Week 3 Synopsis
Episode 3 Summary (“The Seven Stars of Suzaku”):
Miaka’s life isn’t being made much easier by her newfound respect in the kingdom of Konan. She still wants to go home, and Tamahome can be a blasted nuisance—particularly when she keeps on waking up and discovering that she’s clutching him. (This is the second time in two episodes…) So she asks Hotohori, who is very busy with “affairs of state” (i.e. admiring himself in the mirror), how she can attain the power of Suzaku. Hotori informs her that she needs to find all of the Seven Stars of Suzaku, men and/or women of exceptional strength and valor with a special mark somewhere on their body. Tamahome is one of the stars, as his ogre mark proves; and Hotohori himself is another. They gather together the finest warrior-scholars in the land in the hopes of finding some of the others, but the attempt is fairly disastrous: when all else fails, Miaka declares that they will be able to tell one of the Stars of Suzaku by his unwillingness to harm a girl. She tries insulting the soldiers a little bit, but when they all attack her she has not choice to run away. In the confusion, a building gets dropped on her. It’s Tamahome to the rescue, but he can’t hold the weight. As he crouches over Miaka, collapsing under the pressure of the building above him, his lips get closer and closer to hers and she begins to blush…
“Out of the way!” A woman boldly marches onto the screen, surveys the situation, and then begins chucking chunks of building out of the way. Her name is Nuriko, she’s one of the palace guards, and she is obviously another of the Stars of Suzaku. The minute she sees Tamahome, she’s in love: literally tying him up, she drags him off and leaves him in a corner of her room.
Miaka, meanwhile, is dealing with the bloodstains in her clothing. Back on earth, Yui discovers as she reads along that whatever happens to the Priestess of Suzaku happens to her: a bloodstain appears on her skirt, and disappears when the book’s protagonist washes it off. Interesting…
The remainder of this episode can be summarized very quickly: There are some shots of Miaka in her underwear, just in case any guys are watching the show. Nuriko chases the terrified Tamahome around, a lot, and Miaka and Tamahome realize that they rather like each other. (That was fast.) Nuriko is a truly bizarre person: selfish, fickle, and utterly infatuated with Tamahome. Not that she seems interested in actually making his acquaintance; she prefers to tie him up and drag him places. Following an unusually mature line of reasoning, Miaka realizes that since Nuriko is one of the Seven Stars, she’d better get to know her. After all, it looks like they’ll have to be together quite a lot. Miaka tries catering to Nuriko’s personality by offering to be her maid, but the thing turns into an unfortunate sequence of torments and Miaka ends up heading out to the gardens with Tamahome, where she declares in voice-over that there was a moment, under that building, when he really made her heart race…
[Holy cow... I don't remember that there was a single food joke in this episode! What a transformation!]