English Dub Review: Isekai Cheat Magician “Defense of Azpire”

Overview:

The guild takes to defend the city.

Our Take:

Rin definitely shone this episode, taking her scientific knowledge and adapting it to a larger scale. It shows her capabilities are definitely growing, as she easily tears through a swath of low-grade monsters. Even though she was brought to this world by accident, she can definitely hold her own, and this proves it. She’s doing pretty good!

One thing I noticed about the framing is that the isekai overpowered protagonist doesn’t actually help in this case. Taichi is the protagonist, and we have been told from the very start that he has incredible potential as a summoner. He was the person specifically chosen to go into this fantasy world, so it’s no surprise that he would be the one to save the day. This is a little dry, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. The problem is that Taichi is still in-training. Does he have combat abilities that are powerful and would help during a siege? Naturally, of course, he does. However, he hasn’t mastered them to bring himself to his full potential- just last episode we found out that using magic without a contract exhausted him so badly that he was comatose for a few days- so he shouldn’t be the absolute crux of the operation.

Everyone, even the guild master, bemoans that Taichi isn’t there, even before the battle starts. It’s not in a sense of ‘he could help us’, but that ‘he could fix this easily’. Since when has an apprentice garnered this much faith? He is still an apprentice, after all, this is one of his first proper missions. There’s no reason whatsoever for everyone to be counting so heavily on him. It’s not Lemia, one of the most powerful people in the world that’s been introduced so far– but her apprentice, Taichi. Okay.

Exceptions to the rule would be the cult’s master, who seems to know a lot more than he lets on, and Rin herself. Rin cares a lot about Taichi, and draws strength from him being with her. She would have a lot of faith in him, so her wishing that he would be there, that he would save the day, makes sense because they’re so close. Everyone else, on the other hand, believes way too heavily in this guy.

Altogether, tension doesn’t really build up to anything because it’s so cliche. I’m starting to feel that this isekai isn’t going to deliver much.