After feeling that episode 10 of Seirei Gensouki was a little ho-hum I was genuinely caught by surprise at the end of this week’s episode. Admittedly, the end credits rolled over part of the wedding procession and there’s an after credit’s sequence that must be watched, but this episode still felt like it simply flew by and it was a very solid penultimate episode setting up what will probably be a decent season conclusion next week.
Seirei Gensouki reunites the cast from the early episodes in these final ones.
While it really does feel like Seirei Gensouki has really rushed through a lot of content leaving the world building and a lot of the supporting cast feeling a little paper-thin, I can’t deny that there’s a fairly exciting story here. Part of me wishes the execution had been a little more on point given this could have been a really brilliant, epic fantasy.
Instead, we get something that works well enough but never quite satisfies.
Speaking of not quite satisfying, Charles really continues to lack any kind of menace. He’s just such an open bully and idiot and it is kind of clear that without those backing him he wouldn’t have risen to any height. The only real question is who can stand being around him long enough to give him a hand-up, but at the same time he’s probably the perfect patsy because he kind of believes he deserves everything and that somehow his own merit has allowed him to achieve it.
Fortunately, this episode isn’t asking us to care about Charles so much as to understand Celia’s current predicament.
And that’s actually enough tension to drive the episode and make this one of the most interesting Seirei Gensouki has put on offer yet. Unlike Rio, Celia isn’t easily walking through her conflict. Instead, she’s trying very, very hard to keep a brave face on during a situation where she is forced to marry a someone she really doesn’t love in order to protect her family.
Worst, the guy already has multiple wives who have made it clear they intend to look down on her. And even if she does go through the marriage, there’s no guarantee her family will be any safer.
Celia’s reaction when she saw Rio during the procession was kind of perfect and was just the right emotional note after such a tense and highly strung episode.
Still, it is really hard to really get a sense of the politics at play here because we’ve been following Rio and the exposition dump at he start of the episode gained from Rio’s questioning of the guy at the academy isn’t enough to really fill in all the ins and outs.
About the only clear danger in Seirei Gensouki is that Celia is going to be utterly miserable if this marriage happens and honestly they made me care enough about her that the overall lack of understanding of the political ins and outs isn’t actually that much of a problem.
As I said in the beginning, this is a solid penultimate episode in that it does everything you really need from a next to last episode. It feels like we’re close to a climax and they’ve made me invested enough in the outcome that I’m now excited for the final episode.
While I’m not entirely sure what my overall opinion of Seirei Gensouki will be as it has had its moments but also lacked in some areas, I do know that I’ll be pretty excited to see what Rio does in the final episode and I really do want to find out what happens for Celia.
Images from: Seirei Gensouki. Dir. O Yamasaki. TMS Entertainment. 2021
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Karandi James