English Dub Review: Akashic Records of Bastard Magical Instructor “Gold Digger?!”

Going to the chapel and we’re… gonna get kiiiiiiiiiilled.

Spoilers Below

After the whole “Imma-kill-yo-professor-and-kidnap-yo-buddy” act has come to a close, Re=L has tried her best to become close friends with Sistine and Rumia, and to make ti up to them for her actions. She even flies off the handle “protecting” Sistine by chasing down Glenn with a giant sword. What? All he did was thank her for saving his life. Not his fault she was blushing profusely because that mouth-to-mouth was her first kiss. This chase drives him out of the school and into the street, where he is almost run down by an affluent-looking gentleman’s coach. That man, a professor at another magic school, is named Leos. Oh, and he’s Sistine’s fiance. Small world. He’s come to give a guest lecture, and what a lecture! He manages to take extremely complicated magical theorems for military spells and break them down so that the kids can easily digest them. Problem is, he doesn’t teach the kids any restraint. Using what he teaches, the kids could figure out how to make a common, nonlethal spell to kill someone. Rumia turns to Glenn and reassures him. None of Glenn’s students would take it so far. He taught them ethics to go with their magic. Still, both she and Glenn have misgivings about Leos.

Those misgivings are given form shortly after the lecture. Leos takes Sistine aside and asks her to marry him all over again, reaffirming the resolution he made when they were children. Sistine turns him down; she has a dream, and can’t lose focus by getting married now. He tells her to give up on that dream, trash talking the entire field of magical archaeology. He even goes as far as to insult her grandfather and his legacy, though not directly. This is too much for Glenn, who had been eavesdropping with Rumia behind a bush. He encourages her to follow her dream and chuck out this loser. To support his intrusion, however, Sistine tells a lie. Saying that she and Radars are secretly engaged and totally in love. Both men thoroughly believe that the other is horrible for Sistine, and the two agree to duel each other. Later on, however, we see Leos is secretly meeting with one of the Resear-DANGIT! why can’t we go one story arc without one of those cretins? Yes, this entire thing is another scheme by the Researchers of Divine Wisdom. Well, somebody locks Rumia in a closet, they’re gonna kidnap her again!

I had fun watching this episode. It wasn’t the best written, or even animated, but it had some fun to it. It also revealed little bits and pieces throughout that we know is gonna come back to us later. First, we see the Glenn had a crush on a girl that looked exactly like Sistine before he left the Mage Corps. She died during an incident involving a substance called Angel Dust. That stuff has found its way into the city again. Second, we see Celica has a hidden section of the library devoted to her study of the underground labyrinth. Why she has to keep this hidden is anyone’s guess. The story is setting up for its big finish for the season, as we only have two episodes left.

The animation here wasn’t anything to write home about, but the art was pretty solid. Glenn was pretty dynamic during his scenes versus Leon, and there was plenty of well-drawn shots of Sistine blushing. They continue to show us through little bits of background art that the magic of this universe is a solid, regular thing, and I like to see that line of thinking. Here, we see it in the notation on the blackboard, interweaving magical runes with mathematical symbols in an equation. If that equation is actually worth anything is anyone’s guess, but it lends a reality to the magic of the world here. Josh Grelle did a great job with Glenn today. His voice acting was truly hilarious as Re=L attempted to bash his head in with her sword. He easily blends this with a much more sincere tone as we see him in other scenes. All of them are equally believable. I felt, however, that Rachael Messer could have worked a bit harder as Sistine. Though her announcement that she was secretly (and falsely) engaged to Radars was well synced, it was lacking in sensitivity as to how the character was feeling at the moment. There was shouting, but it didn’t really have emotion pumped into it. I give this episode seven cast gauntlets out of ten.