It’s time for a surprising injection of humor into this series.
What They Say:
As Mahiro interrogates the alleged mage of Exodus, Jun meets with the Princess to question her true feelings of Yoshino.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
In telling a generally serious story, this series hasn’t necessarily avoided humor altogether in the past. There’s often a moment here or there that lightens the mood, keeping things a little more balanced, although occasionally feeling out of place with the extremely serious nature of everything else going on. This episode provides far more of this than ever before, but interestingly also offers a commentary that works just as well for its own storytelling as for the world at large. The obvious point that’s attempting to be made is that, even though there’s constantly tragedy all over the world, those who have the luxury of being removed from all that generally don’t bother to acknowledge it at all, simply going along with the comfortable lives they’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy. Although plenty of the big events in this story can be compared to the real world, this is the first time I can think of such a direct and heavy message being put out there. And in a similarly meta sort of way to when the plot was working out however certain characters felt like it should and this plot convenience was actually explained in the mechanics of the world itself, this episode shows a world ripped apart by magic, having just suffered the loss of more people than in any one instance in history, and yet our usually serious characters have lightened up and are even being a bit silly. In both cases, I can’t say I’m sure the show was actually making a point to reference itself, but I’d like to believe it was.
How well this humor works for you can depend greatly on whether or not you think this fits in with the contrasted themes analyzed in this episode, or simply feels out of place when everyone should be taking the situation very seriously. I was able to accept the attempts at humor for what they were, and thanks to how fun Hanemura’s character is, found it more enjoyable than similar (albeit more subtle) moments in the past, but some of it seemed to go a little too far, or at least in a direction that didn’t feel quite right.
Hakaze’s love of Yoshino continues to develop, or at least she finally realizes the extent of her feelings, thanks to voice of reason Jun showing up to point out how obvious it is. This scene tries very hard to be funny and definitely works, but seeing the strong woman that Hakaze was for the first chunk of the series degraded to the blubbering virgin stereotype of anime makes it feel like pandering is being prioritized over character progression.
Fortunately, I felt that Hanemura’s parts were consistently very funny. The fact that he’s not only the most innocent, cowardly, and unperceptive character, but also the most seemingly flawlessly powerful makes for loads of fun. He’s stuck with the overall less likeable group of characters, but forces them to stop being so tight-assed with his goofiness, as well as frustrating them in a remarkably satisfying way. Possibly the best moment of the episode was when Hanemura, after taking a lot of abuse from Mahiro, finally hits back with a verbal strike of his own, accusing Mahiro of having a sister complex. We’ve been explicitly shown just how true this is, so as soon as he said this, I was commending him for saying what I, and presumably most viewers, had been wanting someone to say for a long time, and it’s made even better when immediately followed up by everyone in the room thinking the exact same thing to themselves.
In Summary:
This episode provides a surprising amount of comedic relief given the current state of affairs, and honestly, it actually works out pretty well, for the most part. There’s definitely some minor damage done to the momentum by going in this direction, but some of the heavier commentary we get here also seems to make this fit if you decide to let it. The characterization of Hakaze is providing a lot more humor than before, but also feels like it’s suffering a little because of the general weakening that seems to be prevalent. Overall, things are still on a positive note, though.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Toshiba Satellite L655-S5191 PSK2CU-1C301U Notebook PC.