Someone pick up the phone because I called that Gustov twist. As the episode picks up where the last one left off with Shinobu having a hunch about the masked man, it is immediately confirmed that it is Gustov. However, there seems to be some weird gem wedged into his heart.
The girls escape the castle and the bomb is dropped on it. A show of force from the Seven-Day Light to show that they are willing to meet force with force. Tsukasa gives a rousing speech to the people and as everyone cheers, we see that Gustov lived through the bombing. As we muse that no human should be capable of such a thing, he slowly begins to transform into a demonic like shape. I know nothing of the magic keeping him alive or where it came from, if it came from the empire then I feel like it has to almost be intentional.
To send a demon to fight against ‘Angels’ and ‘God’.
Aoi and Shinobu are the first two to spring to action, however, in the end, it’s Tsukasa with his bullets that bring down the monster. Before he turns to stone and dies, Gustov addresses Tsukasa and calls him an imposter and a normal person. That the Lord of the land is a true prodigy, the only one meant to rule these lands. I’m curious about this statement, but I’m hesitant to craft any theories in fear of this never getting a second season and driving myself slowly insane with the need to know if I’m right or wrong.
As Gustov fades away, peace returns to the area for a time. Tsukasa is plagued by his dying words though and it’s interesting how he sees himself as nothing special when compared to his truly superhuman and talented friends. In short, he suffers from a pretty severe case of imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is feelings of inadequacy that persist despite evident success. Which obviously he’s had, he’s a very capable leader and you can really see it when he is giving his speech earlier on in the episode.
His movement, his charisma. It’s real, and while he may not believe that by the end of the episode but cheers up being surrounded by his friends as they party in celebration of their victory against Gustov and the start of the Elm republic that is where the episode wraps.
This was it, this was the perfect episode! The perfect balance of action and character drama that wasn’t bogged down by needless fanservice. It was like finding the holy grail in this series, it was so far out of reach I never thought I’d find it.
The fight against Gustov, the scene between Ringo and Tsukasa, Tsukasa’s worries and imposter syndrome. Never letting itself get bogged down by silly and pointless scenes to objectify the girls. Yes, this was it. The best episode of the series!
Final Impressions:
Honestly, I’m at a weird place with this show here at the end of it. The plot is just as interesting as I thought it would be in the beginning, there are at least three characters that I genuinely like and have a lot of fun with when they are on screen.
I adored Tsukasa, Ringo, and Shinobu. I also like Masato but after the merchant arc at the beginning of the series his involvement with everything kind of dropped off so he didn’t leave as lasting of an impression as I would of liked.
I feel like Aoi and Akatsuki got shafted as there were almost no episodes focused on them and they did very little but serve as accessories or in Aoi’s case as an excuse for fanservice.
Speaking of fanservice, Kaine and Lyrule. These poor girls, well okay, poor Lyrule. She has a lot of interesting things going on with her character but it feels like the series is too focused on sexualizing her to really explore any of the things that truly make her interesting. Kaine has some pretty interesting ideas, but she also went full yandere and scared me to death so there’s that.
If I had to pick one gripe here at the end of it all is that there was just way too much time dedicated to fanservice. Now, you could sit there and protest and say ‘Well the novels are like that’ and that there are illustrations in the novels and I would look you dead in the eyes and pull a cinema sins and say “The books don’t matter.” while a pure adaption is always nice, there are things that can be cut or dialed back. In particular, scenes that don’t really do anything to advance the plot.
Or if a scene is necessary, like say, teaching Roo how to do her times-tables at the beginning of the series you could shorten the scene a bit and have it take place in a place that isn’t the bathhouse.
I don’t know, I just found it downright distracting which is a shame, because this series does have a lot of cool characters and ideas. It just needs to break free of the confines of wasting time on the female body and focus on its characters.
If there is ever a season two, I’d watch it. I did enjoy certain bits a lot and I would desperately love to know more about the characters that got shafted this season. What makes them who they are, how they tick, how they came to know Tsukasa and the others. Things like that. The brief introduction of characters from the next arc piqued my interest as well, also there is that cute lord guy who seems to realize that the seven-light faiths destructive power is not one that can be found in their world normally.
It’s an average show with a little too much fanservice but it’s fun. I’d give it a solid 7/10 and recommend just marathoning the dub once it finishes airing so you can focus on other tasks while watching.
-Midnight
Of the new isekai series of the last couple of years I thought this was one of the better ones.
I’ve always been drawn to the basic premise of isekai where an ordinary person from our world gets transported to a fantasy world, has adventures, usually ends up with some kind of magic powers and ends up becoming a hero.
I don’t know if they technically count as the same genre but western fantasy stories I grew up on such as the Chronicles of Narnia, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of OZ have the same sort of appeal to me.
They appeal to me on two levels – the basic power fantasy aspect where an ordinary person gets granted magical powers and the worldbuilding/exploration aspect. The concept of exploring a world that is like ours but not exactly the same is fascinating. It’s also why I like parallel universe stories.
I think the biggest problem this series had was that it was only 12 episodes. Even if you cut out all the fan service I think you would only have gotten one extra episode in. Maybe one and a half.
In hindsight most of my favourite isekai anime got 2 cours for their first season which gave them some breathing room to flesh things out and allow for better pacing.
The basic premise of this series had a couple of things that set it apart from the usual isekai. The first being that it had multiple protagonists who were transported to another world to be heroes. Secondly the protagonists were already overpowered in the “real” world so they didn’t go from zero to hero as is so often the case in these stories.
In no particular order my current favourite isekai series are Sword Art Online, Log Horizon, Re:Zero, KonoSuba, Ascendance of a Bookworm and Cautious Hero.
Oh I agree for sure. It really is a good show, the fanservice is the only downside for me. As an Isekai it’s amazing.
My research into the LNs show the anime likely covered up to Vols 3-4.
Vol 9 is the most recent release in Japan (Oct 2019), with Vol 10 due for May 2020.
Vol 8’s synopsis says that the team will travel to an elven village where the mystery behind their summoning is revealed, so likely the mystery behind Lyrule wasn’t answered here because the story hadn’t reached that point yet.