Ice Fantasy 幻城 - Episode 28 (Recap)

kakashi: Look! This is Shi, as a baby! Wasn't he extremely cute??! And they want us to believe this cute baby was evil? I won't!
SakiVI: Me neither. They were all just prejudiced against Lian Ji and paid off to say Shi was evil by the Ice Queen. 
JoAnne: I've never seen a baby in full drag before. Well, pre-wig.

Episode 28

Chao Ya has defeated all the warriors with her harp and now it's Lan Shang's turn! After a few kind words and a smile from Kasuo, she gets into position ... and starts singing. It's the Call of the Sirens, as a concerned Mermaid Saint informs us. She walks among the soldiers, singing, and has them swaying back and forth; they're under her absolute command!
Amazing, she has a use.
She orders them to attack the ice king, freezes the spears in the air and then turns all of them into flowers. Well done!! Lan Shang wins!
Still annoying. Also, anyone else finding this idea of two women "slaying" male soldiers with performances rather sexist?
Oh yes, absolutely
But only our charm and our looks have true worth, ladies. You cannot fight this. It's biology.
Yes, so every morning, I dress up really prettily, put on make-up and then I go sit in the office and am charming. It did get me really far! I will have to learn how to make it rain plastic flowers though
But the silly girl collapses shortly after. When she wakes up, we realize she has lost her voice. Only temporarily (I want to add "sadly", since I really don't like her voice). However, she will never be able to sing again. Singing songs is a big deal for mermaid princesses. It's part of their arsenal. That's the price for the Siren song. Wow, gurl. You really love Kasuo a lot, do you. He stays with her all night because of it (fully clothed and only as a nurse) and she is very happy about that.
You need some self-respect, LanShang.
Wow, though, that was quite a sacrifice.
Less happy: Shi, who realizes that his plan to set his brother free might actually backfire, when he looks at the two. Oh well, darling, such is life. And why are your eyebrows off-colored?
Must be from all his emo-ing over Kasuo. The emotions burnt up his eyebrows.
It's a measure of how high the shit is piling.
So, back to the important stuff. If you've been paying close attention like I have, you know that we have one fight left - the one between the Healer and Luna. Yawn.  He can't sleep before the battle and it seems she can't either. She calls him outside and I notice it isn't dark at all. Maybe they are so far north, there's only an hour of dark. Why were they even trying to sleep?! This drama is puzzling. Anyway, Luna is concerned she might kill him - and promises to look after his father when she does. Oh come on you two. Look at how happy he is that she is even talking to him:

He would've had better luck if he'd looked like this:
Funny I was just thinking that for the first time, he doesn't look like Siwon.
Siwon, not healer.
I dunno, I feel pretty damn good when I look at this.
Cut to Li Luo!! Yay! Yippee! And that bad-hair man whose name escapes me right now. He demands she should make a wreath of flowers - from flowers that take 500 years to sprout and another 500 years to grow (that he makes rain from the sky though). When it does blossom, it only lasts for one day. That's a STUPID flower, if you ask me. Pointless, really. Anyway, it's called Day Blossom. Unimaginative name.
Plot twist: They picked this guy up off the street in Brooklyn, NY. He's not in costume, that's just how he dresses on Wednesday.
And you might have guessed it, Bad-Hair ex-Iceling has a sad story to tell that relates to this flower. He could've just kept it to himself. No one really needed to know his story. 3000 years ago, he gazed upon it for the last time, with his mortal love. He promised her they would look at them again, but, problem!! Mortal woman, who definitely does not have 3000 years to spare... Li Luo guesses he knows something about how to make someone immortal and thinks this guy can definitely help her to get back Kasuo's powers! I doubt that, dearest. He went from this:
To this. All hope is lost.
Fair point. 
Right but he doesn't need to make them live 3000 years. Maybe he was just overzealous before.
He also doesn't want to help. He is surprised she is obviously in love with her king (and she admits it freely) but he also thinks one immortal will just be replaced by the next, which means it does not matter who is king. He has a point there.
Why would you need to replace an immortal, though? Isn't that the point of being immortal? Foreverness?
I think these immortals aren't really immortal. They just grow really, really old

But now, it's time for the last match!  
Can't help myself, but this has to be used: 
Poison and healing is the topic. No big surprise there. No, sigh. Luna is to poison the Healer to death if she wants to win. Go for it, Luna!  And he is to heal himself from her poison if he wants to win. Work hard, Healer. There's a time limit (which means there is a chance they won't end up killing each other). Huang Tuo stands no chance, of course, he is too trusting, the dummy. It's pretty gross. Agreed.
She plants all her poisons inside his body and then activates them with her sword. When he is writhing on the floor, she wants him to admit defeat, but he won't ... he'd rather die, it seems. Dummy. and who is on which side again? And he tells her he is worried about her well being and especially her guilt after she kills him. They could have tried a bit harder with the makeup? No?
That does it, I need to put another Siwon gif here: 
Everyone feel refreshed?
I do. Thank you. OMGwhendoeshecomebackwhenwhenwhen

Conflicted, Luna still raises her sword for the final blow ... but she never gets to deliver it because both Kasuo and Shi intervene. Good boys! The death of a friend is not worth being a king, says Kasuo. And both admit defeat.
You might have guessed it: this is exactly what this round was all about. The king needs to have compassion! Both win.
This is lame. 
You have a lot of anger inside, don't you.
Oups ... that means the two bros have to go up against each other too. But before that, it's time to renew the bonds of friendship between our gang of tribe leaders under a parasol, overlooking the Infinity Ocean! They're sipping cocktails, saying deep things, like whoever will be king, they will pledge their loyalty to.
As they should.
I would be pissed off if I had to risk my life knowing that it really didn't make a difference as to the outcome.
At his dead siblings' graves before the final match, Kasuo learns of the Seven Saints (here are some of them, hahahaaaa, they look so dumb (Pfffft)):
Rejected as a concept by every management company in existence, the Seven Saints turned to govt. work
... and is told what happened when they tried to foretell Shi's destiny, like they do with every one of the Ice King's children: The ringleader died. And everyone else who tried to read Shi's future was severely injured too. The magical cubes declared Kasuo the future king. So you can absolutely not lose, Kasuo, got it? No pressure at all. And in case you do lose? They will simply kill Shi.
I hate them all. So prejudiced.
Gee, I don't know, I think if that happened I'd think, wow, we're sticking our nose into something we shouldn't - not gee, that baby must be evil.
I hate the Seven Saints. Horrible devils, the lot of them. As does Kasuo, who comes to Shi's defense! Bravo, Kasuo! And you're looking really handsome today!
Kasuo has a use too.  
Hm. Shi wants to set Kasuo free - which means he wants to become king so that Kasuo can live a life as free as the sleet birds - but Kasuo now knows that he cannot let Shi win: it means he will die. That's not good. That's not good at all.
It's quite a conflict, yes.
So why not just tell Shi look, nice idea, but it won't work and here's why?

Comments

The Seven Saints are a bunch of dickheads who I am looking forward to seeing punished for their hubris. Seriously, pompous asshats. Exactly. And if Shi absolutely cannot be king, why did the Ice King not simply declare Kasuo his successor and be done with it? Exactly. YEAH. Anyway, we all know Kasuo cannot win against Shi, because he still has NO POWER. Exactly. And we also know that those Seven Asshats will not be able to kill Shi at all, because they are stupid asshats. Exactly. Well I'm not sure about that bit. I am betting a lot of money on Shi as the next Ice King, who is with me? Me. But what if it's a self-fulfilling prophecy? He'd have been fine except they opposed him, but in opposing him they kill him, and all that dying from BEFORE was actually a warning not to oppose him? If that's the case, they killed themselves. PS. I stopped watching this now that I know the ending, because I don't have 417 years left.