I’m really loving how so far this series has been managing to keep this “The [Blank] and the [Blank]” naming structure that this series uses for its episodes. It pairs nicely with the episode title, as we’ve already gotten that title structure established. It’ll be interesting to see if they continue with this name structure the entire way through, or if there are some episodes where they have to stray from this structure.
Anyway, the episode begins with a black cat (Kurobane) wandering through some human civilization…at night. As it turns out, he’s there to check on the prince at the request of the Cat Dragon. Though it’s clear at this point that the Cat Dragon still doesn’t fully trust humans, especially with all of his reminders to just check on the prince.
Kurobane does make it to the castle, and decides to deal with talking to the prince’s parents in the morning. But as it turns out, the room that Kurobane ended up in was the room of the prince, and he seemed like he was about to cry. Kurobane’s tail served as a distraction for the baby prince, however, with the baby prince even managing to grip it before falling back asleep. While that does technically throw a wrench into Kurobane’s visit, he does talk to someone else at the castle to bring that up to the king.
Kurobane appears to have gotten up to a lot in life, as he’s taken on a bear on his own and won! I wonder if he’s ever fought one before that point…
*wink wink nudge nudge*
Anyhow, Kurobane’s asked to judge the prince’s character, only for Kurobane to be like “dude, there isn’t enough data here for me to make a call”, and the king’s like “no worries, take your time.”
Once Kurobane’s back at the prince’s room, he’s like “this is a child that can’t move on its own, how am I supposed to pass judgment?”, but based on a montage we see, Kurobane eventually gets won over.
An example of Kurobane’s training is asking the prince to climb a specific tree. Afterward, though, the prince goes to the training grounds, where we find out that a group of heroes have beaten the army of the Demon King via a discussion that the king and Kurobane are having. Here, we find out that Kurobane and his siblings took down a bear when they were younger.
That’s right! Kurobane is one of the kittens from Episode 3!
Kurobane and the prince do head out, with Kurobane even having his tail up and the prince reaching out, but not grabbing. When Kurobane asks “what, not going to grab the tail?”, the prince is like “I’m not a kid!”.
We also get to see the team of heroes that took that army down, and wouldn’t you know it, the cat that wanted to be a human adventurer is among them. Everyone’s connected. Everything will eventually connect back to itself.
The prince desperately wants to move on from the training exercises to actually learning magic, but he isn’t old enough yet. But the prince isn’t deterred: he saw the adventurers and wants to be one himself, and also be able to be someone able to justify being near Kurobane, and Kurobane in turn helps teach the prince how to speak like an adventurer.
We get a jump forward of seeing the prince give a bear to a guild and requesting to join them, only to give a pull back to when he was still the prince, with Kurobane comparing how girls act at balls — or “dance parties”, as the subtitles state — to hunting for prey, that also leads to the prince getting out with Kurobane.
To really lean into the adventurer aesthetic, the prince opted to cut his hair that night, also choosing to take on the alias of Stan for adventuring.
…and this is where I take issue with Crunchyroll’s synopsis of this episode. As of the time of writing, this is what the synopsis says:
“A black cat named Kurobane meets a human prince, Stan, who wishes to become an adventurer.”
The issue that I take with it is that it seems to imply, at least to me, that Stan is the name of the prince since the beginning, when the episode clearly sets up that Stan is an alias. Like, you could remove the Stan part from the synopsis, and you’d still cover everything important about the episode that needs to come across in the synopsis.
The morning is when the bear gets taken down, and after we get out of that flashback, we find out that Stan used the money to buy himself the necessary things he needs to be an adventurer, like clothes. He and Kurobane head out during the next day, and just in time, as a search notice for the prince has been put out. Then there’s also narration being like “but it would be some time before this other thing happens”, and since the narration didn’t include a “but that’s another story for another day”, I initially thought that the next episode would have clearer signs for whether it would directly follow this or not.
Just based on the title for the next episode, The White Cat and the Girl, however, it doesn’t seem like it’s a direct continuation of the events. I don’t know if it’s because the anime screwed with the ordering, or if that’s genuinely the order that the source material goes in, but whatever.
Honestly, I’m getting episodic cartoon vibes from this series. Yes, there’s a running thread with the characters, but I feel like someone who’s never watched any of the previous episodes of this series could still watch and enjoy this episode. I don’t know if the story does this intentionally or if it was completely unintentional, but I still think it’s a cool decision! I’ve been really enjoying this series so far, and my main complaints that I can recall off the top of my head have been with how Crunchyroll does things, not anything that the series itself does. I’m honestly really glad I’ve been sticking with this show, and I can’t wait to see the next episode!
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Next Post: Episode 5 (“The White Cat and the Girl”) hasn’t aired yet. Unless the episode gets delayed, the post should go live on July 26th, 2026 at 5:30 PM (PDT)
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