demonoid Archives | 100 Word Anime

Revenge Gained, Now What?

Kenja no Mago Episode 10

Early in this episode of Kenja no Mago I wondered whether or not we needed half an episode devoted to the antagonist’s back story. The answer is actually yes, though possibly we could have gotten the highlights of the story in a shorter period of time or they could have delivered the early part of his tale with a little bit more oomph. However, the back story sets up a villain whose primary motive was incredibly clear for once and his rage directed.

grandchild10b — *And he was so optimistic.*

See, the terrible past and want to destroy the world villain is all too common. Schtrom is overcoming the standard expectations by having had a clear goal of bringing down the empire that allowed the other nobles to conspire against him and used the commoners, who had betrayed him, to do it. His goals weren’t exactly noble and his means weren’t valiant, but it was incredibly understandable.

As is his genuine lethargy after having accomplished a long strived for goal. He isn’t having ambitions of ruling or taking over. He was revenge for a specific act against a specific country and he got it. Those who follow him are understandably concerned by his apparent lack of motivation now that they’ve arrived at this point. It means that we’ll end up with a conflict between Shin and Schtrom, almost certainly unless they decide to talk it out, but the way we’ll end up there isn’t the usual Schtrom is evil and must die and Shin is the hero and must fight standards that we are used to.

Affiliate Link

It is amazing how bothering to put motivation in beyond being evil can make something fairly cliché and trite seem somewhat more interesting.

Of course I’ve just brushed right past the point where Aug gets officially recognised as the Crown Prince and then they all fly off to fight some demonoids who are apparently attacking a neighbouring kingdom, but I suspect that will become more relevant next episode.

So while I still feel they could have done more with the back story to give it more impact, I’m pretty happy with this episode and what it sets up for the final couple of episodes, though I suspect the ending will be somewhat less than satisfying given we’ve only got two more episodes.