Impression
Well… Aladdin definitely means business. I’m glad he’s finally taken center stage in the battle against the Fanalis Corps Muu, Myron and Rohroh, who seem to be the only ones dishing out any damage for Reim. Well, I suppose it’d be slightly unfair to say that – they did manage to tear through a whole lot of Bolg defences with their bare hands after all. It’s just sort of unfortunate for them that Aladdin thought up his ingenious plan of flooding the battlefield and treating the Fanalis to an electric current (if you’ve read the manga you’ll know that his idea came from Morgiana, who isn’t very good with water). Myron and Rohroh are evidently members of Muu’s household, and their newly revealed long-range strength is actually sort of frightening – I’m surprised they haven’t run out of magoi to be honest 😀 Those three are clearly a cut above the rest, both in animated design (thanks, A-1 Pictures!) and fighting ability – were it not for Aladdin, they would have been sufficient manpower in wiping out most of Magnostadt’s attack force (or at least, the ones who were useful in the first place). The thing about magicians is that they run on a limited amount of magoi as well, which means a battle of attrition is technically possible against Magnostadt – and on the other hand, Muu still has cards to play, and isn’t even using Barbatos properly. He showed a bit more of his militant side today – he’s been sort of mellow so far, but it looks like he’s as ruthless as the rest of them after all.
I’ve been waiting for Aladdin’s power-up for a long, long time – and for the most part, it was pretty damn awesome. Resolving conflict through non-violent means is what separates Aladdin from Mogamett, despite the eerie similarity of that enormous Halharl Infigar to Mogamett’s WMD last episode (the manga’s version of the Halharl arguably had a greater impact though – it certainly looked more destructive). He needs to end things without killing anyone – and by collapsing the three Ugo sand giants he can continue crushing the Reim army’s morale and push them back to the shore each time, using the Rukh’s power to help him. Muu’s still got a wildcard though – remember how he was talking about metal vessels being the only tools with the ability to put a dent in a Magi’s Bolg? Yeah, Barbatos might give Aladdin some trouble… and if you remember, he didn’t do so well when he last faced off against a metal vessel user (Kougyoku and Vinea).
Finally, the next episode will unfortunately be delayed for a week (as if there hasn’t been enough trouble over release schedules!) so we won’t be getting any Magi until the 23rd of Feburary. It’s apparently due to the Sochi Olympics in one way or another – and they probably foresaw this, which might be why we got a double episode a couple of weeks back.