“Have you come to kill me?”
Impression
I was both amused and yet not surprised to learn that bunny girl likes carrots. Isn’t that just adorable? I think her ears are actually fake as she didn’t have them on in the prison, but still – chou kawaii. We learnt a fair bit about both herself and the world from her – for one thing, Saints are only women. I wasn’t really surprised to learn that either, but thankfully it doesn’t seem they’ll go down the route of having Adlet surrounded by (too many) women, since it doesn’t seem to be the case that you have to be a Saint to become a Brave. In the pilot episode, they made it sound like all the past Braves were Saints, but I guess it’s just because they have the power of a god, and thus are usually the ones most suited for the job. It certainly sounds like something powerful, and thus influential – before Nashetania got hers, her father ordered her execution and it sounded like she went through a whole bunch of hardships. She’s a strange girl, who somehow manages to appear both confident and talented yet nervous and inexperienced at different times – and she has an odd sense of humour. But she’s also a kind person with noble intentions and big dreams, which might be why Goldof is so devoted to her.
It makes sense that the Fiends would try to attack en-route to the rendezvous location, and it was pretty cool to see them both in action. What was slightly more abrupt was the encounter with the person who’s supposedly been going around killing all the potential Brave candidates – Fremy Speeddraw, voiced by the fluffy Yuuki Aoi. It was hyped up as a crucial fight, so I really didn’t expect to encounter them so soon – and the bigger surprise is that Fremy is a Brave, too. I speculated that the two would meet a Brave this episode, but I thought it’d be the Saint that Adlet knew – at first sight, Fremy did seem like a glum person unhappy with the way things currently were for her. If anything, it would make sense that the killer was one of the seven masquerading as a Brave, but somehow I don’t think that’s the case for Fremy. I suppose things must be complicated for her if she ended up in this situation – because why would a genuine Brave want to kill other Braves?
Seeing Fremy face off against Adlet made me remember what the premise reminded me of when I watched the first episode. It’s the Holy Grail War (or Heaven’s Feel ritual, whatever floats your boat) of the Nasuverse. In both, there are people ‘chosen’ and branded with a mark to carry out a ritual once every set number of years, which is here to defeat the Demon God and re-seal it whenever it breaks free. As the cycle repeats itself, the stakes are raised, elements become corrupt and tactics evolve – now, there are people killing Braves before they even become Braves to make the potential candidate pool weaker. The difference here is that the death count isn’t assured, and what Adlet has to do is to make friends with her and ensure that count doesn’t increase by one – that is, assuming she even is the killer in the first place.
Just as a note, in the first group of six heroes, not all of them were saints, although many were. It was only the second group that was exclusively saints. So there is precedent for non-saints being braves.
Ah yes, Nashetania did list ‘nameless warrior Ange’ and ‘Hero King Volmer’ as being Braves from the first group!