Akatsuki no Yona Episode 2

Poor Yona. You know, I talked a lot of crap about her being spoiled and pampered, but being a princess…well, that’s not so surprising. But after all of this happening, losing her father and her home on her birthday, this is a great set up for extreme character development for her. I feel so bad for her.

Before the scene we ended at last week, we saw what transpired beforehand. Hak notices guards not at their posts and some he doesn’t even recognize, and he knows immediately that there’s something wrong. Back with Yona and Soo-won, we get the reason why Soo-won would kill King Il. Il was the youngest of the brothers, and Soo-won’s father Yoo-hong was the eldest and was supposed to take the throne. But, their father appointed Il to the throne instead, a man who was afraid of weapons and conflict, while leaving a strong and courageous man like Yoo-hong to the side. His choice confused people, but Yoo-hong didn’t mind at all. He smiled until the end. The end was King Il. Apparently, the man who was afraid of weapons stabbed his own brother to death. The official story is that he died in an accident, but Soo-won tells the truth, making it hard for Yona (and me) to believe. Soo-won avenged his father, and now he wants to take the throne as king of Kouka. He asks why Yona came into the king’s quarters since it was rare to do so, and yeah…she basically told him how she felt. Dammit I hate you Soo-won.

I don’t know who he is and I forgot his name, I’m guessing he’s Soo-won’s advisor, comes in with guards. Since Yona saw everything they have to kill her. Yona accidentally starts a fire and while the guards are distracted she makes a run for it. She doesn’t go too far and gets caught, coming back to the scene where we left off last week. Hak then finds out that Soo-won killed King Il, and in a fit of rage attacks him, and then ensues a fight. One of the guards points his sword at Yona though, so Hak stops. It’s not until an arrow is shot in between all of them, that Hak takes this opportunity to attack the guard and run off with Yona.

The rest of the episode is escaping the castle. The person who fired the arrow was Min-soo, another one of the guys who served the king and seemed to be close with Hak. The three of them hide for a bit, and know the only safe place for them is to escape the castle. The problem is with all of the guards everywhere, and not knowing which ones are on Soo-won’s side. And so Min-soo has a plan. He’ll wear one of Yona’s cloths over his head and run off, to confuse the guards while the real Yona and Hak make their escape. He leaves, Hak takes out the two guards at the main door, and they both leave the castle. And I was practically yelling at them to go faster because they were walking so slow!! Their lives are at stake and they’re SO SLOW.

BUT WHAT REALLY PAINED ME WAS MIN-SOO. They had wanted Min-soo to escape with them too, but he knew he wasn’t going to make it out alive. While running, guards from above were shooting arrows at him and plenty hit him. It wasn’t until three guards from below dealt the finishing blow. MAJOR PROPS TO THIS GUY. HE GAVE HIS LIFE TO PROTECT THE PRINCESS AND HIS FRIEND. YOU’LL BE REMEMBERED.

Soo-won and his advisor notice the main door was left open, so a search party goes into the mountains to find Hak and Yona. Those two really made it far. I was yelling at them to run, but they went plenty far. They rest because poor Yona is not used to walking long distances, especially on a mountain. Yona’s scared they’ll die, she doesn’t want Hak to die, Hak feels so betrayed by Soo-won seeing as they were friends, and Yona feels awful because she didn’t utter a word of thanks to her father for her birthday party, and I really want to hug them both, but especially Yona. But I don’t need to do that because Hak did YAY SHOUJO FLUFF. Basically, he tells her to keep on living, and that’s how she can return her feelings to her father.

We hear Yona narrating, about losing everything, and how it’s led her to the present. Where she’s got a mini army taking out a huge army. These boys have amazing abilities, and it’s making me more excited to actually meet them in the show later. Short-haired!Yona basically says “GET OUTTA MY KINGDOM, BITCH” and shoots an arrow at them and HMHMSJKFHSDKJ it’s over.

I really enjoyed the episode because this is where Yona’s journey begins, and this is where the excitement starts for us viewers. I didn’t talk about Yona much because it was Hak that took the reigns today. Poor baby girl was a mess, being betrayed by the man she was in love with, and having to leave everything behind. I like the pacing so far. It didn’t feel rushed or anything, so I’m hoping this series gets 24-26 episodes. If it’s only going to have 12/13 episodes, then I feel like it’s going to be too fast for me, and right now the storytelling and pacing feel perfect. I enjoyed the action scenes, they didn’t look or feel slow and clunky. The animation is still pretty. Hak still looks good. Speaking of, it looks like we’ll be getting some backstory on him next week. A note about this show is that it switches to short-haired!Yona, and then the events leading up to that moment (what we’re watching now), and that may not be such a big deal to people, but it kinda irritates me because I love what I’m seeing and I’m reeeeally excited to actually get to that point with all the other characters. Gotta be patient.

Oh, and Soo-won’s story about his uncle killing his father? I still don’t believe it. We saw how sweet this guy was. Maybe this was just Soo-won’s own plans to take the throne in his father’s place or something. It just doesn’t sit right with me.