Episode 2
Things are looking more and more bleak for Yuken as it seems as if he had been snatched up by the carriage through space and time because when the mirror goes to try and locate where he came from, it basically told him there were no search results. To which begs the question as to how Yuken even got here in the first place and what possibly happened to his world. Not to mention, why would the carriage even pick him up if he had no magical prowess whatsoever. The dude was literally a normal high school student in Japan. So either there is some magic in him that no one knows about or the carriage made a mistake. We also can’t take out the possibility of the carriage just straight up accidentally killing him either so he technically doesn’t have a place to return to if that’s the case.
To which just adds to the tragedy of not being able to go back to lead his kendo team at their very first tournament. Though he doesn’t seem terribly upset the next day. I kind of wish they pushed into that a little more for him since it’s weird that he didn’t seem to be overly upset by this despite the main reason for him wanting to get home as soon as possible. I understand that maybe he’s come to terms with the idea that he’s not getting home, but it did feel a tad fast how quickly he got over it. Like at least show him lamenting about it a little more. But I suppose that’s a bit of a nitpick.
One of my favorite concepts of Twisted Wonderland is how as the name suggests, it twists the villains’ intentions to make it seem good and noble rather than what we know them as. Though I do feel like they didn’t fully translate all of the different characters as well as they did in the game because some of their explanations do still sound evil while in the game they made it so each one sounded “good.” Like for the Queen of Hearts for instance. In the game, they described her as bringing order to a chaotic world while in this translation, they made it sound like as Yukken put it, a tyrant. Which she is, but it felt like they didn’t bother to try and make her sound good like they were supposed to.
We actually get a surprising bit of Grim backstory, though considering I don’t like him, this did not make my opinion of him change. Though I do appreciate that it does “humanize” him a little so we actually see his motivations. Even if I still wanted him to be kicked to the curb. I also like that they essentially created a bond between Grim and Yukken already by him seeing Grim’s determination to become a mage similar to that of the kid who was struggling on the kendo team. And Yukken is just a nice guy where he seems to want the best for others around him. It’s very sweet of him to want to encourage others to be the very best they can be.
And then we meet Ace and Deuce and I’m gonna be honest, but I also cannot stand Ace and this episode pretty much confirmed why I could never stand the guy. Yes, I am aware that this is a villain world, but that will not stop me from disliking characters that annoy me. Especially when him and Grim immediately are at odds with one another. Maybe it’s because Ace in EN is voiced by Max Mittelman, but their relationship reminded me of Ryuji and Morgana from Persona 5. To which, was also not pleasant lol. Though I think what confused me was that if Ace could essentially negate Grim’s flames… why didn’t he do that at the ceremony????
While the two idiots fight it out, they accidentally set the statue of the Queen of Hearts on fire. To which, how that is possible, I guess I’ll just chalk it up to be being burned by magic fire lol. In any case, Crowley is not pleased and instantly expels all three of them, despite Yukken not even being a student. Like bruh, you just allowed him lodging and now you’re immediately kicking him out??? The pacing was not pacing in that moment. But poor Deuce. He didn’t even do anything and he got caught in the crossfire. I can’t even blame him for panicking because the guy wasn’t even a part of that mess. Though I did laugh at how chill Yukken was about it since he’s like “bro, I don’t even go here.” So now they’re tasked with a fetch quest to make up for what Ace and Grim did. To which… Crowley sure likes to do the bare minimum when “helping.”
I feel like there wasn’t too much to this episodes besides some build up. Which makes me a little worried about the overall pacing of this arc since there are only 8 episodes. Hopefully the little field trip to the mines won’t take too long.
Episode 3
Okay, the action was SO much better in this episode than what was in the first episode thankfully. The effects of the magic attacks looked a lot more clean and not just a cluster of lights and beams. But holy crap, I clearly do not remember what happened early on in the game… granted it’s been a few years since I played through the Heartslybul arc. All I remember is the Riddle stuff because… I’m biased lol. Anyways, I know there was a monster in that mine, but I completely forgot what it looked like. Not only was it huge, but it was FAST. And the fact it came at them with that amount of speed made it even more scary. It had a zombie effect where if it moved slowly, it wouldn’t have been bad. But because it could move at frightening speeds, I would be GONE. They did such a good job animating how unnerving the monster was and despite it being CG, they were able to blend it pretty well with the 2D background and characters where it didn’t take me out.
It’s honestly hilarious how they implemented the battle system of the game into the anime with Yukken calling out who to attack and when. However, I do think they were able to make it work without it feeling too forced. Since Yukken was the captain of the kendo team and would most likely be the one to come up with strategies to win. And while it seems silly for the isekai protagonist to of course be the one to unite everyone to fight together, considering this is the world of villains, it’s mostly a “everyone for themselves” mentality. Which is expanded upon later with Crowley where he’s actually surprised students were able to work together since the school seemed to be more or less focused on bettering the individuals. And because they disregard the students’ personalities, it’s more than likely they’re gonna be teaching a lot of self-absorbed individuals who will only do things if it benefits them. To which was shown in the first episode where Azul was trying to strike a deal with Crowley to do something about the situation rather than dealing with it immediately. Though it is hilarious how Crowley deemed Yukken as a “beast tamer,” which includes the students in the definition and not just Grim.
While the group was able to land some pretty heavy blows against the mine monster, it wasn’t enough to finish it. And when the red fire appeared to strike down the monster, I already knew who it was and I got unexplainably giddy. I know at this point, Riddle is a tyrannical monster, but I legit cannot help but find him amusingly cute. And the anime did way too well in making him look even more cute compared to his game art. While it would have been nice to have him come to help out Ace and Deuce out of the goodness of his heart.. this is not that type of world and he actually came to hunt them down because they missed singing when a hedgehog sneezed. I don’t think I ever expected write that sort of sentence lol. Hopefully next episode will focus more on him since we are almost halfway through the season and having a proper build up to his arc is needed to really stick the landing of this adaptation.
In any case, Yukken successfully delivers the magic stone to Crowley and I have to side-eye him because, he keeps having students take care of chores he should be overseeing. But instead he just kind of leaves it up to them to take care of things while he does who knows what. But aside from that, both Yukken and Grim are now enrolled into the school as a pair. Though I’m not sure what exactly Yukken will get out of the lessons since he can’t do any magic or if he’s just Grim’s babysitter. Honestly, not sure if this is better than him doing chores around the school lol.
There were a few things that they set up in this episode and I’m not sure if we’ll see what the lead to in this season. Since I don’t even know if Grim eating the monster’s gem has even been fully addressed yet in the game lol. But the mine monster was also pretty unnerving in the fact it was seemingly wearing a dwarf’s outfit while not too far away there was most likely the Seven Dwarves’ house. Or at least what it looked to be. Did something happen to the dwarves in this world? Did the monster kill the dwarves or did the dwarves become it? Either way, it felt extremely worrisome and foreboding. In any case, I’m excited to see how things continue to play out and I am enjoying this adaptation so far. I still have my worries, but so far it’s doing pretty well.
