Akatsuki no Yona Episode 18: Ties

This episode was a mix of emotions. It had me laughing like an idiot, it made me upset at the injustices in Awa, and it made me hopeful. Hopeful that our main group is gonna kick the ass of this lord guy that’s ruining peoples’ lives.

As we already know, Jae-ha is getting horny over Hak and sets out to recruit him for their crew. The main group, minus Shin-ah, head into Awa again to look around. They all pass by a shop where the officials are beating people in the shop. Yona gets furious and starts to head in, when Hak stops her, where Ki-ja stops him, and Yun stops them all and tells them that they have to keep a low profile. So they shouldn’t get involved. The officials leave, and so they continue. Then Hak wanders off all of a sudden, and we then find out why.

And this little shit over here just laughs.

He makes me laugh so much, I love this guy. He’s actually a cooler and better character than I imagined he would be. Jae-ha makes things a lot more fun and hilarious. Behind him, Hak mentions Jae-ha’s own wanted poster, who looks just as ugly and terrible as Hak’s. Actually I think even more worse because I didn’t even recognize it as Jae-ha. The losers rip them off the bulletin board and make a little fire and burn the posters off.

Lucky for Jae-ha to run into Hak, and he starts to try to recruit him. But he says the gayest of stuff and just freaks out Hak and just makes a huge scene because everyone just turned around to look at them, and honestly at this part I practically fell on the floor laughing. It was awkward and beautiful, but their interaction ended when Yona and the group called out to Hak, and Jae-ha made his escape, sensing Ki-ja’s presence. He lands on a roof above them, and he says how awesome he is and then once he takes a step forward, he slips from the roof and crashes into a pot, landing right in front of Ki-ja, who had wandered from the group. What a loser.

Meanwhile, we shift to an emotional scene. Yona, Hak, and Yun pass by the same shop where the officials had been, and they head inside when they hear crying. There’s a couple, beaten, the woman holding an unconscious child. Yona asks what happened, and they explain that this child (which isn’t theirs) stood up against the officials, and he was struck by them. Ever since, he’s never moved. Yun approaches the child and checks his pulse, only to announce that he’s already dead.

Yona is completely hurt by this. She wants to do something,  but knows that they’re powerless. They all are. If only they had stopped the officials before, they could have spared that little boy’s life. And I’m just as angry as Yona.

While the others are away, Ki-ja speaks with Jae-ha, who tells him about himself. Jae-ha left his village because it felt like a prison and arrived in Awa, which he loves. Ki-ja is then excited and grabs Jae-ha and runs off with him, happy he found the Green Dragon. But it was weird because when Jae-ha fell, his ass got stuck in a pot and he couldn’t get out, so Ki-ja just carried him like that and thought he had a really big ass.

But Jae-ha makes it perfectly clear that he doesn’t want to accompany him and Yona on their adventure, no matter how much he asks. He wants his own life, and just calls Ki-ja a puppet. So he breaks the vase, jumps off and escapes Ki-ja, finds Hak, and properly asks him to join his crew. When then Yona and the others approach them, and Ki-ja tells him that he’s the Green Dragon. One look at Yona, and Jae-ha hears that vow in his head, like the other boys did. But again he says, rather politely, that no he doesn’t want to join them. And Yona doesn’t pressure him, because she never commands. She asks.

Hak then explains to them that he’s the one that helped him knock out those officials from the other day, and also that Jae-ha’s trying to recruit him to join his pirate crew. Yona is interested, and says she wants to meet his Captain. So the next day, all of them go to his ship and meet the Captain. It was Yona’s idea to join the pirate crew, because Yona wants to do something against the injustices happening in Awa and to take down that lord jerk. So all of them have to prove themselves to join. Hak, Shin-ah, and Ki-ja have to prove how strong they are by defeating all the men on the ship, which they easily do in seconds. Captain asks Yun what he can do (cooking, sewing, making explosives, medicine, and being really cute? check). Captain asks Yona what she can do.

Well…not much of anything really. But Captain loves the determination in Yona’s eyes, so she proposes this. She’s going to make Yona do a life-threatening task to see if she really can be part of the crew.

I have no idea what Captain wants Yona to do, but in the preview it looked scary, but this is her time to shine! Yona wants to fix the wrongs that used to be under her father’s reign. Also, she doesn’t want to feel powerless anymore, and she wants to do something. You go girl. Go show Captain Scary who’s boss!