Back to the status quo: starting these posts off with squirrel pics.

— More importantly (maybe), the story is back to focusing on Yona and her gang of of misfits. They’re still looking for the Green Dragon, and this has taken them to Awa, a port town within the Earth Tribe’s territory. Yona has never seen the ocean before, but I guess that’s not too surprising. She used to be a sheltered princess, after all.

— I still don’t really see what’s so good about Hak… or why his archetype is so common in these stories. It doesn’t even seem like good-natured teasing between two potential love interests. Usually, teasing is clever and playful. He just flat-out calls her ugly. Secondly, it’s never balanced. Yona never teases him back in a similar way. She’s more like a bathroom carpet who just absorbs all the shit that he flings her way, and we’re supposed to be like, “Oh, the bishie is flirting with her! Doki doki~!”

— Hak goes into the port city alone for now, and notices that no one is really happy. He then sees officials openly trying to drag some girl away to do something unsavory. Probably prostitution. As a result, he and this dude have to step in and save the girl. Hm, conspicuously green hair? Gosh, I wonder who he could be!

— Welp. That’s why he’s a bodyguard.

— Green Dragon’s name is Jaeha, and his gimmick is that he can… fly? Yo, that’s the best power yet. He also talks about beauty constantly, really values his freedom (don’t we all), and runs around with a bunch of pirates. But of course, this is anime, so the pirates aren’t really bad guys. Likewise, the officials generally aren’t good guys.

— Again, Awa lies within the Earth Tribe’s territory, so this just cast an even more negative light on Lord Geuntae. You could say, “Hey, he can’t do everything,” and that would be a plausible argument… but as we’ve seen, he’s been doing nothing lately but sitting on his ass, bitching about how the kingdom needs to go to war.

— The next day, everyone goes into town because Hak had failed to buy any food and provisions on his first foray. But because he had helped Jaeha attack some officials, he goes into town separately again. This just gives the Green Dragon the opportunity to drag Hak off to a brothel, where their conversations are really just disguised exposition dumps.

— Then of course, Hak’s buddies happen to walk by, and they think he split off just to visit some prostitutes. They don’t see the Green Dragon, of course. After all, he can fly. Also, he knows that the other Dragons are nearby, and he doesn’t really like it one bit.

Y’see, he sees the whole “destined to serve King HIryuu” thing as nothing more than a loss of freedom. I’m not inclined to disagree. It’s just too bad that he’ll eventually find his way into Yona’s group anyway.

— Hm.

— Hak and his friends meet up with the woman he had saved the day before. More exposition dumps.

— Yona also notices that no one in town is happy. Oddly enough, Hak is surprised by her observation. It’s not like you need to visit cities often to be able to read people’s expressions. What’s incongruent is how she can make an observation like that, but be oblivious to Hak’s obvious love for her. In other words, typical anime nonsense.

— Later that night, a ship is hoping to make a killing by selling drugs to the people. Y’know, it’s similar to the opium thing that happened to China. Jaeha and his pirates, however, attack and sink the bad guys.

— Unbeknownst to Yona and her buddies, Jaeha thinks he can recruit Hak to the pirate’s cause.

How? I don’t know. He’s beautiful or something? Maybe he erroneously thinks we’re all a little bi on the inside? Oh well. What’s notable is that he’s more than confident that he can get the job done.

— Anyway, the episode is over, but I have some quick meta stuff to mention. I’ve been skipping a few shows lately. You can blame that on my laptop completely bricking, which makes writing during the day a bit difficult. I don’t exactly want to blog on my phone. Plus, my hectic work schedule has left me exhausted once I get home. I still don’t have a replacement laptop, but things have settled down a bit. Hopefully, things will return to normal this week.