彩云国物语 aka Saiunkoku Monogatari

A truly magnificent anime that I've been watching lately. If I'm given a choice I wouldn't categorize it as an anime. To me, It's more like a short fiction Chinese story like 'Xi Yu Ji' or '108 Tiao Hao Han'. By now you would have know that the story set in the ancient china. In short, this story is about an upright lady who dream of becoming a governor so that she is able to care of the citizens in her country. (In the ancient times, the court had always been dominated by men and women were forbidden to take the exams.) She knows that her dream will never come true but she never give up in her dream. And the turning point of her life begins on the day where she agree to become the temporary 'wife' of the emperor. Of course, the emperor nor she came up with this decision. It was the higher governors who requested for her assistance to guide the presently uninterested emperor into ruling the country. Being the daughter of a poor low rank governor, she agreed upon hearing the price they offered. Her duty: to make the emperor attend to his duties! Her journey begins here but it didn't end here. Of course, she manage to hold a governor post in the anime but how and what other difficulties did she face? For those questions, I'll leave it for you guys to answer them after watching it.

Is there romance in it? There are quite a few but I would say that it wasn't the story's main focus so there's only parts of these episodes that contain lovey-dovey scenes. But I got to say that the men drewn in these story are ATTRACTIVE! Lol.. Not that all of them physically attractive but all of them have their own personalities which are attractive depending on the type you like.

But do note that the story can be pretty confusing at some point of time. Since the people in the court are brilliantly talented/clever in their own way, it might be hard to understand some of the schemes they are plotting. Moreover, the subtitles are in Chinese for some of the episodes I've watched. (Chinese~ Something I've return to my teachers long ago. I'm never good at it tot. =~( )

There's in fact 2 seasons to this anime. Each is 39 episodes long. Pretty long eh? Lol.. Well I believe you will enjoy watching it and still wanting for more. Haha..fine! That might only occur to me but it never hurt to watch the first episode of the anime before deciding on whether to continue or not.