“My name is Adlet Mayer, the strongest man in the world!”
Impression
“Legends say that when demons awaken from the depths of darkness, and turn the world into a living hell, the Goddess of Fate will select six heroes and give them the power to save the world. It is always six that are chosen. And for this reason, they are known as the Braves of the Six Flowers.”
How exciting! I haven’t caught up with too much of the new season yet, but I’ve just watched this first episode of Rokka no Yuusha and it’s looking really interesting, save for the worrying one-cour status which means we might get an anime-original ending of sorts. Do bear in mind though that prior to this, I tried out (and promptly dropped) that show about sky wizards fighting magical beetles, which -let’s be honest- will make practically anything look interesting in comparison.
In all seriousness, this does look good. I’m not sure where Adlet gets his amazing self-confidence from, but it was when he first appeared that things started picking up. I have no idea what it even means to be the ‘strongest man in the world’ – what does it mean to be ‘strong’? It looked like he went through hell with his master, at least. I doubt it’s in terms of physical strength, although Adlet is pretty good on that front, and Nashetania has him beat in terms of magical ability or whatever fantasy power is in play in this world. I guess it’d be something along the lines of being able to win the fights you pick, or don’t pick – Adlet can fight for sure, but he also relied a lot on tricks and his wits when he interrupted the tournament semi-final, and that can be counted as part of his ‘strength’ as well. A type of resourcefulness, you could say. At any rate, it was enough for the ‘Goddess of Fate’ -a pretty sketchy entity if I’ve ever seen one- to recognize him as one of the Six Braves, who are heroes tasked with the quest of sealing the Demon God and bringing peace to the land.
So it’s a high fantasy sort of thing, where a group of people go on adventures to fulfil their destiny and save the world – which is exactly the sort of genre I’m into lately. Arslan Senki was one of my favourites from last season, too. A fact we’ve learnt from the synopsis -that they’re taking their time with for now- is that there are actually seven heroes who have been picked this time round, instead of six – meaning that at first sight, one of them is an impostor working with the Demon God. It then says that Adlet, understandably, is the one whom everyone’s suspicion first falls upon, although from the perspective of someone who knows hardly anything yet the Goddess of Fate or Demon God seem more suspicious to me. I mean, he can hardly have faked it in jail, and we’re seeing all sorts of other anomalies pop up, such as Fiends killing potential Braves before they get marked. It must really be unlucky for the people who end up living their lifetimes when the next round of the 300-year cycle repeats itself. Why can’t they just kill the Demon God for good?
I think it was pretty obvious that the maid was actually the princess, especially when she used her own name by accident. I hope Adlet or someone else gives her a nickname soon, because my brain thinks Nashetania is a mouthful and is instead ingraining her in as ‘bunny girl with the big boobs’. I liked how she didn’t break Adlet out until he was confirmed as one of the Braves – he actually went through a hell of a lot of days in prison whilst he was still a strange guy who’d disturbed the peace, and her personal curiosity in him didn’t outweigh the reality that he’d done something bad. At least she was thankfully friendlier than the rest of her Ancient Egypt-style country though, which seemed to be pretty uptight over ceremonies, rituals and the like. All hail bunny girl!
And on that note, I guess I’ll be blogging this? If it’s been left untouched for a week, I guess no-one else is interested! Expect an Episode 2 post in due course!
Possibility of Watching: High
Possibility of Blogging: High
Yay, glad to hear that you’ll be blogging this!:D In the season preview, it sounded like no one really wanted to cover it, but I’m glad that you’re covering it because I think that this show could be really good. Especially compared to the magic beetle show- Kuusen Madoushi Kouhosei no Kyoukan. That was so boring, but I’ll give it two more episodes because it really annoyed me that like everyone called him a traitor. Did he actually do something bad, or, what I’m betting on, is that it’s some stupid misunderstanding. But the tsundere was so annoying. Even the himedere was better. Seriously though, I’m a huge tsundere fan, so if I think that one is annoying then…yeah but anyways I’ll look forward to episode 2 of this series!
I was going to try it at least! And over the week I heard some positive remarks about it, so I made sure to give it a go. I remember not liking the CG animation for what I now know are the Fiends. But it didn’t really bother me in Episode 2, so I’m glad those fears were misplaced.
What really annoyed me with the magic beetle show was the whole ‘black master swordsman’ thing. I already hated how stupid the beetles looked from the opening fight scene, and the rest of the clichés sealed the deal for me. The trope of one boy surrounded by girls in a magic school is far too overused now – to succeed with that you need to either be the first in the genre, or have high production values and entertaining harem members – I guess Infinite Stratos fits the bill, although its second season sucked donkey balls. Mahouka had the last two elements, although Tatsuya being Jesus already separates that from the pack in itself. The last one of this genre I liked was Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance, and that was only because I’d already read the light novels. The rest in recent memory (Seiken Tsukai no World Break, Unlimited Fafnir) I all dropped after one episode. Absolute Duo I only finished because I’d gotten too far into it by the time I got bored of it.
Yeah, Mahouka is basically the definition of the “harem magic school with OP MC” genre. The first episode pretty much screams “cliché”. I usually try to stay away form those kind of shows as they’re not my cup of tea and tend to be to ridiculous for me but I gave this one ago mostly because it was late at night and I was bored. And yeah, the beetles looked so lame.
And yeah, episode 2’s CG wasn’t that bad.
I wouldn’t worry about an anime-original ending, at this rate it’ll probably end right at the end of the first volume which is pretty complete itself. I actually thought the series was over after I finished the first volume, then discovered there were more.
Oh good! It feels like the sort of story which has a definite ending (i.e. it’s over after they seal the Demon God) so I was worried that the novels hadn’t reached that point yet, and they’d have to make up a conclusion somehow.