Finally the evil has been conquered. Finally it’s over. I can finally put this show behind me and erase it from my memory. My sanity no longer will be tested. I’m free.
Well, I’ll officially be free when I finish this review. And honestly, not because I want to get this done as fast as I can, there’s really not much that can be said about this episode. It wasn’t painfully terrible, but it was mostly dumb and very boring. The fairytale book thing comes into play again when somehow Mule drags Melida and the roundtable of nobles into this fairytale world to witness the trial of the decade, Alice in Wonderland style. Is Lord Felgus the father?! The trial consisted of the usual, which was people being assholes to Melida. Salacha’s brother, because I can’t remember his damn name, reads from the magic book Mule stole from Melida and reads out loud that her class is samurai and not paladin. Cue the gasps and “I told you so!” Melida gets angry and as usual she has to prove herself to everyone so she’s made to fight Salacha, a higher noble class to see if Melida even stands a chance against her. To no surprise, she does perfectly fine and the people watching look like idiots and are afraid that they’ll be in trouble for their treasonous actions. What’s his name is stunned but impressed and takes things into his own hands and summons an ink dragon thing to kill anyone that was present, to make it seem like nothing happened. The girls try to save as many people as they can and the girls (who are friends again? i don’t know) and the scene changes the court scene to some sort of cage with a beautiful moon in the background.
The man with the mask that was posing as Melida’s father appears before them. The fight was quick and lame. Kufa arrives somehow being the hero and he and Melida team up to defeat him, which they then proceed to do. Everything ends well, everyone is fine. Other stuff happens where the guy that Kufa defeated his then killed by Salacha’s brother, and it looks like he’s still not done as he wants to investigate further. He’s especially eyeing Kufa.
In the end Melida’s father acknowledges her, and he even says that one of her relatives was actually a samurai themself so her being a samurai is okay I guess? Wow, so convenient. And he’s nice to her this one time and Melida cries and yeah cool. In the post credits scene, Melida uses her favor to ask Kufa to continue to watch over her and be there to witness the world when people finally respect and acknowledge her. Also, she wants to fight for the sake of his life, not him only fighting for the sake of her life. And just to make me gag and laugh one last time, Kufa calls her “my little lady” and have those roses like the first episode. Thanks.
FINAL IMPRESSION
THERE IS NO PRIDE HERE. Assassin’s Pride? No, no one should be proud of this garbage. I feel so horrible for the people that have their names attached to this piece of junk. It’s such an embarrassment and was terrible in every way. The plot was incoherent, probably due to the fact that so much of the material was completely skipped and cut out. Which meant that nothing made sense, characters and plot points would just show up without any explanation, with nothing to back it up or have their inclusion make a lick of sense. The pacing on top of that was god awful and just made the story even worse than it had to be. Some of the plot points were stupid, and maybe the source material isn’t all that great. But there’s no way it’s this terrible.
The characters are mostly forgettable or really bland, but I still ended up liking Melida. The show made her annoying sometimes, but I always loved how she stood up for herself and gained a lot of confidence. She can be immature and childish and kind of dumb, but she can hold her own and she can have a great attitude. This final episode showed that again, so it wasn’t all bad. And she’s cute.
Story was bad, pacing was horrible, characters are bland and that includes Kufa sadly. The animation was bad, but sometimes would look pretty nice. That giant moon with the pretty blue background was nice, as well as that shot of their lantern world, the inside of the library, etc. But sadly the show looked so painfully average, or bad. I don’t think I mentioned this before, but I actually wasn’t a big fan of the uniforms. For young girls, they have skimpy outfits with skirts that barely cover their asses, and the school uniform has a weird thing going on with those boob patches? I don’t know what to call them, but look at the uniform and you know what I mean.
Also, the romance between Melida and Kufa I’m not a fan of at all. I still don’t know much of anything about Kufa but I just don’t feel the romance between them, and the age gap is just gross. He’s not that much older than her, but it’s the mental age gap that’s really gross here. Just…yuck.
There’s so very little good here. Melida is cool, sometimes the environments can look very pretty, and the OP and ED have nice songs. But literally everything else is atrociously terrible. Story makes no sense, some of the stuff that happens is really stupid, characters are boring, pacing was bad. I’ve said these things a lot, if you made it this far with me you should know what’s wrong with it. The first episode wasn’t perfect but it was a set up for a potentially cool show, but it ended up being a piece of steaming garbage and I’m glad it’s over. Now I’m free.
3/10
The general impression I got from other viewers is that you’re better off reading the LNs, or otherwise the manga version; they keep in more of the character interactions and subtleties that made the material interesting.
Also, I hope the LN material links I sent you were helpful.
Spoiler: Now one interesting bit about Kufa is
that his vampire mother actually fled her homeland with her son for the human kingdom, where she died there. Not much has been explained about the vampires in particular, but overall bitter racial tensions/warfare between various lancantrope species are a major factor enabling the kingdom’s survival; that is if the ruthless power plays and suppressed social tensions in the kingdom don’t destroy them first.
^^^ I can absolutely vouch for this, at least in regards to the manga since I haven’t read the light novel yet. This adaption was so disappointing. The series deserved better. =3=
Yeah I’ve seen the same. Honestly it seems like a given, considering how badly this adaptation came to be. I’d like to check it out one day, but the anime unfortunately sullied its image for me so it’ll be awhile.
Also yes, they were very helpful thank you! Speaking of, that’s another thing this anime barely touched on, which were the lancanthropes. I had no idea there were so many different races of them, but we never got to see the dark part of the world anyways. It would have been really cool to see that part of this universe.
And about Kufa, it makes sense why he and his mother were persecuted. I guess I could have put two and two together…
From what I’ve heard, the dark world is mostly mentioned as worldbuilding but not really visited. Greater focus is on the various political conspiracies and intrigues within the human kingdom.