Trample everything in your path, victory at any cost.
What They Say:
Episode #6: “March”
Villar’s Mage Leader, Margaret, is about to turn 25. Villar only employs female mages, and when they reach the age of 25, he has their contracts voided. A lavish party is thrown. All in attendance express their gratitude to Margaret, as well as their sorrow at having to bid her farewell. It is then that Villar takes her hand and asks her to dance. Siluca looks on with growing frustration as they dance passionately, almost flaunting their mutual feelings for each other.
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
It’s really strange, this episode feels like it should have been in the middle of the last. No mention is made of the events in the forest from the last episode. (The wolf girls show up near the end, that’s the only proof it happened.) Theo and Siluca are back at Villar’s home base preparing for a meeting of the lords. We find out it’s only been six months since the events that kicked off the entire series. Not only is the plot moving at light speed, time is as well.
Even though the show wanted you to think otherwise, Lord Villar is indeed sexist. (Cue sob backstory about how his mother didn’t love him enough, whatever.) They try to paint his policy of only employing lady mages until their 25 as some kindhearted act that allows them to go off and have a family life after all. So what happens when someone like Margaret comes along who would rather serve than be dismissed? Here’s the glass ceiling, don’t let it hit you on the head on the way out. Siluca is annoyed for the wrong reasons because she sees Margaret’s attraction for her employer and thinks that they’d be good for each other permanently. Margaret does as well. So she is instantly diminished as a character as well because she’s been demoted to just a love interest. Hold on, I need to go scream into a hole for a good twenty minutes.
The animation is this show usually looks pretty good. The dance scene in this episode is a fucking animation disaster. I take my dancing in anime seriously, and an opportunity to animate dancing is usually a chance for animators to revel in their craft. This ballroom scene is supposed to be impressive looking and instead, it looks utterly ridiculous. There are laughably overblown angles, weird lighting effects, bizarre posses so they can actively avoid showing the feet. Shameful stuff really, Rage of Bahamut this is not.
Which makes it all the more confusing because the action animation is still on point, as we get to see when Prince Mirza tries some strong-arm diplomacy. Theo may be mostly useless but his main asset appears to be his ability to judge people accurately. He’s dead on about the dangerous nature of the sketchy Prince Mirza. (He’s the guy with the scimitar because I too had to look up his name.) Mirza is stuck on calling Theo out for not having a spine, but Theo isn’t wrong in thinking the dude is a shifty murder hobo. Sure, those assholes might have had it coming, but we never really see why.
Politics drive this episode. Stupid politics, but politics none the less. Each territory seems to have an endless supply of people willing to throw their lives away. If wars happen in this series as often as they seem to portray them then everything should be in shambles. Society would break down, the infrastructure would be in ruins. Not to mention the chaos outbreaks. A meeting of the lords is supposed to happen but Lord Villar decides to conquer a few kingdoms on the way there. Wait, what? Why? This is so stupid.
In Summary:
At this point, Theo and the others should probably be asking themselves why they’re trying to take over the world. Will that really bring unity and an end of the chaos demons invading from another dimension? All Theo wanted was to free his homeland from a tyrant, right? The boy is in way over his head. Villar is a sexist idiot, Margaret is an idiot for loving his stupid ass, and Siluca who started off as potentially interesting is growing duller with each passing episode. Points deducted for the greatest crime in anime, poor dancing. Maybe this latest bloody conquest will kill off a named character or two to get the cast size manageable again. If it wasn’t a looker everyone would have left this party by now.
Episode Grade: C
Streamed by: Crunchyroll & Hulu
