Saihate no Paladin

So far one of the things I’ve consistently praised about Saihate no Paladin is the deliberate choice not to rush through set-up or events just for the sake of quick thrills. Instead this story has taken its time to build up the character and the world and that means my emotional investment is significantly greater than it usually is for this kind of hack and slash fantasy. Which makes me wonder why episode 12 feels so incredibly rushed as our main character gets over his sudden round of self-doubt, rallies the troops and defeats the immediate villain before finding out he’s pretty much in charge of the region in the space of twenty minutes.

The only justification I can see for the sudden haste is that overcoming this creature and somewhat resolving the issue in the southern woods does at least provide a sensible resting point for the story for the season to end on.

Saihate no Paladin’s final episode for season one feels all too hasty.

Unfortunately, by rushing it, Saihate no Paladin has undermined that sense of deliberate pacing that has permeated the entire story so far. While there’s nothing wrong with episode 12 -indeed when compared to the ending some something like Banished From The Hero’s Party, the final episode of Saihate no Paladin comes out significantly stronger – and yet it loses something of its own tone in the process.

Will has been a character we’ve watched grow up and find his feet. Two episodes ago he finally became an actually recognised Paladin. One episode ago he experienced his first real taste of failure since saying goodbye to Mary and Blood. And in this episode he more or less has a little bit of a sulk about it, has Menel come along and beat him up a bit, and instantly he’s just fine. Even tells everyone else that it’s all good.

This is the first time it has felt like Saihate no Paladin has trivialised a pivotal character growth moment and the episode suffers because of it.

Though points for Menel for knowing when it was time to beat his friend senseless.

Regardless of how satisfying it is to see Will, Menel and the others get back on their feet and plan to defeat the demon beasts, and then do just that, the episode is marred by this absolute abrupt turn around from the end of last episode where Will resolves to go it alone because he’s almost immediately reversed position and it feels far too trite.

Then, we also need to look at the battle. It was definitely satisfying and overcoming the chimera that took down Menel last week needed to happen for the season to come to some kind of a close, and yet Saihate no Paladin blurs through preparations with a few stills and a quick narration and then the fight begins. And all too quickly Menel and Will are separated from all the extras for their own fight against the chimera so it just makes you wonder why they bothered dragging them all along.

Despite all those complaints, ultimately this final episode leaves us in a good position to end the season as it brings one phase of Will’s journey to an end. Now we just have to hope a season two actually comes out because while it has been announced details are few and far between. I have thoroughly enjoyed Will’s story up until this point and really do want to find out what is next for these characters and this world so I’ll keep my fingers crossed for more details of Saihate no Paladin season 2.

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

Saihate no Paladin definitely did the whole calm before the storm thing with episode 10 being very much set-up with very little happening before this episode has the adventurers who have signed on with Will entering the forest, helping deliver goods to the villagers and sending out periodic scouting parties looking for demons. Inevitably, one of the scouting groups goes missing and Will and others set out to track them down.

Spoiler alert – it doesn’t end well.

Saihate no Paladin doesn’t let Will triumph for too long before bringing him down.

There’s something oddly similar between how Saihate no Paladin works to shatter Will’s confidence this week with how Mushoku Taisei: Jobless Reincarnation treats its protagonist, Rudeus, in almost every episode. Having defeated a wyvern two episodes ago and been made a paladin in the last episode, Will enters the woods on a real high note.

More than that, the mission initially goes well with villages welcoming them and coming to rely on Will for a number of reasons. In fact it is all going so smoothly you just know it isn’t going to last.

And lo-and-behold it doesn’t.

There’s a turning point in this episode of Saihate no Paladin where the guy whose name I can’t remember but he’s referred to as the Penetrator (because he kills monsters in one blow naturally) enters Will’s tent and tells him one of the scouting parties is over-due.

Will, Menel and the Penetrator gather some others and head out after them.

Unfortunately, its already too late and they come across the grisly remains which they bury. During this process they notice one of the heads is missing and so progress further down a valley in search of someone who may have run from the scene.

For viewers watching it is just a tease as you know this is a bad idea. It’s like watching a horror movie where the characters hear a noise and go to investigate. You just want to shake them and ask them what they think they are doing.

By the time the characters wizen up that perhaps this valley with steep sides isn’t the best location to be walking around in, its already too late and they find themselves boxed in by enemies.

Here Will learns that just having good intentions isn’t enough. Also, just because you are strong doesn’t mean you can protect everyone.

Saihate no Paladin doesn’t take this lesson to the extreme and doesn’t permanently take out Will’s potential friend here, but it does come close and it is enough to send Will a little over the edge during this fight.

Further evidence of how rattled Will has become is clear when he actually misfires his magic. I know he was hit from behind by one of the monsters but in all the time we’ve watched Will grow up and train he’s never once blown a spell that badly. The fight that follows is ugly and Will himself isn’t proud of it but he, and all the other adventurers, do survive it which is kind of a miracle in and of itself.

However, I think the real tragedy comes afterward when Will draws the wrong conclusion from the fight.

Here’s hoping the final episode of the season for Saihate no Paladin has Will’s friends find him and beating some sense into his head given his goddess didn’t feel the need to correct his misinterpretation of the lesson from this fight.

That and I kind of hope Will gets a rematch with the monster. I think that will help him a little bit if he gets the chance to face it again.

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

This week, Saihate no Paladin finally made Will an actual Paladin. Admittedly, that happened during the end credits and the lead up to it felt like a lot of talking heads. I guess it is all important set-up for the next step on the journey as the Prince and the Bishop argue about Will’s status as Knight or Priest and then Will posts an advertisement looking to recruit adventurers to defeat the demon boss in the woods, but it does all feel a little tedious and looking at the screen caps there’s a lot of people standing in rooms and talking.

Is the dramatic step to becoming a Paladin enough?

What actually makes this episode even more tedious is once again there’s a heavy reliance on Will’s internal monologue at times and as usual it adds little that wasn’t clearly apparent by watching the scene. The other problem of course being that if this was part of a longer work it would be the preparation before the adventure and it wouldn’t really warrant criticism but as a stand-alone twenty minute chunk it wasn’t great viewing.

I still don’t have much of a reading on the Prince. I mean, he doesn’t say no to Will and he does knight him, but he also clearly has his own agenda and he isn’t even subtle about making that known. More importantly, for all that Will internally makes his judgements on the Bishop known (not that they weren’t obvious from his actions) with the Prince we get nothing and then Will leaves the room so we don’t really know what his overall feeling about the situation is.

If Saihate no Paladin was going to rely so heavily on internal dialogue to convey a character’s impressions of others, that might have been a good time to use them.

Then we have Will’s recruitment of adventurers and apparently people who adventure to make a living aren’t what they are looking for.

Sure, go for the crazy and mad kind. That’ll end well.

Weirdly though it probably will. It always seems to in fiction where you get the recruits no one else seems to want to recruit.

Ultimately they aren’t even particularly clear on who Will has recruited other than one guy who the bard travelling with Will also wants to interview to write a song about. And sure, he seems strong but I’m kind of thinking Will needed more than one guy and there were others who said they would join but we learn nothing about them. Nothing at all. They barely even register as background characters.

There’s also a minor reminder about the purchasing of live stock that was part of Will and Menel’s original purpose in travelling to the city. And once again Will’s lack of business savvy is made clear.

Basically, I understand the necessity of the events that occur in this episode of Saihate no Paladin and the end of this episode certainly sets Will up for the next step in his journey as he is now a Paladin who has his own epic song being composed by a travelling bard (yeah, I get how that could become awkward). But at the same time, I didn’t find this episode particularly entertaining.

Here’s hoping the final two episodes are a bit more entertaining and I guess then we just have to hope that this one eventually gets a sequel because clearly the story isn’t going to be done. One might even argue that Will’s journey is still in its very early stages and there’s still miles to go.

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

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

Saihate no Paladin has Will and Meneldor heading to a town to buy livestock and other supplies for the newly reclaimed village. While Will can eradicate the demons (as shown in the previous episode) he can’t bring back everything that was lost during the demon invasion and so after an off-screen bit of ruins exploration for cash the two head-off to town.

Naturally, because this is a fantasy anime, they hear a scream in the forest while walking and Will does his hero thing saving a bard and a travelling salesman from certain death (or at least theft) by a giant ape monster thing. The four then continue the journey.

Are Robina and Antonia a good addition to the mix in Saihate no Paladin?

This week we still get an unnecessary amount of internal dialogue from Will but for the most part with the addition of two more characters there’s at least less time for Will to spend in his own head. Robina is a particularly exuberant character who brightens up scenes just by being in them and she’s forced the other characters to be a bit more lively as well.

That she is also serving a plot purpose, being a bard and recounting the history of the land including (conveniently) the history of a certain warrior, sage and priestess, is just icing on the cake of a character who has burst onto the scene like a breath of fresh air.

I really love that Saihate no Paladin is keeping Will connected to his roots. While the story might not be quite right, even Will internally acknowledges the characters described in the bard’s song weren’t exactly as he would picture them, seeing Blood, Mary and Gus working together to take down a wyvern was still pretty awesome.

For Will, learning that some people (such as the half-elf in the story) were even still alive overwhelmed him emotionally as he realised that he wasn’t the only person alive who remembered the three even though they had been ‘dead’ for so long and now Blood and Mary have moved on altogether.

Perhaps the best thing about this episode was the Meneldor finally seems to have relaxed and isn’t putting on a false bravado or tough front anymore. He opening laughs and his interactions with Will and the others, while guarded to a point, feel far more natural. It’s taken a few episodes but Saihate no Paladin is slowly settling this character into his role.

Though while he might be settling his personality, his actual actions this week were a little bit sidelined as he was largely just there. He did some introductions and talking at times but he didn’t involve himself in the ape stand-off and wasn’t involved in the performing or selling in towns. Really he just kind of travelled along. Weirdly, you couldn’t imagine the group functioning without him being there but it was hard to say what exactly he did.

By the end of episode 8 of Saihate no Paladin the group have come across fields of wheat and the episode ends as they can see the ocean and a city sprawling along its edge. We’ll have to wait for next week to see how Will fares in his first real encounter with civilisation. I suspect that it isn’t going to be smooth sailing for him.

Otherwise this episode really was just a transitional episode moving us from the villages in the beast forest toward the city and continuing to expand our understanding of the world and its history. Will, and the audience, picked up quite a bit of history this week in Saihate no Paladin and toward the end of the episode a bit of the political situation was explained (I guess Will’s somehow going to get caught up in that situation, otherwise why tell us).

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

Saihate no Paladin continues its languid pace. Even where there are fights to be had and enemies to vanquish, Will continues to move deliberately through his own story allowing things to happen as they do. It is such a change for this kind of series to not have a harem of girls showing up at every turn, not have some gag comedy moments just to break the tension, and to really just let the story and the world speak for themselves.

Admittedly, whether you like this or not will entirely depend on how you feel about those things being missing. For me, Saihate no Paladin has really created the sense of a world that is slowly dying. It feel empty and devoid of hope which really helps Will to shine as a character who has vowed to bring light into the darkness. That doesn’t make it particularly cheery viewing but it does make the tone feel consistent and each step of the journey feel somewhat meaningful.

Saihate no Paladin lays the groundwork for a beautiful friendship.

This episode has Will and Meneldor continue their journey back to Menel’s village with Meneldor as the guide as agreed last episode. Along the way they take out some demons and Will lay’s souls to rest.

It is an emotional journey for Meneldor who has a long-lived half-elf has struggled to find a place in the world, and the place he had found is more or less gone now. The person who saved him and took him in passing on after conveying her final messages.

While I try, most of the time, not to compare one story against another as frequently they are trying to create something entirely different, I couldn’t help but appreciate how much stronger the foundation is in Saihate no Paladin for Meneldor to join Will on his journey when compared to the characters who jumped on board the trip in Sakugan. And again, I get these are very different stories but where Sakugan has me wondering just why these characters are even in the story, here we’ve had two episodes to really give Meneldor a reason to want to follow Will on his journey.

I also really love that even though these last two episodes have focused on bringing Meneldor into the story, Will isn’t just left on the side-line. As much as Meneldor is being changed through his encounters and the trip back to his village with Will, Will is also changing as Meneldor is really the first person he’s interacted with over a period of time outside of Blood, Mary and Gus who raised him.

Both characters are also bringing strengths into the mix with Meneldor knowing far more about the world and having his ability to work with fairies and Will being pretty ignorant of the current state of the world but stupidly strong and earnest. It will be really great watching these characters help each other to grow from this point forward.

Of course, it isn’t all beer and friendships. Saihate no Paladin has built a world that is pretty unforgiving and even though Meneldor hopes that they will find someone alive in their village the end result is that they only encounter the dead and undead. Confronting this kind of loss of life in a world that is already feeling a little empty really adds to the overall feeling of isolation and loneliness in this episode.

As Will and Meneldor stare off into the sunset you can’t help but wonder if these two characters are entirely alone (not really true given they just left the gathering of the surviving villagers who came to bury the dead).

I kind of want this season of Saihate no Paladin to draw to a close, largely because I really want to binge watch this series in a single setting. I feel the languid pace would really work in a continuous viewing period rather than having the weekly interruptions. There’s a lot to love about this story but it really doesn’t quite suite the episodic approach.

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

It was always going to be hard for Saihate no Paladin to follow up after the emotional turmoil of episode 5. Five episodes of building toward that mid-season climax means we’re now left with having to transition into a new arc with the only character who is continuing on being Will. I don’t doubt that this anime can pull it off but to say that episode 6 was a little more subdued would be an understatement.

On the bright side, at least Will doesn’t leave his home for the first time ever and discover there was a human village literally a day’s walk away the whole time. That would have absolutely cheapened the entire point of his being raised in isolation with only Mary, Blood and Gus.

Instead, Saihate no Paladin has Will setting out on a genuine journey crossing plains and through forests and finding other ruined and abandoned cities long before he has a chance encounter with a half-elf who is hunting in the forest.

Saihate no Paladin is willing to let things take the time they take rather than rush to the next story beat.

Meneldor, the half-elf in question, doesn’t make the greatest first impression here. Not because of his personality, but rather because his personality seems to be bouncing all over the place. Part of that may be because he’s forcing himself to act contrary to his own nature, but the overall impression he leaves is of a character who is still finding his own footing.

Will on the other-hand is most definitely over-powered after the upbringing he has had, taking down boars and demons alike with little effort as he wanders along following a river in hopes of finding people. But, I feel they’ve balanced that nicely with his lack of knowledge about the world as well as his somewhat awkward and hesitant personality. Will is going to struggle to make his way in the world and I don’t doubt at some point someone is going to seriously swindle him. It provides a bit of balance to a character who may otherwise feel untouchable.

And while Saihate no Paladin isn’t rushing into the next story beat, it is setting it up nicely. After Will’s encounter with Meneldor he receives a divine revelation of a village under-attack and he rushes to its rescue only to find one of the attackers is Meneldor. He then intervenes in their sentencing, offering to pay compensation for their release.

All of this sets up the fact that somewhere there’s a village that has been overrun by demons and Will is on course now to go kill the demons. I love that his plan, when asked by Meneldor who has been pressed into being a guide, is more or less go to the village and kill the demons. It’s so simple and straightforward and so totally Will.

Visually this episode was very impressive with lovely landscape scenes as Will made his way across the wilderness, more subdued but equally lovely scenes of souls beings guided home through Will’s prayers, and even fairies (depicted as fairy lights rather than actual fairies), so all and all it was just a great episode to watch.

Where Saihate no Paladin still kind of falls short is in the action itself. Whether it was fighting the boar or taking out Meneldor, this anime is big on keeping the action pretty simple. The end result in the case of the boar scene being that for a moment the boar seems to be suspended in mid-air held up by the spear but neither moving forward or back, before Will then throws it backward. It doesn’t quite look right.

Anyway, we have the promise of some demon fighting coming up in Saihate no Paladin so I’m pretty keen to see 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

You know I watched two anime episodes on Sunday that both seemed pretty obsessed with dragging out a farewell and yet unlike Taishou Otome Fairytale (review out later), Saihate no Paladin managed to make this feel absolutely necessary. Instead of just filling screen time this was a necessary epilogue of the opening act of what is going to be a much larger story. And I very much appreciate that this anime has taken five episodes on this opening act for Will.

Where another fantasy or isekai anime would have maybe spent an episode on Will growing up, training, and then heading off on his adventure, we’ve had five episode in Saihate no Paladin to really learn about Will and to watch him grow and prepare for the next steps of his journey.

More than that, Mary, Blood and Gus are more than just mentors who appear and then disappear or a family member buried in one episode and then mentioned but never really understood by the audience. We’ve spent near half a season with these characters and seeing their influence on Will. This absolutely gives them and their memory more impact than some nebulous relative that we might see for a single scene before they go get themselves killed prompting the hero to leave on his journey.

That this story understands that the death of a character has more impact when the audience has a connection with that character makes me feel cautiously optimistic going forward even if I doubt we can get far along Will’s journey in this season of Saihate no Paladin given the slower pace of the story.

And that slower pace makes me fear this may be another Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash (which I absolutely loved) that never got a second season for the anime. I’ll be honest, Grimgar needs a reboot because the light novels are amazing and that story deserves to be animated.

Saihate no Paladin continues to impress with narrative set-up but is it too late for some viewers?

Right, so this episode of Saihate no Paladin does some fantastic work with closing out its opening act and transitions to Will heading off on his journey but while the plot and character work is very solid the visuals leave a bit to be desired.

Will concludes his fight against Stagnate and honestly while the music was swelling epically as Will delivered his flurry of sword strikes the visuals were just kind of messy. More than that, the final confrontation took place inside the darkened temple so all of the scenes were just a bit murky with a dull background.

Saihate no Paladin has managed some glorious scenery but thinking back none of the high action scenes have been particularly impressive in terms of their animation. This may be a clear weak point for the series.

Still, someone give the people responsible for the score of this episode an award. Sure it is all standard fantasy style but it works so effectively and if you close your eyes and just listen to the first half of this episode you would absolutely be swept away to an epic battle between opposing forces with everything on the line. Beautiful.

Once the fight is concluded we have the sequence with the family celebrating one final time and all the goodbyes from Mary and Blood. On the one hand it is emotionally touching and on the other I kind of feel like they are handing a lot of baggage to Will to carry forward. That thought becomes certainty the next day when Gus lays solving the issue of the sealed Undead King on Will as well. Sure Will has ten years to work on it but Mary, Blood and Gus were there for 200 years. Seems a little unfair.

The other criticism I will give this episode (and keep in mind I was happily swept along while watching the episode) is the very opening scene where Will is running toward the temple continuing directly on from episode 4 and we hear a constant internal monologue from him. I’ve mentioned this before I think with this anime but Will needs to stop narrating things the audience can clearly see or put together for themselves. Even after the fight Will feels the need to reflect on the fact that it took all three of his mentor’s skills to overcome the obstacles in the fight.

The audience just watched him fight. We know he used prayer, the sword, and magic and where he got all those skills.

That aside, it is very easy to just get swept up in this final battle. It’s been built up from the beginning, the characters have a real stake in the outcome, and neither of the combatants are suddenly pulling a new power or skill out of thin air. It’s a solid concluding fight for a narrative sequence.

Be sure to watch the after the credits scenes where we see Blood and Mary before their final battle. While it doesn’t necessarily add new information, it is just kind of nice to see these two as human before everything else and it is a lovely tribute to Will’s parents.

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