One last tears before the final battle; Princes of snow and blood episode 11 impression

Time for the penultimate episode for Joran. With the finale got closer, I was wondering how the director gonna conserve the time limitation to made a satisfying ending. Enough with the speculation; lets start with the new episode summaries. After exposing the real identity of Jin, Sawa didn't instantly try to stab him because from the memo left by Tsukishiro, it was revealed that Yoshinobu himself was the one who ordered Jin to decimate the village of Karasumori. Sawa wondered about his motive because at the same time, Jin acted differently from what government agents should be. The fact that he didn't deliver Sawa to them was one of the obvious fact that he deviated from them. As they talked, suddenly an intruder alarm sound started to ring and Jin instantly told Sawa to leave the place or else she would be captured and her blood would be taken daily to make a weapon. Jin told her to meet him again at Shinabozu pond during midnight. As she flew from the building, several elite agent tried to capture her alive until the "deceased" Nue executioner saved her from their chase with her bow-gun. 

He was her family killer but also a protector in shadow ..in short it is complicated xD

Sawa was surprised that Elena was still alive and she told her that her survival was thanks to Jin covering to her escape. It had became clear that Jin was a real antihero and not a villain. He decided to betray Yoshinobu after knowing how vile his boss is. First, he saved Sawa back when he was about to be killed by Kotodama. Second, he hide both Sawa and Elena from the government's reach. And last, he always work in shadow while playing a double agent. One time he would be a government agent while in another, he would be plotting a scheme to hide some information from the big bad. As Sawa and Elena evaded the government special forces, They were cornered by Rinko; the new Nue agent that we just saw from the last two episode. The interesting part was Sawa could take care of Rinko in one on one battle; which means that her fighting power was way superior despite of how gruesome Rinko's skill is. As Rinko stormed Sawa with a blade, she simply side stepped on the incoming blade and broke it using her finger and each time she broke it, she sustained a damage. Sawa kept hurting Riko until blood poured from her eyes and just when Rinko unleashed all her blades, Sawa could evade all of them and gave one big falcon punch that drove her body flying hard. Sawa didn't finish her off though and let her alive that Elena even said how different Sawa was nowadays.

Career shattering punch!!

Sawa and Elena got back to the bookstore and Elena told that Jin made the bookstore as a secret place so they would be save from the time being. Elena last mission that Jin gave from the previous episode was actually to save Sawa back to the place so she already finished her last job. In their conversation, Elena told that the Dragon vein or Rumkyakuu was about to dry out leading to the power outage at some point. It also means that the Tokugawa regime was about to end with more and more rioting happened in Tokyo. In order to make them stay above the rioters, the Tokugawa used the military to suppress the rioters and they even made a curfew hour in when they would consider any person who break the curfew as a rioter. Elena told Sawa that she should not bother to take revenge on Jin again after all the revelation and she did say that as long as the person that matter the most for her was alive, taking revenge was not really needed. One of the biggest surprise was..just after Elenad saying that, Asahi opened the door and welcoming her home. She was still alive because Jin secretly fakes her dead just like how Sawa was deemed "dead" before. Just as Elena was about to leave them celebrating the reunion, she felt pain in her stomach. It seemed that her baby was about to born at that moment. As clumsy as Sawa dealing with helping pregnancy, along with Asahi's help, she managed to help Elena gave birth to a healthy baby girl. After giving birth, Elena was resting due to exhaustion with her baby in hand

From bitter rival into a friend. Sawa and Elena had put away their difference now

The last part of this episode was more or less the conversation between Sawa and Asahi. The little girl asked Sawa if she could help her teaching about a work that mother used to teach their daughter is. Sawa then opened a drawer and gave Asahi some book about school work. She intended to send Asahi to school so that she might had a better future. She also gave the little girl the diary that Sawa mother gave to little Sawa. The diary that had a speck of blue blood was never used before and it was like a treasured possession for Sawa and now it belong to her little siste; Asahi. She asked Asahi to take turn writing on the diary and filled the empty book with their memory starting from tomorrow. After Asahi fall asleep, Sawa was sharpening her Katana and all of sudden, a sudden brief of memory between her and Asahi just resurfaced on the Katana's blade..She dropped her Katana and cried one more times ..maybe she was reminded with the fact as she could not run away from her fate and sooner or later, she had to go to end everything. It was ended with Sawa leaving the bookstore and heading for her final battle.

Sawa was very relieved to see Asahi again

Episode review

It was another good episode with Asahi revealed to be alive. It seemed that Jin knew all along bout Tsukishiro's plan so he made a body double for Asahi and made an illusion as if the little girl was dead. Yet at one point, once more time we saw Sawa cried from her bottom heart. Did she cry because she knew she would not survive her last mission? It was another set up for the next tragedy to come? About Sawa went on one on one with Rinko, I never expected that Sawa's skill was way above Rinko especially after seeing what she was capable to do during the previous two episode. I am a bit sad that it was about to end soon. While I like most of the previous episodes, I admit that I am not a very big fan of Joran in general and I thought the battle could have been handled better. In addition, I still thought that so many thing had not cleared yet. For example, the female changeling that appeared in the first episode was never mentioned again as if she was just there for nothing. Also, I don't think I can get a very through ending with just one episode left unless they made the last episode like two hours special. Ok with the end game grew closer, I hope they could squeeze the last part so well so that we could get the most satisfying ending within a limited time slot.