numbers (at least 500,000 troops, even without Qi).  But there are challenges in mounting a coalition invasion, as Li Mu knows all too well.  Everyone is already jockeying for position for the aftermath of Qin’s destruction, before the war has even been won.  And this problem is compounded by a fact that’s illustrated when Li Mu’s Zhao army meets up with Wu Feng Ming’s Wei force – the remaining invasion armies are basically of equal size.  That means they’re entitled to equal shares of Qin according to the pact Li Mu negotiated, but even more urgently it means they theoretically don’t defer to each other. If Wu wants to tarry and dance with Biao and Xin, Li Mu has no overt means to order him not to.

There’s another reason Wu has slowed down.  Wei is the farthest advanced of the coalition armies, thus making them the vanguard – and no one is getting paid extra for that duty, and the extra casualties it brings with it.  For Li Mu a rapid invasion was the key to everything, but these kinds of complications are the inherent weakness of a coalition-based invasion.  With Chu, Yan and Han now converging on the scene these concerns are about to lose their importance, but some of the element of surprise has been lost.  How will Changping use that tiny respite – and what is the 20% success rate desperation strategy that he’s called all his generals back to the capital to explain?

Without a shadow of a doubt, Kingdom really hits the spot.  It fills an anime niche that hasn’t really been filled since it vacated it six years ago, though shows like Shoukoku no Altair and Arslan Senki bit off chunks of it.  There’s nothing quite like a grand, sweeping military epic, especially one that’s heavy on historical realism and light on magical realism like Kingdom.  And happily, I’ve barely noticed the visuals in the first two episodes – which for this franchise counts as a massive improvement.  I don’t know for how long we’ll be enjoying Kingdom – a series length hasn’t been announced (I’m guessing three cours again), but the elephant in the room is the more pressing issue.  As with everything anime at the moment, I’m trying to enjoy it while it lasts.