In episode 8 of Saihate no Paladin Will was given a bit of a history lesson and also was told about some of the political situation going on in the city they were to visit. As I thought, he nearly instantly got himself caught up in politics, both in the temple and after saving the city with the city leaders. Whether this turns out to be helpful to him or not remains to be seen.
Still, episode 9 was a fun episode to watch with just enough touring the city, relaxing in the bath and eating a good meal moments before plunging into temple politics, fending off a wyvern attack and then fencing words with the leader of the city.
Saihate no Paladin knows the dangers of the city can be as hard to navigate as a forest.
It was no surprise, given this is an isekai story, to see Will get so excited over the thought of a public bath house. Fortunately the explanation of how it worked was pretty brief and we didn’t spend too much screen time on shots of characters luxuriating in water (probably because the water itself wasn’t heated, the steam room was).
Instead, Saihate no Paladin broke up the first half of this episode with Will looking around the city, the markets, the brief bathhouse visit, eating a good meal, all before visiting the temple.
The group dynamic here with the bard, merchant and Meneldor kind of works though unfortunately these characters are all falling into that ‘beige’ category where they are nice people, helping out the main character and sure they have one or two individual skills but honestly as individuals they don’t leave much impression other than their visual design. Which makes it even harder for Antonio who is more or less generic old-studious looking guy.
However, once Saihate no Paladin feels confident that through information given last week and the tour we get early on in this episode the audience has enough understanding of the new location, it moves the story along. Firstly by having Will introduce himself at the temple as a Priest of Gracefeel.
There he learns that that aren’t many priests there because of problems outside of the city and also that the Bishop isn’t well liked. Admittedly, when we meet the man he’s a bit of a grump, but he does seem to know his gods and acknowledges Will as a Priest after a few simple questions.
However we don’t have time to dwell on this. Saihate no Paladin then throws a wyvern at the town and for the first time in a while we get to see Will lose his cool.
It is sometimes hard to remember he’s still pretty young and inexperienced given how overpowered he kind of is so it was nice to get this reminder.
Also nice to see that Maneldor, despite being a grump and saying he wouldn’t be friends, does exactly what any good friend should do and brings Will’s focus back to the task at hand.
What follows is a pretty decent fight (or at least as decent as you can really get when non-flying characters are taking on an infuriated wyvern. The conclusion of which is obvious but still pretty spectacular to watch and Saihate no Paladin ensures that Will uses something from every one of his family in bringing down the beast.
During the clean up, the ‘wyvern killer’ is summoned to meet with the leader of the city and that’s where we get some politics coming into play as Will really wants to help those living in the southern forest but the city really doesn’t have the resources to deal with demons in the forest. I guess we’ll see how that plays out in the next episode.
You can read the full season review here.
Images from: Saihate no Paladin. Dir. Y. Nobuta. Children’s Playground Entertainment. 2021
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Karandi James