What They Say:
Favarro is a rogue bounty hunter by trade and is relentlessly pursued by his rival Kaisar. One day after completing a job he encounters a mysterious girl who is seeking out a location called Helheim. Favvaro claims to know where it is and after she ends up saving him, Favarro finds his life changed forever.
The Review:
Content(warning as portions of this review may contain spoilers):
Bahamut’s first couple of episodes have brought the series off to a really strong start, and have done a fantastic job of showing off the show’s clearly Hollywood film inspired elements. Things have mostly been pretty straightforward in terms of that inspiration though as it’s been following a pretty by the book high action-adventure style so far, albiet with great execution. This week’s episode pulls it’s inspiration from elsewhere regarding exact genre, but the show still knows how to make that work for it.
The episode starts off with another look at what’s going on regarding the gods and the demons their plans regarding the God Key mentioned earlier. Meanwhile Favarro and Amara are still on their journey to Helheim but they need more provisions for the trip so Favvaro decides to have them take on another bounty hunting gig. He’s worried about who they have to capture though and decides to stock up on some herbs. After almost falling off a cliff to get them he realizes Amara could have just flown up there with her demon wings, but she reveals she’s lost one of them while obtaining the God Key. The show gives us a flashback of her exploits but Favvaro doesn’t quite buy the story since she doesn’t have the key on her until she reveals that she’s infused her soul with and has more or less become the key itself.
This bit of helpful infodumping takes up most of the first half of the episode but the real interest lies with Kaisar’s situation. While still in pursuit of Favvaro and Amara he passes out in the woods and is rescued by a strange girl named Rita who brings him to a town that looks like something straight out of a horror flick. It’s pretty apparent right off the bat that something isn’t quite right with this town and the girl’s parents mention that the town has been attacked by trolls for some time. Even with that explanation things still seem a bit too eerie but Kaisar buys into it and joins the family for dinner though Rita doesn’t seem to have much respect for her parents.
Kaiser tries to have a talk with her about his relationship with his family he was her age, though he ignores her mentioning the huge red flag of being much older than he is when he starts thinking back. He was brought up in a pretty strict family of knights and resented his training until his father was hanged after a group of bandits stole something important on his watch. His mom committed suicide afterwards and the experience apparently made Kaisar realize how much he’d taken his family for granted but Rita is pretty disinterested in his sob story since there’s obviously something else going on there.
Things come to a head when the trolls come to attack the town and Kaiser holds them off, but the trolls seem to know who he is and have some very familiar voices. As it turns out the entire town has been under an illusionary fog (why the illusion couldn’t be bothered to make the town look less suspicious is anyone’s guess), the trolls are really just Favvaro and Amara and all the villagers had been turned into zombies by Rita who is actually a Necromancer as well as their latest bounty. Kaisar’s pretty mad about being tricked and helps them battle the zombie horde though the fight ends unexpectedly when Rita ends up being bitten by one of them herself. After getting rid of the book she’s used for her magic, Favvaro reveals she actually used to be one of the villagers before it got attacked by monsters and picked up necromancy to maintain the illusion. Since she’s now doomed to become a zombie after getting bitten Favarro offers Kaisar the chance to kill her as they part ways, but he decides to spare her since he can’t bring himself to desecrate the dead (though he mentions the undead are fair game) and she starts following him around.
In Summary:
Bahamut switches things around this week by switching from a Hollywood action-adventure to a Hollywood horror/zombie flick but the show still maintains it’s charm extremely well and the entire scenario is handled expertly, right down to the twist regarding the town. Now that Kaiser has his own travel companion it’ll be fun to see how they mix since her deadpan nature seems like a pretty good match for his white knight personality. This show continues to be an absolute blast and looking forward to seeing what it does next.
Grade: A-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
