Record of Grancrest War Episode 17: Decisive Victory

Outnumbered and surrounded Milza decides his best plan is to ride out from the safety of his fortress anyway. Another wonderfully logical move by the characters of this anime.

I don’t know that I would describe Milza’s strategy as a strategy or even as flexible. Mostly it just seemed to be ride fast, cut down anything in the way, and get to Theo. He became pretty obsessed with killing Theo because apparently Theo is heralding a new age for the world because he’s utilising people power or something. The notion that Lords haven’t used the common people in battle has come up before, but this is the first time this has actually been a major plot point so it suddenly seems like the anime is trying to craft an entirely new theme into its story just as it cuts down Milza who was really Theo’s last real goal after he’d already liberated Sistina. Seriously, why is Theo still involved in this war?

But who cares about logic? We have a major battle with lots of the allied Lords, all of whom other than Lassic I’ve forgotten the names of and some of them even fight before they run away or have most their men cut down or they are utterly ignored as Milza bypasses them. All of Theo’s closest friends get to attempt to cut down Milza, failing miserably, before it all comes down to a one on one duel. This should more or less be over instantly in Milza’s favour but somehow the crest thing has made Milza weaker and Theo stronger since last time they fought. It would be really great if the crests had been explained properly at any point in time, but again, whatever.

What I found really funny was how the end of this episode seemed to want to be this grand and cinematic ending and yet the whole fight sequence just seemed kind of hacked out and Theo’s victory was relatively hollow because he just suddenly got better than Milza. There was no real weight behind it and having to drop exposition mid-battle to explain things is never a great move. Anyway onward to fighting Marrine maybe, I’m not even sure what their next goal is but I guess they’ll find someone else to fight given the anime isn’t over yet.

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