What a difference a few years makes, or at least that’s what Rio is going to discover when he finally returns to see Claire this week in Seirei Gensouki.
Last week ended with him waking up beside a naked girl, which is quickly explained as harmless because she’s an amnesiac spirit who ends up just dressing herself using mana. Anyway, Rio quickly sees that she bares an uncanny resemblance to the childhood friend/crush he had back in Japan when he was Haruto and so naturally he gives spirit girl the same name, Aishia.
Not entirely sure it makes sense to cling on to that life, particularly when Rio has spent a lot of time making sure he’s living in this life and not in the past, but hey, childhood crush.
Meanwhile, Aishia is wowing everyone in Seirei Gensouki by being able to control pretty much every element and she fights Rio and matches his level of amazingness which given he has protagonist plot armour deeply wrapped around him is an impressive feat indeed.
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Does it feel like Seirei Gensouki is missing something?
The whole way through this season, Seirei Gensouki has been driving forward. Rio seldom stays in one place longer than two episodes (outside of the initial kingdom which he lasted three episodes in) and he meets different people and makes different friends in each location.
Problem is, at episode 10 with 2 episodes to go, I’m left wondering if enough has been done to really make me care about this trumped up conflict Claire is now in. Plus, Rio seems to pass in and out of Latifa’s life pretty easily and it would be good to see if he at least intended to eventually settle down in one of the locations he’s visited.
With all that said though, Aishia was pretty awesome to see in action and the fight between her and Rio was solidly entertaining and perhaps the most dynamic fight we’ve seen from Seirei Gensouki yet. That they spent a little too much of it on reactions from those watching isn’t really a problem given visually Seirei Gensouki hasn’t been a disaster but nor is it particularly impressive.
Return of the lame villains.
Still, one of my earliest complaints about Seirei Gensouki was how incredibly lacking in nuance the villains or antagonists were. They are bullies or blunt instruments and they don’t manage to ever feel even vaguely threatening or even plausible as a real character. So it is with the smug faced Charles this week and if this is the final confrontation for Rio I really don’t think I’m gonig to be that invested.
See, I was kind of hoping for Rio to confront the guy who killed his mother, a potential actual threat, rather than deal with some arbitrary issue that really doesn’t seem to be connected to much of anything we’ve seen so far.
But we can’t have everything and episode 10 of Seirei Gensouki delivers cute girls, magic battles, yet another scene change for Rio, and it does set up this new conflict even if I’m not so keen on watching it play out. There’s little more you can ask for this late in the season so lets hope Seirei Gensouki can end strong.
Images from: Seirei Gensouki. Dir. O Yamasaki. TMS Entertainment. 2021
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Karandi James
I’m really disappointed in Seirei Gensouki. I felt they could have done so much with it. Like you said he very rarely stays in one place long enough so you dont get to form any bond with the other characters. Plus his personality is just so bland. It just drifted from episode to episode and i felt they could have put a lot more action into this series.
I am trying to enjoy what the show is doing, but tge problem is that it so easily could have been great given the ideas we have seen and instead it is waychable but relatively forgettable.
I found this to be boring, but I agree with your views on the fights.
lol you brought up a good point on why would Rio name the spirit Aishia…and all I can say is, “yes, another LN to anime change I can’t explain because massive spoilers!!!” But yes, your interpretation makes sense given what’s been shown in the anime.
I will spoil one thing: Charles of course is one of the antagonists, but Rio will be facing someone way tougher as the animation in the OP revealed that, and it should happen in Ep 11. I’m just hoping the fight actually feels satisfying though…
Okay, I’ll wait and see what episode 11 brings.