I hadn’t really thought about it until now, but it’s a funny coincidence that the two series with the most seasons on LiA had premieres on the same day. HeroAca has the most both of seasons and episodes. Hunter X Hunter actually has more eps than Kingdom – though even with a cour the latter will pass it. And Natsume Yuujinchou has more seasons total, but the first couple pre-date this site (hard as that is to believe). So quite a historical Saturday night/Sunday morning for anime and LiA.

How many episodes this season will run is the big question with Kingdom – and this is not a series that generally has a lot of unknowns. It’s always really good, and almost always kind of overlooked. It’s beginning a 150-odd chapter arc now, which  would nominally require three cours to adapt at the usual pace. That’s how many the first season ran, but none since have been that long. And the last one was a single cour. So with no episode count announced, we have no idea what’s in-store – three split cours, a long wait, a hurried adaptation (that seems less likely).

Kingdom always zigzags between political intrigue/diplomacy and warfare. The general trend has been towards the former, but S5 veered towards the latter. No character here straddles those two threads like Li Mu of Zhao. Li Mu is both a politician and a general, the smartest guy in the room no matter what room it is (or so he believes), and more or less the foil for both Xin and Zheng. He’s arrived, surprisingly, in Xianyang for talks with Qin’s young king. Ostensibly he’s there to try and persuade Zheng not to proceed with his plan to unite the seven kingdoms. But Zheng comes to believe he’s come to get a look at his foe and size him up.

Li Mu is a fascinating one, as he speaks with a tongue both silver and forked. I don’t doubt his sincerity when he tells Zheng he respects him and makes the case against this plan – to wit, that the war to achieve it will cause astronomical loss of life. But I don’t think for a minute he believed Zheng would be persuaded (and indeed, he didn’t try that hard). And Zheng makes a valid point – even if somehow Li Mu can convince the other six nations to sign away their right to invade each other, once the two of them are dead someone will surely come along and violate it.

In Kingdom, it’s no slam dunk that Zheng is a good guy and not the big bad. His unification plan absolutely is bankrolled in blood and there are alternatives. Not just Li Mu’s, but the path Lu Buwei advocated – economic imperialism. But so far Zheng has always come out on top. And of course it falls to his generals to put any of his plans into motion. Most obviously Xin, ultimately the protagonist of the story and the one whose perspective is closest to the audience POV. He’s up north recruiting 1000 new members for the Fei Xin force, and they’ll need them. And because the Fei Xin has gotten pretty popular, they get 6000 applicants who show up for the trials..

Being popular means the Fei Xin can afford to be choosy now. And Diao has designed a seriously hardcore set of trials for the newbies. Among them are two that Xin dubs the “Bow Brothers” – Cang Ren (Komura Shou) and Cang Dan (Hayashi Diachi). They’re not cut out for the physical trials, but having caught Xin’s eye comes to their rescue – he spots them in the reject pile and points out to Diao that she’s long wanted more skilled archers. As it turns out the Cang Brothers are very skilled indeed – in fact their father was a respected archery commander that a couple of Xin’s captains had served with. One of them was part of a regiment that his archers saved from certain death.

It’s not played up here, but there’s a crucial element of this sequence. Many of these men are here because of Xin – both who he is and what he is, a commoner. He’s a peasant who worked his way up from nothing, and his army has a building reputation as a meritocracy where height of birth means little and personal loyalty and skill everything. With most generals coming from the privileged class and funnelled through military schools, this is Xin’s secret weapon in the race to the top. If you’re a commoner yourself – especially a skilled one – who else would you rather pledge your sword (or bow) to?