The Twelve Kingdoms is one of those animes that deserves more love. Sure, it’s ugly by todays standards, but it has some of the best world and character building I’ve ever seen. The isekai genre usually uses its premise to seamlessly introduce the audience to its fantasy world. The protagonist doesn’t know anything, so the audience can learn the ropes alongside them, seeing through their eyes. The Twelve Kingdoms, on the other hand, wants a rocky, painful introduction to its world. Yoko is hurled into the world with no explanations, where she is a part of a hated underclass and being actively hunted by the highest power in the land. The show goes to great lengths to stick you in her shoes. Not short of making a whole conlang, so that you feel just as confused as she does. No kidding, when I was first watching Twelve Kingdoms I thought that the sub I was using was just not translating some Japanese words, expecting me to be weeb enough to get it. But no. Those are words for concepts that can’t be translated into Japanese by Yoko’s innate knowledge of the new language (and were never meant to be understood by the audience, or Yoko.) In addition to the conlang confusion, the show goes out of its way to explain nothing. Why is Yoko the chosen one, and for what is she chosen? Why are they being attacked, and by who? Who was that white haired guy who swore fealty to her and what does he want? Why does he turn into a unicorn, get blood dumped on him, and then get kidnapped? Actually, that whole scene where Keiki gets kidnapped would make a lot more sense if it was a flashback later on in the show. Yoko doesn’t even see that event- it’s presented in its chronological place solely to be a confusing wtf moment. All of this confusion works together to make you, the audience, empathize with how scared and out of place Yoko feels. The girl can’t even feel safe in her own body- she gets genetically rewritten, can speak a new language, and has a goo monster living in her now. She doesn’t get an explanation as to why any of this is happening and it’s painful.
It’s important for the show to make you empathize with Yoko, because she’s not going to be doing any “likeable character” work for a little bit. She starts out as a very weak person, who’s thrust into a leadership role by virtue of being the only one who can speak the language, and she does a terrible job. Her friend group dissolves into infighting. She’s too limp wristed to make good decisions. And she ends up alone. The series explores how her upbringing surrounded by sexism has damaged her. Her self image is that of being a good woman, a good girl who doesn’t hurt others. But when she learns her friend genuinely hates her, that she has hurt them, that self image is shattered. Betrayal after betrayal by the world, and Yoko accepts that hurting people is the only way to get by. And if she can’t be that acceptable good woman, then the world has no place for her, and she doesn’t owe it anything either. She has no confidence that she is strong enough in her own identity to exist outside of acceptable womanhood. So she stops being acceptable all together. She gives up on learning anything new, gives up on learning with the world, and resorts to violence to force her way. The series throws you and Yoko down into this hellish world so that it can break Yoko down to her lowest point.
So Twelve kingdoms is a confusing show with an unlikable protagonist, you may be thinking? Why do you want me to watch this? Because the payoff is wonderful. Do you remember Rising of the Shield Hero? Yoko’s like the Shield Hero, but the betrayal that makes her give up on society is xenophobia from that society. And the solution to resolve her disillusionment is receiving kindness and grace from a denizen of the new world who is equally disenfranchised. So Twelve Kingdoms is Shield Hero, if it was actually good. Yoko gets reminded of her common humanity, and slowly comes out of her funk. She starts learning about the world again and realizes that there is a way out of her current predicament- she can escape to a country that’s less racist. She begins to feel genuinely thankful for the people who have gotten her this far. She draws a line of acceptability for herself, that she won’t cross for her own sake. This show lets you watch Yoko become a person. She decides that even though she doesn’t know why she’s here, she values herself and the people around her, and that’s enough to live with purpose. It’s a really good character arc, and it reminds me of one of my all time favorites, Yona of the Dawn.
Once Yoko gets to this level of confidence, she becomes ready to learn. And finally, the show teaches you the conlang. It’s so satisfying to be able to understand what has happened up till now in retrospect. You even learn what happened with that weird guy who turned into a unicorn and got kidnapped. The chaos of the first episode gets reframed into an unfortunate event in history, brought about by subterfuge and political intrigue. And that’s how the rest of the story is framed too. The Twelve Kingdoms is a historical record of what happens within the twelve kingdoms, and Yoko, though she didn’t know it at first, is now a player on the historical stage. The series won’t focus on her so closely from here on out. It instead examines other historical events and characters that surround her. She is no longer the protagonist, instead the Twelve Kingdoms themselves are. Is this a plot twist? Whatever it is, there is only one word that I can describe it with, and that is “grand.” Every heart wrenching struggle Yoko delt with up till now could be summed up with no more than a single sentence in the tombs of history. And The Twelve Kingdoms is history, with all the vastness it entails. If worldbuilding is the art of making a world feel big, then there can be no finer examples than the Twelve Kingdoms.