English Dub Review: Chain Chronicle: Light of Haecceittas “The Flower in the Desert”

Okay, okay, Julianna. We’ll call you Queen, already.

Spoilers Below

Aram and Phoena head out to the Desert Lake kingdom, armed with the knowledge that a new guardian dragon would appear there. As luck would have it, they found a tablet of magical music in the old dragon’s lair, so maybe getting the local songtress, Musica… Musica? Why would you name your daughter that? If she goes into music, she’s cliched and typecast. If she doesn’t, she’ll spend the rest of her life with people looking at her funny. Lose-Lose for the kid. You have to think about these things, people. Anyways, while Phoena goes off to find Musica and get the song sung, we’ve got bigger issues. Shuza and Julianna are outside the city, with the full force of both their countries’ armies behind them.

While both armies facing each other down, they debate sending messengers to declare the terms of the battle. There isn’t much of a point, no messengers would ever make it back. The desert kingdom sends its own envoy in between them with an invitation. Come to the kingdom’s capital and negotiate. They both agree, but the negotiations are… tense. Read that as “Two teenage boys trash talking over the voice line in a Call of Duty game”. Shuza keeps egging Julianna on to the point she’s ready stab him right there. So, I guess it’s a good thing the Black Army has shown up looking for a fight.

And what a fight! The droid girl, the succubus, even Darkhart is here! It’s like the battle of the four armies all over again! While the succubus supervises, the droid goes after Shuza, and Darkhart takes on Julianna. I have to say, for wearing such a huge dress, queenie’s got some serious mobility. When it seems like Darkhart might get the upper hand, Aram jumps in for an assist and drives him off. While Aram continues to fight other lesser soldiers, one of the desert soldiers comes to Aram with a warning. They have to make sure that both Julianna AND Shuza survive this battle. If either of them die the battle will switch from three armies against the bad guys to every army for themselves. No one will survive that. The worst part is, on the field of war, there is enough chaos to give anyone a good chance to do something really stu-Really Julianna?

The queen takes the fight straight to Shuza herself, attempting to flank him. The two are neck and neck as far as combat power, but at least the battle is epic. She’s yelling at him for the stuff he said over the negotiating table. How he said she didn’t deserve to be queen. She fires back with whining about how hard a decision that was. But she’s queen now, call her queen. Okay! Hey, did she always have that bad dye-job on her right curly-pom-pom-pylon-like hair thingy? Oh. Darkness is not only pouring out of Shuza, but is coming out of Julianna’s proud locks as well. Aram interrupts, breaking off their attacks against each other. The baddies come in after him, knocking his sword out of his hand. Despite that, he defends himself by weaving raw mana into a shield that repels the darklings.

Back in the sanctuary of the guardian dragon, Musica begins singing her song. This does two things. One, Aram’s sword returns to him of its own volition and transforms into a powered up form. Two, Furball begins a transformation of his own. HE is the new guardian dragon! He’s been with them the whole time and merely needed to be awakened. While Furball takes out the riffraff, Aram and his shiny new sword takes down Darkhart and the droid in the same strike. The Black Army retreats.

In the aftermath, Aram demands the return of the Chain Chronicle and Shuza… Flinches? Well, seeing Aram one-shot two of the demons who were giving you a hard time would give you pause. Fortunately, the Chain Chronicle makes Shuza’s decision for him, floating over to Aram. In his hands, filled with hope and determination, the darkness is purged. Julianna makes amends with Shuza and joins Aram, while Shuza rides off into the sunset.

Well, that was a fun episode. The battles were quite epic, and well animated. There were several points that made me wanted to screencap for the art, but then I’d just be making a comic book of screenshots, and nobody likes those. Character voices, not shabby. The story wasn’t there very much, but it was an action episode so… whatever. I still give this episode eight furball dragons out of ten.