- Genre : Fantasy, Adventure, action, political
- Studio: A-1 Pictures
I had to actually look up how many episodes A Record of Grancrest War is slotted for because I cannot see how they are going to just wrap things up next week. Admittedly it wouldn’t be out of character for this series to just stop mid sentence. Maybe they could pull a Soprano’s black screen move. I’ve never seen the Soprano’s…
Remember how a new threat rose it’s head last week in the form of the Order? OK, now forget about it – no longer relevant. Back to the evil mages we go. You may have noticed that I whine a lot about how we never got any follow through on the vampires. This will be a shocker to exactly none of you, but I occasionally get hung up on details. You know, like major character and plot points getting introduced and then never mentioned again. So I was pretty psyched to see Vampire boss guy (who may or may not be the ONLY vampire in existence) back in the opening scene. He disappeared right away though.
Speaking of irrelevant details I insist upon for no reason. The fact that Pandora is apparently a demon’s name and that’s what the secret society is named after (rather than an abstract cautionary myth) was super disappointing to me. Everyone knows what (who) Pandora is, there’s absolutely no need to simplify it for us. Yeah, I know, it really doesn’t matter but it’s somewhat representative of the missed opportunities in this series. I’m not sure whether the writing is just not strong enough to properly exploit the potential of the plot or whether the writers don’t expect much from the audience and feel like they have to spell everything out while not being obligated to maintain proper narrative integrity. Long story short – I kinda liked this episode.
It was essentially a two part assault starting the siege of the Mage city. But before we got to the fun stuff, we were yet again reminded that Theo has never been affected by anything ever as much as Priscilla’s death. When he mentioned that getting close to the city might cost them dearly in casualty due to the canons, I fully expected his follow up sentence to be: Siluca, please lead the assault.. Maybe without the “please”. At least he still has Lassic. Even Siluca acknowledged how much they like each other.
So when the mages unfrosted a giant cyclops as a fantasy weapon of mass destruction and Lassic stubbornly decided to go take it down, I was very worried for Theo. I don’t think he would be able to handle losing both his loves. He would have nothing left. Nothing at all…
Although the fight between Lassic and just like 3 other guys…and the cyclops wasn’t particularly strategic it was a really fun watch. Once again Grancrest adopted the unusual animation style I like, which I’ve chosen to define as “molten”. They’ve used it extremely sparingly but to great effect. It really adds a lot to the visual cachet of the show.
At this point, I would like to share with you how much of a dork I am. I realized about three quarters into this scene that Lassic’s surname is David and the the Cyclops is a giant making this an almost literal David vs Goliath situation and got so ridiculously excited about it that I had to immediately tweet it out to Crow who is now my Grancrest watching buddy, I’ve unilaterally decided. Yes, it’s that easy to make me happy.
So action happens, they bring down the big guy surprisingly easily and metal dude isn’t dead. Do we know why one of Lassic’s captains can turn his body to steel? Can anyone else do that? It seems handy. Lassic slays the beast and is triumphantly cheered on by the entire army. It was a cute scene until you realize that a thousand dudes where just sort of hanging out, watching the fight, not helping out in any way. Then is seemed more silly but still cute.
The second half gave my favorite sex positive lord a little something to do by having her army bait the canons and distract the enemy from a safe distance, while the shota captain lead a stealth invasion past the city defenses. In an inverse of the first part, this was not quite as interesting to watch but it featured a great strategy as well as a fantastic teaching method. However, the most interesting part was surely finding out that not only is the shota a King but kitty got claws!
The episode closed out with a relieved Theo (now that Lassic is out of danger) mentioning that he has to stay alive to carry on Priscilla’s legacy. No other reason, nuh-huh… And then suddenly getting teleported, along with Siluca, Aishela, Irvin and the twins (I call them the baffling 6) to the dark vampire forest. I guess they didn’t forget all about Dimitrie yet again.
I really did like the episode. I thought it was paced well and fun to watch. Most characters had at least a small part to play and their roles were logical and consistent with what we know of them. The only real hangup I have is that reintroducing the vampire(s) and demons as major players in the plot at this point, adds yet another plot point to resolve and I just don’t see how they can satisfyingly wrap everything up in just one more episode.
Would it be funny if I decided to drop the show now?
Let’s not all get biblical now XDD. For the funzzies, shota king is what you call a sapper. They were pretty much used to undermine castle defences. Yeah Theo’s 3 love are certainly taking it’s toll. Seeing the bromance between Lassic and Theo is heart warming. Not sure where Siluca will be after this. At least she has Aishela?. One more laughing epi to go xDD.
I kinda complete forgot why Irvin is even there – maybe we could ship him with someone
I found this episode frustrating (surprise). Once again we have random villains being forgotten, random enemies showing up, and things all going Theo’s way because reasons. This show always has things either flowing all Theo’s way or all totally against Theo. There’s never any half-way.
And yeah, random vampire dude showing up again is pretty random. I wonder if they’ll explain anything next week, if they’ll finish the story, or whether they will literally end the series mid-sentence.
I mean we both know it’s going to be a mess but I still want to see it…
I know. I want to see exactly how this train lands at the bottom of the cliff it jumped off.
Really, if you dial down your expectations the Cyclops might be fun, but as it was: sudden Cyclops, suddenly defeated. There was some sort of theme there, employing a two-edged force of destruction, which would probably have been a pyrrhic victory at best. But here, with few losses, this thing was defeated, and it may or may not get them support next episode, but we don’t know yet what the mages are really fighting for, so that feels a little empty. There was potential to make a point, here, but no…
I’m worried what this means for our vampire lord: is there any more to his motivation than “I want to survive”? We’ll see.
It says something that both of us still have a glimmer of expectations for this show..
Screen cap of Ellet? Automatic +10!
“Siluca, please lead the assault…”
Since Theo didn’t say that, I think that’s a sign they’ve made up.
“making this an almost literal David vs Goliath situation and got so ridiculously excited about it that I had to immediately tweet it out to Crow who is now my Grancrest watching buddy, I’ve unilaterally decided.”
That’s so cool! I’m going to be sad seeing the show end — it’s been a lot of fun trading observations and comments!
And you came up with an awesome title, too!
“as well as a fantastic teaching method.”
I’m not sure why I liked that scene with Edokia so much, but maybe it had something to do with a character learning from the past! She’s one of my favorite side-characters, and not for the obvious reasons!
“Would it be funny if I decided to drop the show now?”
Funny, sure! But a real bummer otherwise!
Ellet seems like a bit of a troll which is automatic win with me. I wish we got to know her better.
Maybe we can find a different aime to exchange on next season.
I actually really love Edokia. The show occasionally infantilizes her but in such a way that makes it seem perfectly in line with the character.
I adore that we have a soft very feminine leader who goes about leading her realm and army in a very personal way and the story never shames her for it and it’s even generally successful. Thi is really quite progressive and very positive.
This definitely was a better episode.I’m afraid it’s probably too late to save the series as a whole for me, though.
I don’t care for that molten look. They don’t use it regularly enough for me consider it part of the series “style”, so it more or less comes off as cheap and ugly to me. But seriously, how do the people over at A-1 manage to make things look so good and so bad AT THE SAME TIME? The overall quality of animation varies wildly even within episodes. It’s like the animators themselves can’t even keep up with the pace of the story.
It was nice seeing something that looked like an actual siege, too. We get siege towers, battering rams, artillery, sapping, and nobody runs outside to get immediately surrounded.
this show is so frustrating at every time I’m ready to give up on it it does something cool.
I hope you guys to a series overview podcast once it’s over
I have a very special show in the works for Grancrest.
ho HO! Exciting!