One if by land, two if by sea.
What They Say:
Episode #10: “Blade of Betrayal”
After subjugating Starck, Waldlind barely pauses before invading Altirk. Villar joins forces with neighboring domains Kilhis, Regalia, and Haman to repulse Waldlind, but then a new enemy arrives from the seas. It’s Milza Kuches, prince of Dartania, who once looked up to Villar. Milza has forsaken Villar, instead becoming Marrine’s sword. And with the Dartanian fleet in tow, he’s about to unleash a furious assault on Altirk.
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Villar is now realizing that he’s been betrayed and that his allies, as willing as they are to come to his aid, are actually marching to their doom. I think he underestimated his cousin’s resolve to unit everything by force.
It’s a shame the story is so rushed, it introduces all of these colorful lords and we barely get to learn anything about them. There’s the queen with an iron-clad warship who keeps a retinue of men at her beck and call, and the lord who leads an inspirational speech equating his forces to actors on a stage and encourages them with a drink. Notice I’m not using any names? How could anyone keep track of all these bit players we only see for two minutes. How is anyone supposed to care about who wins or loses?
Villar is burning through his allies at an astonishing rate. Truth be told, I have no idea how much time is passing between each episode. Surely some time must have passed for Milza to overthrow his father and muster the forces he needed to push onward. Outside of Margaret, who returns to the man she loves as a free agent, nobody else seems to be pushing back internally against their shitty rulers. These minor countries are being decimated in forces with these endless wars. Who is left to fight chaos monsters when all able men are being tossed into the meat grinder?
Outside of the inconsistent power struggle, it’s fun to see that Altirk has a magical version of the Archimedes mirror to attack seagoing vessels. In a world with so many magicians and monsters, you’d expect that the sorcery would be even more overpowered and that all of these conventional battles would need equal magical protection. We’ve seen little in the way of magical defense.
What about Siluca and Theo? Well, there is an army bearing down on the small kingdom that Theo accidentally won. The denizens of the forest step up to defend themselves and their homes, even though they don’t care for Theo at all. Theo is perhaps the only rational player who actively strives for a peaceful resolution because he’s not ruling class. He knows he can’t let the fight happen at the castle but isn’t going to preemptively strike. For now, he waits until the enemy attempts to march in.
In Summary:
Watching Grancrest feels like reading a particularly dry history book punctuated with the occasional gory portrait glorifying figures that probably don’t deserve it. There’s such a disconnect now between who are supposed to be the main characters of this story and the actions going on around. It feels that there should have been more focus on Theo’s personal battle but that’s all been forgotten in this war drama. In fact, the lord he wanted ousted had been removed. Theo is being kept back from returning home to help his own people be the debt he owes Villar. What has Villar given back to any of these lords to earn his place above them?
Episode Grade: B –
Streamed by: Crunchyroll & Hulu
