English Dub Review: The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar “The Oath of the Chalice”

Bout time.

Overview (Spoilers Below!)

The night before a major battle, Yuuto studies military formations, discovering how a phalanx functions. He puts his knowledge into action the following morning, leading the Wolf Clan to victory against the Horn Clan. With the help of warriors Felicia and Sigrun, Yuuto conducts a successful diplomatic meeting with the Horn Clan’s patriarch Linnea, declaring her his honorary little sister.

Exhausted, Yuuto races home, ignoring his “uncles” in favor of making a discrete call on his smartphone. Apparently, Yuuto is from modern-day Japan, but was summoned into the mythical world of Yggdrasil two years ago. Utilizing military and diplomatic tactics that he researches on his phone, Yuuto was able to rise to the position of patriarch of the Wolf Clan. He wants nothing more than to return home to his childhood friend Mitsuki, but he also wants to ensure that the people of Yggdrasil are safe and unified.

Yuuto’s skills as a leader are put to the test when the Horn Clan is attacked mere hours after forming an alliance with the Wolf Clan. Yuuto’s team of advisors think it would be ridiculous to rush to the Horn Clan’s aid, but in a dramatic outburst, Yuuto insists that they fight for their allies.

Our Take

The premise of this show (a modern guy is seen as a military genius in a stone-age civilization because he can research stuff they haven’t invented yet) is pretty amusing and has a lot of potentials. I’m excited to see where the writers take it—what will happen if Yuuto’s phone runs out of battery at a key strategic moment? Or if an enemy discovers his phone? Would his clan stop respecting him if they found out the source of his brilliant leadership? The possibilities are promising.

That being said, this episode is mostly setup. Viewers haven’t yet had time to get invested in the characters, so the opening battle scene isn’t particularly thrilling. But “The Oath of the Chalice” does do a pretty good job of setting up Yuuto’s motivations and the world of Yggdrasil, and it makes me curious to see more, which is basically the job of an opening episode of a series.

The animation is certainly a highlight here. Backgrounds include majestic starry skies and glittering oceans, and the characters’ faces are adorable and likable. I especially enjoyed the use of CGI during the battle scene, with some interesting camerawork as we pan from the battle to Yuuto and Felicia (as well as a really realistic CGI flag).

At times, though, the fanservice in this show is a little overdone. I know this is basically a harem anime, and some fanservice is par for the course in this genre. But it’s still an extremely jarring tonal shift to go from serious military tactical planning to a character insisting that she help another character with his morning wood. I found myself rolling my eyes whenever Felicia was around because her behavior is so predictable and awkward to watch. The same goes for the series’ ending song—it’s just all the female characters in the nude, which doesn’t seem to have much to do with the story.

The fanservice is particularly uncomfortable because of a Yggdrasil cultural custom: all members of the Wolf Clan refer to themselves as the “little sibling” or “child” of the patriarch. So watching Felicia call herself Yuuto’s little sister in the same breath as she makes sexual advances towards him? It’s a little weird. In general, I don’t really understand what the child/little sister classifications actually entail, and I hope the concept is better explained as the show goes on.

While watching this episode, I was most interested in Yuuto’s tactical deliberations. He is manipulative and aggressive, and sometimes scary, but he always uses this underhanded rhetoric as a means to protect others from bloodshed. There’s definitely a message to be gleaned here about nonviolence, about keeping your promises to help others. It’s fascinating to me that some teenager from the twenty-first century ended up as such an effective leader, and I hope the series shows us how he got to that point because I’m really curious to know. I also just love how dramatic he can be—Yuuto’s monologue in the ending scene was so over-the-top that it made me smile (and Brandon McInnis’s voice acting was great throughout). Complicated and flashy, Yuuto seems like he’ll be a really fun character to get to know.

I do want to know more about the other characters, though, because right now they seem to fit neatly into tropes: Felicia is the sexy one, Sigrun is the tomboy, Ingrid is tsundere, Mitsuki is sweet. At the moment, they just serve as supporting players in Yuuto’s story. I’d love to see them get a bit more depth and become developed characters in their own right.

All in all not too much happened in this episode other than setting the stage for events to come. Future episodes will need to up the stakes in order to keep my attention, but “The Oath of the Chalice” is a fine first episode.