Twelve Kingdoms 24-26 - Okay episodes, but this series continues being somewhat uncomfortable to watch. I don't like how long it keeps the suspense going before it finally allows anything to happen, I can't take it and just want to know what's going to happen but in this show it's likely that it'll be way too long until it'll tell me. Not fun.
As for the plot, Youko is the main character but there are also bits about the stories of two other female characters we've seen some of before, the former princess Shouhei from ep. 23 and a Japanese girl who got caught in a storm and pulled to the Twelve Kingdoms a century ago and is now a servant at a quite nasty woman's palace. She's immortal and can understand their speech thanks to the servant contract, but hates her mistress and is miserable. Understandable, with the not very nice stuff the mistress makes her servants do.
Youko's story is the best of these three by far, so far. She's the queen now of course, but she's having a tough time with learning how to be queen of a fantasy kingdom. That makes sense, how many modern-day high schoolers would be able to cope with suddenly being tossed into a very strange fantasy world and abruptly made their ruler? It's kind of absurd to expect her to be able to get it all without problems, she just doesn't know how this world works and nor would anyone. I'm not sure exactly what's going on yet, entirely, because the show's keeping it hidden, but there is obviously a conspiracy. Probably several conspiracies. So far one has been revealed, in part; it remains to be seen if these people really were evil, I'm not sure, but I guess they were conspiring against her. The question is why, is that lord who escaped behind it or is it deeper? I expect there to be multiple conspiracies soon. Youko's doing what she can and she's doing a decent job of it, but it's really hard for someone to be tossed into a tough job like that, particularly when they know nothing about how this world works. I'm sure she will figure out things better as the series continues, she's smart enough. But yeah, it's an interesting story of conspiracies and Youko learning about how the kingdom works and how she should run it. This part was the best side of these episodes.
As for Shouhei, she's a serious pain. Sure, up to this point all she'd ever done was been cute and danced and stuff, without another thought in her head, and now she has to suffer and deal with being mortal, but seriously, I do think that she should be more able to rationally think about what people are saying about the things her parents did. She hears the innumerable horriffic stories of their crimes, but she somehow manages to mostly ignore them and just keeps defending his actions. Sure, she was sheltered in the palace and not allowed out, but now that the truth has been revealed to her, that she continues to be in denial and defend them is awful! Even if it's sad and hard to take, the truth is the truth, and she's not just denying it, she's making false, stupid accusations on others in her attempts to cling on to the lies her parents told them about what she was doing.
I can understand her bitterness at suddenly being mortal now and having to work instead of living in the palace, but her awful attitude, defense of her father's actions, etc. make her very, very hard to take. That Kei guy was being pretty admirable when he ignored her numerous stupid insults and just banished her, instead of having her killed like almost everyone else in the country wants...
