Magi Episode 12: Determination and Separation

“You’re not needed anymore. Get out of here. If you still plan on stopping me, then the next time we meet, we’ll be enemies.” – Kassim

Summary

Sinbad informs Alibaba and Morgiana of his suspicions, and later tells Alibaba of his intention to make Alibaba the new king of Balbadd.  A shocked Alibaba goes for a walk the next day after mulling over his thoughts, and is abruptly taken to meet Kassim, who informs him of the Fog Troupe’s plan to rally the citizens and attack Balbadd Castle the next day. Intending to stop him, Alibaba manages to get Sinbad to teach him the proper method of wielding a djinn, and heads to attempt to speak to Ahbmad once more.

Impression

Today’s episode was very much a bridge between two major plot events in the show – the confrontation with the Kou Empire ending last week and the storming of Balbadd Palace due to begin next week. As with many other series within the shounen genre, there’s that period of reflection and training the characters go through before attempting to challenge the enemy once more, and this episode we got more puzzle pieces in addition to that. Sinbad gives us a different explanation as to what a Magi is – to him, they are known as world-creating magicians, and aside from having massive rukh reserves they also have the more significant ability to raise dungeons at their whim and guide people through them. While Aladdin might not be capable of this just yet, we’ve definitely seen Judal do this, as he was responsible for the collapse of Amon’s dungeon back in Qishan near the start of the series. With Judal allied with the Kou Empire, it also makes sense that they eventually grew to become a massive powerhouse, as Judal could raise as many dungeons as he’d like for various princes and princesses of the Kou Empire to conquer in order for them to gain djinn metal vessels. Hakuei has one, and so does Kougyoku – it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that all members of the Kou royalty have their own metal vessel, courtesy of Judal.

“There are real heroes in the world.” – Alibaba Saluja

I can understand that Alibaba would be down after having Ahbmad (whose name has reverted its spelling yet again) completely reject him, but when he gets depressed, it really hits him hard. And it came at a really bad time too – where the country needs to be remade from scratch after being destroyed by a greedy king. Only someone who truly loves Balbadd will be able to do that, and right now the person everyone’s looking to for that task is Alibaba. Sinbad agrees he should, and the citizens, the Fog Troupe, Morgiana and even Sahbmad believes in him and his ability to lead Balbadd to a brighter future – everyone except Alibaba himself. Oh, and I suppose Kassim as well.

Kassim seems to be pretty fed up with the situation. It looks like he’s given up on the idea of using royalty to bring the monarchy down from within – instead, he’ll use the extra-governmental pressure to topple it down through a revolution. It’s true – if you give unhappy, desperate people information about their futures as slaves and evil weapons, then there’s no doubt that an attack on the palace will be mounted, which would blow up into a full-scale war between the citizens of Balbadd and the Kou Empire. I disagree fully with Kassim, by the way – sometimes having the advantage in numbers doesn’t matter, as with Kou you have quality over quantity. And whose to say that they haven’t got reserves anyway? The Arms Dealer is also reeking with suspicion – no, I’m pretty sure he’s not just a simple Arms Dealer. Emitting black rukh immediately links him with Judal, Banker and therefore the Kou Empire all over again. With the Kou Empire supplying weapons to the Fog Troupe, they have an element of control within it, and may be manipulating it from within for their own ends. Lives will be lost, but apparently neither the Kou Empire nor Kassim seem to care at this point. You do have to give him some credit in being fed up with Alibaba though, who disagrees with him yet can’t come up with a better alternative.

So the only option left is to stop Kassim, and that can be done through gaining more power – the power that comes with using a djinn properly, Djinn Equip. Sinbad was kind enough to give us a proper explanation – when getting a djinn after clearing a dungeon, it’d make sense to use it to as great an extent as you can. You can materialize a djinn if you manage to feed massive amounts of magoi into it, but normal people would die, and so only Magi can skip Djinn Equipment and go straight to producing a full djinn. The alternative is to cover your whole body with a djinn’s form, or to equip the most effective part of its form – a weapon. It’s very cool, and I’m sure it’ll look great once he does it – but that’s the issue. Trying to speak with Ahbmad again to stop Kassim from mounting his assault is all well and good, but he’s going despite not even managing to achieve Djinn Weapon Equip, or seemingly without doing much training at all. I think they actually skipped a lot of the training in the manga to quicken the pace a bit, because here it looks like all Alibaba did was some half-assed attempts before running out of magoi and collapsing. See, even Morgiana doesn’t look too impressed.