Sara Talks Anime

I feel like this season keeps on getting better and better. Maybe it’s just a case of “I’ve already watched a season of this show, so I already know exactly what to expect for this series”, compared to the other shows that I’m regularly reviewing here, where I’m trying to get a grasp of the feel of the series as I’m watching it. Because I don’t need to get a grip on that, however, I’m spending less of my time trying to figure out exactly what kind of series I’m watching compared to my expectations. And now, to deal with talking about this episode!

Something that I’ve done in past episode writeups but eventually fell out of doing was talking about things section by section and having headings specifically for those sections. However, I think that bringing these headings splitting sections back is the only way for me to be able to reasonably talk about this episode without crossing the wires too much. Here we go…

Battle for the Book in Reality

The portion of the episode that takes place in reality continues building from where last episode left off, even giving us a repeat of a scene from the last episode. The students that remain awake (because they have Crests) are asked to meet elsewhere to discuss the plan for fighting Clevatess. They set up their teams, though the number 3 student is given a different task. And as you’d expect, the top two students are in two of the three groups. They’ve got their tactics built up, and Clevatess also summons some of his followers, giving the command to devour them.

There’s also an interaction between the flying guy that was introduced last season and Zavthier possessing the Shamaness Godspeaker have with Clevatess, but I’m not sure just how much narrative impact it’ll have at this time.

Another important point of the parts of the episode focused on this heading is that we get hints that Pope Romain isn’t fully human, as his skin starts falling from his face, though he fixes it just in time. Sorry if this is poor timing for a joke, but it seems he’s basically the humanoid equivalent of romaine lettuce at the moment. Somebody recall him, please.

Honestly, I find this part to be super tense. It’s building up to a big confrontation between Clevatess and the members of the students and staff of the academy that are trying to maintain the status quo, and I genuinely can’t wait to see how Clevatess’s part of the story continues.

Of course, that’s not the entirety of the episode. If it was, I’d be highly disappointed. Meaning it’s time to talk about the other side of this coin.

Alicia and the Other World

In the other world, Alicia has been captured by one of the third best student’s plants, with it draining energy from her and growing bigger because of it. Of course, this energy it’s draining is the dark ichor that keeps Alicia alive. It only drains a portion of it, however, before it becomes too big for its cage and ends up losing its grip on Alicia.

She manages to get out of where she was, and finds another glass surface to look into. She manages to deduce that the reflections she sees are of the real world, and notices that her tail in the real world is larger than it was before. During her wandering, she runs into that damn snail, which reveals itself to be able to change forms, taking on the form of hero Alicia prior to death.

With the episode title, I think you can figure out what happens next. The two engage in a battle. During this battle, Alicia manages to awaken magical power because apparently her suffering, at least in this world, makes her stronger. Okay, sure, fine, whatever. I’ll just accept that at this point.

Because she’s able to beat this other version of her, however, it serves as her having completed a trial, and she’s offered to go through with the whole Crest thing. However, she’s able to pick up on the fact that something isn’t right here, and opts to not go through. While the thing from the other side trying to get through to her, it doesn’t follow her all the way through. Also, because of her surviving this trial, she can now understand the human speech in this world, though her speech still reads to them as animal noises.

This is also where we establish the third best student’s power. He can talk to plants using his magic. Wow. However, he had magic set up so if creature Alicia ever escaped and tried to get away, she could easily be recaptured. As it turns out, he is merciless to everything that isn’t plants, and we end the episode with the sound of something being cut. I highly doubt that Alicia’s going to die here, considering that this season has been confirmed to be 13 episodes long, it wouldn’t make sense for Alicia to die here. Even then, Alicia can’t die unless Clevatess turns her back into a corpse.

Just…woo, this is getting to be a high impact series. I feel like, for my own sake, I’m going to need to keep splitting the wires on these posts, at least until Alicia and Clevatess are in the same world again. I know I’ve been good at keeping these things straight in the past, but since this seems to be a much more extended thing than I thought, I figured that having this split will do all of us good.

Really excited for next week, though. This season is getting so good!

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