- 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?
