Tensai Ouji no Akaji Kokka Saisei Jutsu resolves its plot from last week with Wein visiting the neighbouring lord under the guise of returning his son’s corpse after episode 4’s mishap. However, pretty much as soon as Wein lands those at the heart of the conspiracy begin to move and it becomes a game of who has the better plan and contingency plan as Wein works on intimidating the idiot’s father into laying all the blame for the potential rebellion plot on the now-dead son.
This is aided by the man being a bit of a coward and clearly someone who struggles to make snap decisions under pressure. Still, Tensai Ouji no Akaji Kokka Saisei Jutsu makes it clear he isn’t the only one calling the shots.
Tensai Ouji no Akaji Kokka Saisei Jutsu decided to let Wein’s plans mostly work this week.
One of the problems episode 5 of Tensai Ouji faces is that we really don’t care about any of the characters Wein is facing off against. The Princess and Ninym only get a few appearances in this episode, mostly in a flashback where Wein outlines part of his plans to them (just to justify the success of his back-up plan) and then the Princess gets to scowl the guy into final submission after he’s already completely lost. Then the two girls have tea and discuss whether the Princess actually likes Wein.
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It seems like a decided step backward for both of these characters and it also means the most of the episode we just have Wein and a whole bunch of extras we don’t really care about facing off against villains we also don’t care about.
Basically after leaving the father to make preparations for departure (or so he says), Wein and his small number of guards are returning to a hotel (I think) when they are waylaid by spies from the western kingdoms who were clearly the ones pushing for the rebellious plot in the first place. Their appearance was not unexpected and even though Wein and his guards are few in number they manage to overcome this threat though even Wein has to admit he very nearly got skewered, and wouldn’t that have put a dint in the genius’ plans.
It’s kind of weird. So many anime kind of inspire when main characters come up with good plans, work hard and then succeed but there’s something so insufferably smug about Wein that Tensai Ouji no Akaji Kokka Saisei Jutsu never really manages to make me feel that way. Actually, I had a lot more fun in episode 4 when everything kind of went wrong for him. It felt kind of satisfying.
Yet here, Wein manipulates the lord and even though he doesn’t do what Wein wanted as a first course of action, his follow up was more or less as predicted and Wein was ready for it. He also overcomes the spies both in preventing them from killing him and in preventing them from destroying the evidence of the plot. And through it all he also managed to keep his childhood promise to the Princess to maybe help her out if she dragged him into trouble. It all seems like I should feel happy for the guy.
I’m definitely going to attribute my lack of cheering at Wein’s victory to the fact that Tensai Ouji still really hasn’t given us any other characters that really seem interesting or worth overcoming. We know practically nothing about the ones Wein faces off against, and what we do know paints them as very one-dimensional and usually quite dull-witted. It makes his victories seem a little on the hollow side.
That said, this episode of Tensai Ouji no Akaji Kokka Saisei Jutsu was easy to watch and the various plots flowed along nicely to a resolution so it isn’t all doom and gloom. I’m just not that invested in the characters and as we’re now practically half-way through the season I’m guessing this is about as good as it is going to get.
Images from: Tensai Ouji no Akaji Kokka Saisei Jutsu. Dir. M Tamagawa. Yokohama Animation Lab. 2022
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Karandi James
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