The demons return after a century long slumber…
Streaming: Funimation
Episodes: 26
Source: Game
Summary: A century ago, the Kingdom of Orvelia quelled a demon invasion. Since then, the country has been peaceful, and that’s the only world that apprentice Knight Kasel knows. His biggest concerns are whether he’ll complete his apprenticeship with his mentor, the Knight Clause, and whether his dinner (usually something like cooked spider that would make most folks turn up their noses) will upset his stomach. His friend, a local priestess named Frey, is one of the few people with whom he shares these feelings.
But the nobles of Orvelia are beginning to hear rumblings of a new demon invasion at the borders of their country. There’s some disagreement about how to deal with this, but one rogue noble offers a suggestion – hire the mercenary group Black Edge, comprised of Dark Elves willing to fight for a price. Unfortunately, racism against Dark Elves runs deep in Orvelia, and the other nobles aren’t convinced about letting them fight on behalf of the nation. The Dark Elves also have their own goals; as a reaction to the suffering inflicted upon their people by the humans of Orvelia, they’re out to seek revenge. With demons now responsible for taking out an entire Orvelian scout party, what choice will the country ultimately make?
Impressions: Screen captures are taken using the official legal stream of the series, when available.
I knew I was taking a little bit of a risk when I watched this episode. I wanted to check it out in the short amount of time I had between getting out of bed and leaving for a pretty lengthy excursion to go pick up some mead from a local winery. I was worried that I might not have much to say about it to begin with, and with a few hours between my viewing and sitting down to write this review (not to mention, several delicious mead samples and a nap after I got back home) I thought I might end up forgetting all about it. To be blunt, that impression has much more to do with the content of the episode than it does with my schedule or Sunday afternoon habits; that may be all that some readers need to hear in order to know just exactly what my opinion is.
This appears to be a pretty toothless fantasy story where the heroes are unquestionably good and compelled to battle against the oncoming horde of evil creatures who are beginning to appear. Our protagonist, a level 1 fighter character if I ever saw one, appears ill-equipped to take on the challenge, but his dutiful nature ensures that he’ll be compelled to avenge his fallen brothers in one way or another. He’s already got a second member of his party in Frey, a priestess who I assume based on her presence throughout the episode also has some sort of latent ability. The monsters are your average demonic horde, in this case comprised mostly of goofy-looking skeletons wearing armor. It’s typical sort of D&D stuff and for the most part doesn’t leave a strong impression.
There definitely is one aspect of the story’s world building that stuck out to me, though, and that’s its incorporation of some classic fantasy-style racism. The citizens of Orvelia pretty clearly don’t like Dark Elves; that’s one of the first really strong stances anyone takes throughout the episode. When a Dark Elf character walks through the town, the townspeople beg Kasel and Clause to remove him. It comes out in bits and pieces throughout the episode that there was some kind of conflict in the past which lead to this distrust between the races; whatever the exact nature of that conflict was isn’t outlined in detail. Needless to say, they’re a maligned faction and we’re clearly meant to pick up on that within the first minutes of the episode.
I think typically this would be an opportunity for the story to explain this persecution in more detail, or perhaps introduce a sympathetic Dark Elf character to help add some nuance to the narrative. Nope! We soon learn that the Dark Elves we meet are part of a faction trying to infiltrate the government and take over the country as a form of revenge. The revenge is for prior genocide committed against them, so at least it’s not for undefined reasons. Unfortunately, that leaves us as viewers disliking the Orvelian government for being corrupt, disliking the Dark Elves for their ham-fisted “eye-for-an-eye” perspective (seriously, it would have been child’s play to get us to sympathize with them, but instead their framed as shifty and murderous), and having to fall in line behind Kasel, whose major personality trait is that he’ll eat anything. This doesn’t make me feel very optimistic.
There’s a little bit of action sprinkled throughout the episode which gets surprisingly graphic a couple of times (some dismemberment and an arrow through a man’s head for some flavor), so if that’s your bag you might get some momentary pleasure out of watching it. I’ve personally gotten a little particular about action animation and editing over the years, because I can think of so many great examples of anime for which this is a major feature. So when the majority of the battle looks sort of hokey and doesn’t really add much to the flow of the episode, it feels extraneous.
One thing I’m always curious about with these game-based properties is whether they require some familiarity with the game to be enjoyable, or whether my like or dislike of them is purely based on the adaptation’s own merits. One thing I will say is that the episode thankfully doesn’t feel like it’s based directly on a game; it’s not obsessed with the explanations of its own mechanics and its setting and story seem merely generic rather than slavishly adherent to some other material. Even the Dark Elf… stuff is kind of a tried-and-true fantasy trope – one that I wish would fade away into the night, but which is definitely nothing new to the genre. So I suppose one nice thing about this episode is that it doesn’t appear to rely too much on its parent property.
There’s nothing else very distinct about this series, and I kind of doubt it will end up being one of the season’s more memorable titles. It seems to be a roughly-competent fantasy story of the type we’re familiar with in the West – nothing more, nothing less.
Pros: It does not feel beholden to the game on which it’s based.
Cons: A very rote execution of a cliché story. Some fantasy racism. The various factions just aren’t sympathetic.
Content Warnings: Violence/gore (blood and dismemberment). Racism. Mild fanservice (low-angle camera shots, silly outfits).
Grade: C-
