Review:
Seriously, this show is making itself hard to defend. As much as I love a good fantasy (or even a bad one) when an episode starts with a bunch of characters we haven’t met, discussing events we don’t really have a context for, and then apparently we’re supposed to care about the outcome of said discussions because it is the basis for the next crisis our story’s hero is going to face, you have to wonder what the writers are even thinking about.
That isn’t to say the new characters aren’t interesting. And hey, why not add vampires and werewolves into the world. However, there are ways of doing this that don’t leave the audience simply rolling their eyes.
What makes it even more jarring is after the introduction of this new kind of issue, we then catch up with Theo and Siluca still dealing with the fallout of Theo’s status change after the last episode. Seems everyone still loves Theo but I did like the Prince’s reaction to him. I can’t help but wonder if they are going to do something with that later.
However, soon enough Theo and Siluca are sent to deal with the vampire/werewolf situation in the forest and it really feels like a lot was left unexplained here. They kind of win and we see them setting up shop in the vampire’s castle at the end but it isn’t as though they beat him. More that he just couldn’t be bothered sticking around. All and all, there was something decidedly missing from events this week.
Though, Theo finally did something in a fight all on his own and we saw him actually use his crest in a battle so there were a few highlights during the episode.
Thanks for reading.
Karandi James
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Totally agree. This episode came out of left field. Not only was it jarring for the reasons you stated, but the episode in itself felt very disjointed production-wise.
My brother added this to my queue on Crunchyroll and I almost gave it a shot, but through reading your reviews on the episodes it seems like they’re fumbling with things, adding aspects that don’t hold any value or weight to the story, and are creating a mess. So far I’m not regretting holding off on this one. Maybe when I can binge it at a later date…maybe. But so far it seems like not caring is probably a good idea.
First episode had definite potential and it could still improve, but yeah. I actively want to like this and even I’m finding it hard to be overly positive about where it is at the moment.
yeah, it really seemed like they were flying through this story for some reason. i thought this series had 2 cours too, so im puzzled as to why it has to progress so quickly
The pacing is all over the place at the moment and really, where did these characters come from. I get we’re moving onto a new arc and all but this just seemed like a totally different story.
The Record of Grancrest War Light-Novel/novella series is ten volumes long, the anime adaptation was given an allotment of twenty four episodes.
That is the reason that the show carriers the feeling of disjointment and disconnection, large amounts of information and characterization were omitted to make the story fit into the time that it was given.
The Grancrest RPG found here , https://ontlogy.wordpress.com/2014/12/16/fantranslated-japanese-tabletop-rpgs-grancrest/, has a wealth of setting information.
The issue there is, if you are adapting something then they need to think about the form of the adaptation. Rather than just hacking bits out they should have reworked the story to fit the medium.
Hmmm as you know I had plans to add this one to my seasonal watch list, but in the end did not go through with it. Reading the opening of this post, I’m not really regretting that at the moment. But..I will probably bingewatch this when it’s finished 😀
Probably not worth regretting as this show just gets harder to defend each week, despite my really wanting to have a straight fantasy to watch. Yeah, plot wise this show is not so great at the moment.